“We’ve got gypsies!” Old Grimsy, Marsden-Lacey’s cantankerous town gossip, warns the patrons of The Traveller’s Inn one golden autumn afternoon. Soon, the quaint Yorkshire village is playing host to a family of exotic Romanis, three colorful narrowboats, and a rough bunch of Russian mafiosos who’ll stop at nothing to get their hands on a royal treasure lost to time. Martha Littleword and Helen Ryes find themselves up two their necks in chasing mobsters, running from Russians, inciting ghostly visitations and wreaking havoc in their love lives. Chief Johns has his work cut out for him keeping the villagers from rioting, corralling two adventure loving Southern girls and investigating the frightful deaths of two innocent women who knew too much. For good measure, Martha and Helen will throw in some sassiness, mix well with laughter, and add three heaping helpings of love from two cats and one fearless canine hero, Amos. It’s mystery and high jinks that only two Southern women, can pull off with fun, flair and the occasional bowl of jambalaya served cajun style.

In the 1970s and 1980s the countries of Latin America dealt with their similar debt problems in very different ways–ranging from militantly market-oriented approaches to massive state intervention in their economies–while their political systems headed toward either democracy or authoritarianism. Applying the tools of modern political economy to a developing-country context, Jeffry Frieden analyzes the different patterns of national economic and political behavior that arose in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. This book will be useful to those interested in comparative politics, international studies, development studies, and political economy more generally. “Jeffry Frieden weaves together a powerful theoretical framework with comparative case studies of the region’s five largest debtor states. The result is the most insightful analysis to date of how the interplay between politics and economics in post-war Latin America set the stage for the dramatic events of the 1980s.”–Carol Wise, Center for Politics and Policy, Claremont Graduate School

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Sally was drowning in debt, the type of debt with no way out. Her naivety and kind nature had led to her being taken advantage of at every turn. The lawyer for the card company added to her debt before pursuing her. He had his own secrets and issues, but he made her heart race and her body respond. Should she choose him, or his bitter rival, a complex and fascinating man who’d take great delight in breaking up her burgeoning romance, convincing Sally he was the better man? She had to learn the hard way that rich men are ruthless, play in their world at your own risk. Which one is a Knight in shining armour and which one is the Devil incarnate?

AMIDST THE WRECKAGE OF FINANCIAL RUIN, PEOPLE ARE LEFT PUZZLING ABOUT HOW IT HAPPENED. WHERE DID ALL THE PROBLEMS BEGIN?

For the answer, Jack Cashill, a journalist as shrewd as he is seasoned, looks past the headlines and deep into pages of history and comes back with the goods. From Plato to payday loans, from Aristotle to AIG, from Shakespeare to the Salomon Brothers, from the Medici to Bernie Madoff?in Popes and Bankers Jack Cashill unfurls a fascinating story of credit and debt, usury and “the sordid love of gain.”

With a dizzying cast of characters, including church officials, gutter loan sharks, and even the Knights Templar, Cashill traces the creative tension between “pious restraint” and “economic ambition” through the annals of human history and illuminates both the dark corners of our past and the dusty corners of our billfolds. 

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Navigating Austerity addresses a key policy question of our era: what happens to society and the environment when austerity dominates political and economic life? To get to the heart of this issue, Laura Bear tells the stories of boatmen, shipyard workers, hydrographers, port bureaucrats and river pilots on the Hooghly River, a tributary of the Ganges that flows into the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean. Through their accounts, Bear traces the hidden currents of state debt crises and their often devastating effects.

Taking the reader on a voyage along the river, Bear reveals how bureaucrats, entrepreneurs and workers navigate austerity policies. Their attempts to reverse the decline of ruined public infrastructures, environments and urban spaces lead Bear to argue for a radical rethinking of economics according to a social calculus. This is a critical measure derived from the ethical concerns of people affected by national policies. It places issues of redistribution and inequality at the fore of public and environmental plans. Concluding with proposals for restoring more just long term social obligations, Bear suggests new practices of state financing and ways to democratize fiscal policy. Her aim is to transform sovereign debt from a financial problem into a widely debated ethical and political issue. Navigating Austerity contributes to policy studies as well as to the understanding of today’s global injustices. It also develops new theories about the significance of state debt, speculation and time for contemporary capitalism. Sited on a single body of water flowing with rhythms of circulation, renewal and transformation, this ambitious and accessible book will be of interest to specialists and general readers.

