American Finance

A Washington Post reporter's intimate account of the fallout from the closing of a General Motors assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin - Paul Ryan's hometown - and a larger story of the hollowing of the American middle class. This is the story of what happens to an industrial town in the American heartland when its factory stills - but it's not the familiar tale. Most observers record the immediate shock of vanished jobs, but few stay around long enough to notice what happens next, when a community with a can-do spirit tries to pick itself up.

Default is the riveting story of Argentina's sovereign debt drama, which reveals the obscure inner workings of sovereign debt restructuring. This detailed case study describes the intense fight over the role of the IMF in Argentina's 2005 debt restructuring and the ensuing bitter decade of litigation with holdout creditors, demonstrating that outcomes for sovereign debt are determined by a complex interplay between financial markets, governments, the IMF, the press, and the courts.

If business is so bad, why does it remain so integral to the basic functioning of America? Economist and best-selling author Tyler Cowen says our biggest problem is that we don’t love business enough. In Big Business, Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their essential role in a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions.

Are you a citizen of the United States who lives abroad? Maybe you're thinking about moving from the United States, and aren't sure how this affects your tax filing requirements. Or perhaps you have been tax non-compliant for many years, and don't know how to get caught up with the US government without incurring huge fees. You could be a self-employed "digital nomad" who works from many different countries, moving wherever you want at your leisure.

The American economy is strong in large part because nobody believes that America would ever default on its debt. Yet in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt did just that, when in a bid to pull the country out of depression, he depreciated the US dollar in relation to gold, effectively annulling all debt contracts. American Default is the story of this forgotten chapter in America's history.

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” This phrase, arguably Thomas Edison’s most famous quote, has been drilled into the minds of generations of Americans. A fairly straightforward iteration of the idea that innovation, discovery, and ingenuity are the result of drive and grit above all, it has also come to represent much darker myths: that hard work always leads to success and that achievement is the product of individuals and not communities.

What happens when you take on the establishment? In Adults in the Room, renowned economist and former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis gives the full, blistering account of his momentous clash with the mightiest economic and political forces on earth.

Before Bill Gross was known among investors as the Bond King, he was a gambler. In 1966, a fresh college grad, he went to Vegas armed with his net worth ($200) and a knack for counting cards. Ten thousand dollars and countless casino bans later, he was hooked, so he enrolled in business school. The Bond King is the story of how that whiz kid made American finance his casino.

Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row - a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year - and they're still rising. Case and Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class.

America’s unique prosperity is based on its creation of a middle class. In the 20th century, that middle class provided the workforce, the educated skills, and the demand that gave life to the world’s greatest consumer economy. It was innovative and dynamic; it eclipsed old imperial systems and colonial archetypes. It gave rise to a dream: that if you worked hard and followed the rules you would prosper in America, and your children would enjoy a better life than yours. Incredibly, however, for more than 30 years, government and big business in America have conspired to roll back the American dream....

Being an entrepreneur seems like the ultimate American dream. But the startup mythology is filled with urban legends and false expectations that can cause business owners to lose what is truly important to them. To succeed in the world of entrepreneurship, one should know how to enter with clear goals and strong boundaries. In What You Know About Startups Is Wrong, K.P. Reddy explains the behind-the-scenes reality of business building, debunking eleven popular myths about what defines a top entrepreneur. With guidance on everything from how to balance work and personal life to leveraging ...

Why is your CEO boosting stock prices instead of creating real jobs? Why do politicians get rich so fast without being expert investors? Powerful forces shape our lives while the media stays silent. But together, we can change the rules and return power to the people. The middle class is shrinking, reason is being silenced, and the elite keep us distracted and divided. We've given up control—it’s time to take it back.

In The Unwinding, George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, tells the story of the United States over the past three decades in an utterly original way, with his characteristically sharp eye for detail and gift for weaving together complex narratives. The Unwinding portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation.

From Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition to the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, American history has been made in St. Louis. And as Walter Johnson shows in this searing book, the city exemplifies how imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to corrupt the nation's past. St. Louis was a staging post for Indian removal and imperial expansion, and its wealth grew on the backs of its poor Black residents, from slavery through redlining and urban renewal.

As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighborhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. The result is not just an economic divide but a fracturing of American society along class lines. Upper-middle-class children become upper-middle-class adults.

America is the land of the opportunities, but when you land on its soil, nobody welcomes you and say "welcome to America, and here is your handbook!" When you come to America as a first-generation immigrant, the expectations are high, and the aspirations to success and wealth are great. Without a checklist, you are left wondering how to leverage this great opportunity that is life in America. What should you know about Finance in America before you get started? You wish someone seats you down and teach you all the fundamentals of "making it in America." You wish someone would give you the ...

This is the story of a man caught in the middle of a huge American destabilising operation, illustrating the secret economic war that the United States is waging against developed nations across the world. In 2014, France lost part of the control of its nuclear power plants to the United States. Frédéric Pierucci, former senior executive of one of Alstom's subsidiaries, found himself at the heart of this state scandal. His story goes to the very heart of a $12 billion thriller that illustrates the secret economic war that the United States is waging in Europe.

In The Hellhound of Wall Street, Michael Perino recounts in riveting detail the 1933 hearings that put Wall Street on trial for the Great Crash. Never before in American history had so many financial titans been called to account before the public, and they had come within a few weeks of emerging unscathed. By the time Ferdinand Pecora, a Sicilian immigrant and former New York prosecutor, took over as chief counsel, the investigation had dragged on ineffectively for nearly a year and was universally written off as dead....

A sweeping history of the United States' economy and politics, Shock Values reveals how the American state has been shaped by a massive, ever-evolving effort to insulate its economy from the real and perceived dangers of price fluctuations. Carola Binder narrates how the pains of rising and falling prices have brought lasting changes for every generation of Americans. And with each brush with price instability, the United States has been reinvented—not as a more perfect union, but as a reflection of its most recent failures.

Suze Orman, the woman millions of Americans have turned to for financial advice, says it’s time for a serious reconsideration of the American Dream - what promise it still holds, what aspects are in need of revision, and how it must be refashioned to fit our lives so that we can once again have faith that our hard work will pay off and that a secure and hopeful future is within our reach. In nine electrifying chapters, Orman delivers a master class on personal finance for this pivotal moment in time and addresses every aspect of the American Dream.