Mid-twentieth-century capitalism has turned into global capitalism, and global capitalism - turbocharged, Web-based, and able to find and make almost anything just about anywhere - has turned into supercapitalism. But as Robert B. Reich makes clear in this eye-opening book, while supercapitalism is working wonderfully well to enlarge the economic pie, democracy - charged with caring for all citizens - is becoming less and less effective under its influence. Reich explains how widening inequalities of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and the spreading effects of global warming are the logical outcomes of supercapitalism. He shows us why companies, fighting harder than ever to maintain their competitive positions, have become even more deeply involved in politics; and how average citizens, seeking great deals and invested in the stock market to an unprecedented degree, are increasingly loath to stand by their values if it means biting the hands that feed them. As one of America's most influential voices, Reich sets out a clear course to a vibrant capitalism and a concurrent, equally vibrant democracy.

In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed media scholar and author Douglas Rushkoff tells us how to combine the best of human nature with the best of modern technology. Tying together disparate threads - big data, the rise of robots and AI, the increasing participation of algorithms in stock market trading, the gig economy, the collapse of the eurozone - Rushkoff provides a critical vocabulary for our economic moment and a nuanced portrait of humans and commerce at a critical crossroads. -- From the Amazon

The 2008 financial crisis cost $15 trillion in the U.S. stock and residential housing markets. The crash hit institutions and citizens, threatening economic survival, employment, and retirement prospects. What went wrong? And how can we prevent a similar disaster? In Worth the Risk, Robert Merton--the Nobel Prize-winning economist whose work revolutionized financial markets--offers answers. Merton maintains that the magnitude of the crisis points to more fundamental forces at work than the greed, selfishness, or criminal behavior of some financial-system players and consumers. In clear, accessible language, he demystifies those forces. For example, he shows: -Why the professionals underestimated the riskiness of mortgage-backed securities and corporate loan portfolios. -How the financial innovations that brought home ownership to millions of Americans combined with other benign developments to inject huge, systemic risk into the U.S. economy. Merton then identifies specific reforms that could improve regulation and transparency in the financial-services industry and head off a similar crash in the future. In particular, he offers strategies for minimizing risks in the innovation of financial instruments--which remains essential for our economy's health. And he suggests innovations that could open the door to security and growth for nations, corporations, and individuals. Engaging and authoritative, Worth the Risk provides answers to the burning questions on everyone's mind'and paints an encouraging picture of a far more solid financial future.

Over the past decade, Sanford Grossman's contributions to the economics ofinformation have significantly altered the way economists think about rational expectations. Herehis articles are collected in one place, providing a uniform framework for understanding how pricesconvey information in securities markets.Grossman elaborates a new model of economic equilibriumthat casts a dual role for prices both as constraints that affect the immediate costs or benefits ofacts and as conveyers of information about the probable future costs and benefits of those acts. Hepoints to the Wall Street panic of October 1987 as an example of the informational role of priceswhere volatility actually represented sophisticated trading strategies by relatively uninformedindividuals.In the first two chapters, Grossman interprets the ideas presented in the articles inlight of recent developments in financial markets, looks at selected contributions to the new andstill expanding literature on the informational role of prices, and introduces the rationalexpectations model of demand price equilibrium.Six chapters then take up the informational role ofprices in competitive stock markets, and future markets (where Grossman's "noisy rationalexpectations" model provides rewards for discovering new information). They look at theimpossibility of informationally efficient markets, the implications of program trading and dynamichedging strategies for stock and futures price volatility, and takeover bids. The last two chaptersconcentrate on the informational role of contracts -- warranties and private disclosure aboutproduct quality, and the implication of unemployment with observable aggregate shocks. Economistscollaborating with Grossman on several chapters include J. E. Stiglitz, Oliver Hart, and EricMaskin.Sanford Grossman is Professor of Finance at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.The Informational Role of Prices is included in the Wicksell Lectures series.

“Pre-eminent among historians of labor history.†—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The textbook history of the 1920s is a story of Prohibition, flappers, and unbounded prosperity. For millions of industrial workers, however, the “roaring twenties†looked very different. Working-class communities were already in crisis in the years before the stock market crash of 1929. Strikes in the 1920s and attempts to organize the unemployed and fight evictions in the early 1930s often fell victim to police violence and repression. Here, Irving Bernstein recaptures the social history of the decade leading up to Franklin Delano Rooseveltâ€s inauguration, uncovers its widespread inequality, and sheds light on the long-forgotten struggles that form the prelude to the great labor victories of the 1930s. "In other words, viewed from afar, most of the people who were suffering the hardships of the Depression were depressed and even ashamed, ready to blame themselves for their plight. But the train of developments that connects changes in social conditions to a changed consciousness is not simple. People, including ordinary people, harbor somewhere in their memories the building blocks of different and contradictory interpretations of what it is that is happening to them, of who should be blamed, and what can be done about it. Even the hangdog and ashamed unemployed worker who swings his lunch box and strides down the street so the neighbors will think he is going to a job can also have other ideas that only have to be evoked, and when they are make it possible for him on another day to rally with others and rise up in anger at his condition. —From the new introduction by Frances Fox Piven