Why the World Economy Needs a Financial Crash and Other Critical Essays on Finance and Financial Economics

Jan Toporowski is Reader in Economics and Chair of the Economics Department at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He studied Economics at Birkbeck College, University of London and at the University of Birmingham. Jan Toporowski has worked in fund management, international banking and central banking.

• Introduction; 1. Why the World Economy Needs a Financial Crash; Part I. The Economics of Financial Inflation; 2. Money in Globalised Times; 3. Neo-liberalism and International Finance; 4. Financial Innovation: Better Machines for Financial Inflation?; 5. The Inflation of Goodwill; 6. Leverage and Balance Sheet Inflation; 7. Inflation in Financial Markets; 8. Asset Inflation and Deflation; Part II. The Culture of Financial Inflation; 9. Twentieth-Century Finance Theory: The Frauds of Economic Innocence (in memoriam J. K. Galbraith); 10. Fischer Black’s ‘Revolution’; 11. Economic Inequality and Asset Inflation; 12. The Wisdom of Property and the Culture of the Middle Classes; Part III. Financial Crisis; 13. Everything You Need to Know about the Financial Crisis but Couldn’t Find Out Because the Experts were Explaining It; 14. The Limitations of Financial Stabilisation by Central Banks; 15. International Business and the Crisis; 16. Developing Countries in the Crisis Transmission Mechanism; Epilogue; Notes; Index