Book description
An engaging look at how modern finance almost destroyed our global economy
Over the last thirty years, capital markets have been restructured
through the tenets of modern finance. This has been enormously
profitable for the financial services sector. However, these
innovations, coupled with unsound risk and regulatory practices have
proved disastrous for the global economy.
In a clear and accessible style, ex-investment banker and financial
journalist Martin Hutchinson, and highly respected academic, Kevin
Dowd show how modern finance combined with easy money threatened to
bring down the world financial system. At the heart of the book is
modern finance as a U. S. invention, the theories and practices
associated with them, and the changes they made in business models and
risk management on Wall Street and other major financial centers.
- Breaks down the events involved in the 2007-08 financial collapse
- Reveals how botched policy response made a bad situation worse
- Focuses on lessons that the practice of finance must learn from
recent events
The Alchemists of Loss will help you to understand how our
financial system crashed and show you what it will take to make
sure this won't happen again as we move forward.
Kevin Dowd is a former academic and policy economist who
has written extensively on the areas of monetary, financial and
macro-economics, political economy and financial risk management.
Professor Dowd's books include Competition and Finance: a New
Interpretation of Financial and Monetary Economics (Macmillan,
1996), Money and the Market: Essays on Free Banking (Routledge,
2000) and Measuring Market Risk (Wiley, 2005). He has
affiliations with the Cato Institute (Washington), the Cobden Centre
(London), the Institute of Economic Affairs (London), the Independent
Institute (Oakland), the Istituto Bruno Leoni (Milan), the Pensions
Institute (London) and the Taxpayers' Alliance (London). He lives in
Sheffield, England with his wife and their two daughters.
Martin Hutchinson was a merchant/investment banker with more than 25
years' experience in London, New York and Zagreb, beginning with the
merchant bank Hill Samuel, before moving into financial journalism in
2000. After working for US, Swedish and Austrian banks, he was a
director of a Spanish private-equity firm, an advisor to a Korean
conglomerate and Chairman of a US modular building company. As the US
Treasury Advisor to Croatia in 1996, he helped the country establish
its own T-bill program, launch its first government bond issue, and
start a forward currency market. He then set up the Corporate Finance
Division for the Croatian bank Privredna banka Zagreb and advised the
Republic of Macedonia on restitution of savings for 800,000 Macedonian savers.
In 2000 he moved into journalism, in October 2000 beginning his
weekly column “The Bear's Lair,” which now appears on the website www.
prudentbear. com. He is currently a columnist for Reuters
BreakingViews, writes for Agora Publishing's financial website
Money Morning and is editor of the Permanent Wealth
Report. He has appeared on television on the BBC, Fox News, Fox
Business, CNBC and RTV Slovenija. He is also the author of Great
Conservatives (Academica Press, 2004) a study of the rise, triumph
and decline of British Conservatism.
Hutchinson has a degree in mathematics from Trinity College,
Cambridge, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
