BAD
MONEY: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics
and In his 2006 New York Times bestselling book American Theocracy, political and economic commentator Kevin Phillips warned of the dangers of our dependence on oil and credit. Now, in BAD MONEY, Phillips explains why we’re in full-blown crisis. He argues that the American economy, despite its global dominance, is built upon a house of cards. The current mortgage crisis is only one small piece of this little-understood shift in the country’s economic makeup, but it is a harbinger of the broadening ill effects of America’s dependence on financial enterprise. Compounding the problem are strategic abuses of relatively new—and irresistibly profitable—financial products with complex-sounding names like asset-backed securities and collaterized debt obligations (CDOs), along with the lure of buccaneering institutions like hedge funds. The extent to which U.S. home ownership has been hotwired to global financial experimentation is plastered all over the news, but Phillips places these fiscal shenanigans in historical context. He also investigates the decline of the dollar over the last six years, a result of Washington’s financial irresponsibility and its failure in Iraq, and explores the political and commercial implications of its plummeting value. Lastly, Phillips weighs in on what the new administration must do to reverse the tide of wayward megafinance. |
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