Published by FT Publishing International (January 24, 2014) © 2014
Satyajit DasProduct Information
The human race created money and finance. But our inventions re-create us. Mankind mistook money—a lubricant of society and human well-being—for an end in itself. Finance, the monetary shadow of real things, came to dominate human reality. Extreme Money tells the story of how this happened—and, in so doing, it tells the story of the modern world.
Bestselling author Satyajit Das draws on 33 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. 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.
Extreme Money is about:
The new financial fundamentalism: false gods, false prophets - Faith in money, faith in risk, faith in shadows
The cult of risk and the growth engine that isn’t - How financial engineering replaced real engineering and illusions replaced reality
Financial alchemy and the “Doomsday Debt Machine”- The rise of the global financial machine we cannot escape
The new global oligarchy—and the nihilistic games they play - Too smart, too fast, too greedy, too self-absorbed—and far too dangerous
Prologue: Hubris
Sub-prime dialects
Best in show
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living
Retreat
Swiss inquisitions
Idea of an investment
Ambush
Mega presentations
Fording streams
Liquidity and leverage
Democracy of greed
Pick and pay
Black Sea real estate
Life on the margin
Racing days
Dr Doom
Extreme money
Part 1 Faith
1 Mirror of the times
Some kinda money
Trading places
The invention of money
Barbarous relic
The real thing
The Hotel New Hampshire
Collapse
Money machines
Debt clock
Money is nothing
The mirrored room
2 Money changes everything
Mrs Watanabe goes to Wall Street
FX Beauties Club
Plutonomy
Trickling down, trading up
I shop, therefore I must be!
Spend it like Beckham!
Golden years
Tax avoidance
Japanese curse
The god of our time
3 Business of business
Limited consciences
A brilliant daring speculation
Dirty tricks
Marriages and separations
The house that Jack built
Capital ideas
WWJD – watch what Jack did!
Business dealings
4 Money for sale
It’s a wonderful bank!
Pass the parcel
Loan frenzy
Plastic fantastic money
Casino banking
Confidence tricks
The Citi of money
Sign of the times
5 Yellow brick road
Monumental money
The battle of the ‘pond’
Cool Britannia
Barbarian invasions
Unlikely centres
El-Dollardo economics
The unbalanced bicycle
Foreign treasure
Fool’s gold
Liquidity vortex
6 Money honey
Printing it
Column inches
Video money
Studs, starlets
Financial porn
Speedy money
Literary money
Money for all
Part 2 Fundamentalism
7 Los Cee-Ca-Go boys
Dismal science
Chicago Interpretation
Economic politics
Academic warfare
The Gipper and the Iron Lady
Political economy
New old deal
The monetary lens
Unstable stability?
8 False gods, fake prophecies
Mystery of price
Demon of chance
Corporate M&Ms
Risk taming
Slow and quick money
Corporate practice
Everything is just noise
Perfect worlds
Financial fundamentalism
Fata morgana
Part 3 Alchemy
9 Learning to love debt
Fixed floor coverings
By the bootstraps
Leverage for everything
Cutting to the bone
Professor Jensen goes to Wall Street
Drowning by numbers
Censored loans
High opportunity bonds
Fallen angels
Junk people
Milken’s mobsters
The sweet envy of bankers
Thank you for borrowing
One bridge too far
National treasure
10 &n