Cover image for Why save the bankers? : and other essays on our economic and political crisis
Title:
Why save the bankers? : and other essays on our economic and political crisis
Edition:
First Mariner books edition.
Publication Date:
2017

2012
Publication Information:
Boston : Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

©2012
Physical Description:
ix, 212 pages ; 20 cm
ISBN:
9780544947283
Abstract:
Thomas Piketty's work has proved that unfettered markets lead to increasing inequality. Without meaningful regulation, capitalist economies will concentrate wealth in an ever smaller number of hands. For years, this critical challenge to democracy has been the focus of Piketty's monthly newspaper columns, which pierce the surface of current events to reveal the economic forces underneath. Why Save the Bankers? brings together selected columns from the period bookended by the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers and the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. In crystalline prose, Piketty examines a wide range of topics, and along the way he decodes the European Union's economic troubles, weighs in on oligarchy in the United States, wonders whether debts actually need to be paid back, and discovers surprising lessons about inequality by examining the career of Steve Jobs. Coursing with insight and flashes of wit, these brief essays offer a view of recent history through the eyes of one of the most influential economic thinkers of our time.
General Note:
Includes index.
Contents:
Why save the bankers? -- A trillion dollars -- Obama and FDR: a misleading analogy -- Profits, wages, and inequality -- The Irish disaster -- Central banks at work -- Forgotten inequalities -- Mysteries of the carbon tax -- Lessons for the tax system from the Bettencourt affair -- Enough of GDP, let's go back to national income -- Down with idiotic taxes! -- Who will be the winners of the crisis? -- With or without a platform? -- Record bank profits: a matter of politics -- No, the Greeks aren't lazy -- Europe against the markets -- Rethinking central banks -- Does Liliane Bettencourt pay taxes? -- Toward a calm debate on the wealth tax -- Should we fear the Fed? -- The scandal of the Irish bank bailout -- Japan: private wealth, public debts -- Greece: for a European bank tax -- Poor as jobs -- Rethinking the European project--and fast -- Protectionism: a useful weapon ... For lack of anything better -- Francois Hollande, a new Roosevelt for Europe? -- Federalism: the only solution -- The what and why of federalism -- Action, fast! -- Merkhollande and the Eurozone: shortsighted selfishness -- The Italian elections: Europe's responsibility -- For a European wealth tax -- Slavery: reparations through transparency -- A new Europe to overcome the crisis -- Can growth save us? -- IMF: still a ways to go! -- Libé: what does it mean to be free? -- On oligarchy in America -- To the polls, citizens! -- The exorbitant cost of being a small country -- Capital in Hong Kong? -- Capital according to Carlos Fuentes -- 2015: what shocks can get Europe moving? -- Spreading the democratic revolution to the rest of Europe -- The double hardship of the working class -- Must debts always be paid back? -- A crackdown alone will solve nothing.
Genre:
Language:
English
Additional Language:
Translated from the French.
Holds: