From NYU Press, the introduction to Business as Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown; the introduction to The Deepening Crisis: Governance Challenges after Neoliberalism; and the introduction to Aftermath: A New Global Economic Order?, all edited by Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian. A review of The Futures: The Rise of the Speculator and the Origins of the World’s Biggest Markets by Emily Lambert. Wall Street banks are lining up against a derivatives regulation in the Dodd-Frank Act — teaming up with Republicans, they may prove that procrastination ultimately prevails. Bob Rodriguez, the man who sees another crash: He's the mutual fund manager with the best record in the past quarter-century, and he correctly predicted the last two stock market crashes. New York City’s top prosecutor Peter Bharara takes on Wall Street crime. Paul Krugman and Robin Wells review Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present by Jeff Madrick (and more). If economic crises make the short-run pains of reforms easier to bear, then crises could yield considerable long-run benefits, but the recent global financial crisis has been wasted thus far — political crises and not economic turmoil that actually bring about reforms. Was economics caught unawares when the worst crisis since the Great Depression threatened three years ago? The answer seems to be both yes and no. An interview with Sheila Bair, departing chairwoman of the FDIC. Keynes’ General Theory is 75 years old — many of its insights and lessons are still relevant today, but many have been forgotten. A review of How Capitalism Will Save Us by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames. If financial deregulation looks like such a bad idea now, why didn’t it back in the 1990s?
