The Only Game in Town
Central Banks, Instability, and Recovering from Another Collapse
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- 129,00 kr
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- 129,00 kr
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A roadmap to what lies ahead and the decisions we must make now to stave off the next global economic and financial crisis, from one of the world’s most influential economic thinkers and the author of When Markets Collide • Updated, with a new chapter and author’s note
“The one economic book you must read now . . . If you want to understand [our] bifurcated world and where it’s headed, there is no better interpreter than Mohamed El-Erian.”—Time
Our current economic path is coming to an end. The signposts are all around us: sluggish growth, rising inequality, stubbornly high pockets of unemployment, and jittery financial markets, to name a few. Soon we will reach a fork in the road: One path leads to renewed growth, prosperity, and financial stability, the other to recession and market disorder.
In The Only Game in Town, El-Erian casts his gaze toward the future of the global economy and markets, outlining the choices we face both individually and collectively in an era of economic uncertainty and financial insecurity. Beginning with their response to the 2008 global crisis, El-Erian explains how and why our central banks became the critical policy actors—and, most important, why they cannot continue is this role alone. They saved the financial system from collapse in 2008 and a multiyear economic depression, but lack the tools to enable a return to high inclusive growth and durable financial stability. The time has come for a policy handoff, from a prolonged period of monetary policy experimentation to a strategy that better targets what ails economies and distorts the financial sector—before we stumble into another crisis.
The future, critically, is not predestined. It is up to us to decide where we will go from here as households, investors, companies, and governments. Using a mix of insights from economics, finance, and behavioral science, this book gives us the tools we need to properly understand this turning point, prepare for it, and come out of it stronger. A comprehensive, controversial look at the realities of our global economy and markets, The Only Game in Town is required reading for investors, policymakers, and anyone interested in the future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
El-Erian, former CEO of investment firm Pimco, sets the stage for his well-informed, if sometimes overstretched, argument with a Larry Summers quote: "The world has largely exhausted the scope for central bank improvisation as a growth strategy." Central banks have pulled the world out of the Great Recession, but the critical task of creating sustainable global economic growth not temporary money bubbles remains. If governments don't accomplish this, they risk opening a geopolitical Pandora's Box: generational joblessness; worsening inequality; eroding institutional credibility; political dysfunction; and financial excess. El-Erian's formula for avoiding this is reduced to four basic prescriptions: seriously address economic growth; match ability and willingness to spend; reduce the burden of debt; and improve policy coordination. El-Erian is at his best when he sticks to what he knows: finance. But his thesis is that finance only takes you so far, so his book's last section finds him verging into trendy but less relevant territory with references to "cognitive diversity" and quotes from Sheryl Sandberg. These passages tend to deviate from his usual intellectual rigor with Oprah-like feel-good mantras. Nonetheless, this is a prescient warning against our current overreliance on central banks and a call to action toward building a sustainable global economy.