Popular personal finance blogger and money-management expert shows how to overcome financial stress with straightforward advice when debt-reduction programs and budgets fail to help.

FROM ONE OF NIELSEN’S TOP 50 POWER MOMS COMES ADVICE YOU CAN TAKE TO THE BANK—LITERALLY !

Crystal Paine, who has helped busy women everywhere take control of their finances, presents her most effective strategies designed for families of all sizes and income levels.

With hundreds of inspiring “why didn’t I think of that?” TIPS, plus WORKSHEETS, Paine breaks down your goals into easy, manageable steps so you can:

• Achieve a complete financial makeover
• Set up a realistic budget
• Never pay retail
• Slash your grocery bill
• Organize your time & your home
• Use coupons wisely
• Pay with cash only
• Live simply
• Become debt free
• Choose contentment
• Make every dollar count

For more than a decade, Henry Kravis and George Roberts have been archetypes, first of Wall Street’s boom years and then of its excesses. Their story and that of their firm – the biggest, most successful and most controversial participant in the age of leverage – illuminates an entire era of financial high jinks and speculative mania. Kravis and Roberts wrote their way into the history books by concocting one giant takeover after another. Their technique: the leveraged buyout, an audacious way to acquire a company with borrowed money, borrowed management – and a lot of nerve. Their firm, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., dominated the Wall Street scene in the late 1980s, acquiring one Fortune 500 company after another, including Safeway, Duracell, Motel 6, and RJR Nabisco. This book draws on more than 250 interviews, including recurring access to the central figures and their KKR associates, as well as confidential documents and private correspondence to couch giant financial issues in human terms. “Merchants of Debt” shows how pride, jealousy, fear, and ambition fuelled Wall Street’s debt mania – with consequences that affected hundreds of thousands of people. The book addresses 3 questions – why did American business become so enchanted by debt in the 1980s? How exactly did Kravis and Roberts rise to the top of the heap? What have buyouts, especially KKR’s deals, done to America’s economic strength? In the tradition of “Barbarians at the Gate” and “The House of Morgan” this is a saga that takes readers behind closed boardroom doors to show how star-struck young bankers, ruthless deal-makers, and nervous CEOs changed one another’s lives – and the whole American economy – over a 15 year span.

The financial crisis of 2007–8 has been widely understood as a result of the financial system’s exceeding its proper place in society; the system became unbalanced, unsustainable, and deprived of a solid foundation. Even as capitalist finance seeks to reinvent itself in the wake of massive upheaval, critics continue to portray the financial system as fundamentally irrational—an unstable, destructive inventor of fictitious money. Characterizing finance in this way, however, neglects the growing connection between the worlds of high finance and consumer credit. The essays in this special issue take the financial crisis as an opportunity for much-needed conceptual innovation. Its contributors move beyond strictly moralistic criticisms of financialization to rethink core economic categories such as money, speculation, measure, value, and the wage, as well as the relationship among labor, finance, and money.

Melinda Cooper is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Clinical Labor: Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Global Bioeconomy, also published by Duke University Press. Martijn Konings is Senior Lecturer and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. He is the author of The Development of American Finance.

Contributors: Lisa Adkins, Fiona Allon, Dick Bryan, Melinda Cooper, Marieke de Goede, Chris Jefferis, Martijn Konings, Randy Martin, Michael Rafferty

The United States monetary system is complex.

Money is not what you think it is.

Debt Inflation provides the clarity that is needed.
Why should you care about the monetary system?

The monetary system is like a game. As a participant of the economy you are a player in this game. A clear understanding of how the game works will provide you a significant strategic advantage.
In these pages the monetary system game is deconstructed. Difficult economic concepts are addressed with remarkable clarity. Page after page compelling points pile up, one upon the other, until two extraordinary benefits emerge:
ECONOMIC BREAKTHROUGH: An accurate method for determining the true inflation rate of the dollar is devised. Reliance on “official government inflation numbers” is no longer necessary. The numbers are real, and the conclusions are surprising.
FINANCIAL TRIUMPH: A clever plan for winning the monetary system game is exposed. Incredibly, you will learn how to identify when an economic downturn is lurking around the corner. With this information, you can sell investments and prepare your personal finances months before asset values tumble and recessions develop.
Inside you will discover original ideas and perspectives that are not found in any other book.
Debt Inflation is not a restatement or reorganization of the same old ideas and catch-phrases.
These are new ideas. This is a fresh perspective.