- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Profile Books (26 Nov 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1846683327
- ISBN-13: 978-1846683329
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 14 x 1.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 796,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Early in 2007 Leigh Skene warned of the danger of a meltdown in global markets. Now, while governments spend furiously to rescue the global economy, he again challenges received wisdom. In The Impoverishment of Nations, he prescribes a different solution, outlining a plan to deal with a very different economic future, following the financial crisis that ended the longest period of prosperity for some five hundred years. We have entered a period of uncertainty, which has placed a huge burden on public finances. Governments have spent $10 trillion on bailing out financial institutions and other firms, including General Motors. We are at a tipping point and the future will be unlike the past - one of the most dangerous economic stages any generation can face. In his penetrating analysis, Leigh Skene traces how we got here and what has to happen for the global economy to recover the ground it has lost in less than two years. He looks at the shift of economic power to emerging nations, the inevitability of deflation, the unfitness for purpose of the financial markets, how governments' share of output must shrink, how solvency not liquidity caused the current crisis, and how it is wrong to think you can borrow your way to growth.
About the Author
Leigh Skene worked in debt analysis and trading for leading insurance companies and underwriters before becoming head of fixed income trading then chief economist for a major investment bank. Since 1980 he has been an independent economic consultant specialising in financial markets. He is the author of four books, and of several reports predicting the credit crunch.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Primrose path to economic ruin,
By Victor Smart (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Impoverishment of Nations: The issues facing the post meltdown global economy (Paperback)
This is an important and ambitious book which charts how decades of easy money led us fatefully into our current economic predicament. Pacily written and technical without being jargon-filled, it is by turns erudite, didactic and downright scary.The Impoverishment of Nations traces the trajectory of the world economy since the trusty Gold Standard was cast aside and governments began to print so-called fiat money backed by nothing very much other than the hope that confidence can be self-perpetuating. According to Skene, what happened in the ensuing decades was an inexorable path towards catastrophe. As government-printed money swelled credit, leverage grew, and, inevitably, exotic financial engineering and exotic products entered the scene. We felt richer and richer. Until the whole top-heavy edifice came crashing down. Skene displays a penetrating understanding of esoteric financial products such as collateralised debt obligations and teases out their many unintended consequences in what is a highly interconnected system. In explaining how high finance affects geopolitics the devil is in the detail. The Impoverishment of Nations is also a reminder of how darn interesting global finance, with all its mysterious intricacies, is for those with the patience. In case the reader has missed the message, a summary at the end sets out Ten Basic Truths. These include "Printed money = excessive borrowing = the illusion of rising wealth" and "All previous fiat money systems have ended in disaster". Skene scorns governments, regulators and self-serving Wall Street and City bankers in equal measure for getting us into this fix. There are no pain-free solutions to our situation - and anyone who suggests there are deserves our contempt. Our destiny now lies in our ability to come to terms with forces that have moved beyond our control. In that sense this book depicts a tragedy which has come to engulf us all.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE WORLD ECONOMY EXPLAINED PAR EXCELENCE,
By
This review is from: The Impoverishment of Nations: The issues facing the post meltdown global economy (Paperback)
THIS BOOK EXPLAINS WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE WORLD ECONOMY OVER THE LAST FEW HUNDRES YEARS AND CONCENTRATING ON THE SITUATION THAT WE ALL FACE NOW,DE MYSTYFYING IT AND GIVING MANY OF THE "WHYS AND WHEREFORES" WHICH LEADS TO THE "HERE WE ARE NOW" BUT THE REAL BEAUTY OF THIS WELL WRITTEN BOOK IS THAT IT SUGGESTS A VERY COMPELLING EXIT STRATEGY THAT WILL PUT THE WORLD ECONOMY ON A REALATIVELY MORE STABLE AND SUSTAINABLE FOOTING. A VERY HIGHLY RECOMENDED SOURCE OF INFORMATION FOR EVERYONE ,IN FACT IT SHOULD BE COMPULSERY READING FOR ALL CONCERNED WITH OUR CURRENT FISCAL/& WORLD ECOLOGICAL SITUATION .H A TRUSWELL OXFORD
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Right on the Scene,
By Colin M. Waugh - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Impoverishment of Nations: The issues facing the post meltdown global economy (Paperback)
Leigh Skene takes his reader step by step through the key factors at work in the post-crisis global economic order, using plain language and the perspective gained from an extensive career spent working in international financial markets. His book identifies the critical missteps of policy makers as well as highlighting continuing vulnerabilities in the system - which are both acute and imminent, according to this Canadian economist, ex-trader and former insurance company debt analyst.Drawing on disciplines as diverse as demographics, history and sociology as well as economics and finance to make his points, the work's eclectic analysis extends from a critique of renewable energy to a discussion of the strategic importance of water supplies in the future survival and dominance of the world's great economies. More pessimistic about the ability of emerging markets to lead future global growth than the current reviewer, Leigh Skene is far from sanguine about the longevity of China's current growth rates, not to mention the prospects for the Asian powerhouse's financial and social stability. To a degree a number of his predictions depend more on politics than economics, in a world which, since the outbreak of the crisis, has repeatedly seen the public sector come to the rescue of the profligate and the financially dysfunctional. A bonus for readers with a continuing interest in the evolution of the scenarios which Skene depicts is the ability to follow his regular columns in a newly-launched online commentary and analysis, known as "Skene's Scene", available through the website of Lombard Street Research, the independent London-based consultancy and monetary think-tank. Whether you agree or disagree with the Skene diagnosis and prescriptions on economics, this book is keen reading for the both the ailing and the opportunistic - read it to understand the past - or for an unsettling view of the future.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A timely look at what ails our economy,
By N. Klynjan "1engelbythesea" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Impoverishment of Nations: The issues facing the post meltdown global economy (Paperback)
If you want to understand more about global economy this is a book you want to read. You will want to read it more than once as it is hard to digest all in a single read.
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