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Title details for Permanent Distortion by Nomi Prins - Available

Permanent Distortion

How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever

by Nomi Prins
Ellen Archer
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
A riveting exposé of a permanent financial dystopia, its causes, and real-world consequences It is abundantly clear that our world is divided into two very different economies. The real one, for the average worker, is based on productivity and results. It behaves according to traditional rules of money and economics. The other doesn't. It is the product of years of loose money, poured by central banks into a system dominated by financial titans. It is powerful enough to send stock markets higher even in the face of a global pandemic and threats of nuclear war.

This parting from reality has its roots in an emergency response to the financial crisis of 2008. "Quantitative Easing" injected a vast amount of cash into the economy—especially if you were a major Wall Street bank. What began as a short-term dependency became a habit, then a compulsion, and finally an addiction.

Nomi Prins relentlessly exposes a world fractured by policies crafted by the largest financial institutions, led by the Federal Reserve, that have supercharged the financial system while selling out regular citizens and leading to social and political reckonings. She uncovers a newly polarized world of the mega rich versus the never rich, the winners and losers of an unprecedented distortion that can never return to "normal."

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 11, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781549163999
      • File size: 289629 KB
      • Duration: 10:03:23

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      August 1, 2022
      A hard-hitting survey of the "forces...that fuel financial markets at the expense of destabilizing the real economy." Prins has written several books about the lack of connection between the financial markets and the real world, including Other People's Money and All the Presidents' Bankers, and as a former Wall Street executive, she has plenty of experience to draw on. Here, she delves into the roots of the disjunction and considers the consequences. Much of the problem, she writes, can be traced to the response of the Federal Reserve to the 2008 financial crisis. The Fed poured money into the market, arguing that some of the leading institutions could not be allowed to fail. This worked reasonably well, although much of the money ended up in the pockets of bankers who were already wealthy. The real problem was that once the flow of cheap money started, it was difficult to stop it without causing another crisis. Prins explains how all this worked, looking at the mechanisms of quantitative easing and bond buybacks. The recovery and the subsequent boom were built on an ever growing mountain of debt, but that was a problem for another generation. The author sees a similar reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic, as the economy was flooded with money as economic stimulus. "What started as an emergency response to two crises," she writes, "became a permanent power grab...and while people and small businesses received some fiscal support on the fringes, the bulk of manufactured money zoomed into financial assets." Prins is understandably worried about the future of the economy, with emerging disintermediation avenues and an increasing recognition of the widening gap between the mega-rich and the rest of us. The big banks might be flush with the largesse of their central bank sponsors, but, as the author clearly demonstrates, they should expect turbulent times ahead. Prins effectively dismantles the machinery of financial markets and explains how they operate in a secret world of their own.

      COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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