Extreme Money: the Masters of the Universe and the cult of risk

Description

Once, we built things - useful things. Now, we construct immense financial structures from thin air and lies. We have crafted a colossal worldwide financial machine that makes a few individuals staggeringly wealthy and sacrifices everyone else at its altar of risk. Bestselling author Satyajit Das draws on over thirty years of personal experience at the heart of modern global finance to narrate this story. Das reveals the spectacular, dangerous money games that have generated increasingly massive bubbles of fake growth, ponzi prosperity, sophistication and wealth - while endangering the jobs, possessions and futures of virtually everyone outside the financial industry. You'll learn how everything from home mortgages to climate change has become financialized, as vast fortunes are generated by individuals who build nothing of lasting value. Das shows how 'extreme money' has become ever more unreal; how 'voodoo banking' continues to generate massive phony profits even now; and how a new generation of 'Masters of the Universe' has come to dominate the world.

Satyajit Das is an internationally respected expert in finance with over thirty years' experience. Das is the author of many highly regarded standard reference books on derivatives and risk management. In 2006, he published the international bestseller Traders, Guns and Money, an account of the world of derivatives trading. In Traders, Guns and Money and a series of speeches delivered at the time, 'The Coming Credit Crash', he provided a highly prescient insight into the structure and risk of the world financial system exposing the problems that subsequently became apparent.