Dead Pledges is the first book to explore the ways that U.S. culture—from novels and poems to photojournalism and horror movies—has responded to the collapse of the financialized consumer credit economy in 2008. Connecting debt theory to questions of cultural form, this book argues that artists, filmmakers, and writers have re-imagined what it means to owe and to own in a period when debt is what makes our economic lives possible. Encompassing both popular entertainment and avant-garde art, the post-crisis productions examined here help to map the landscape of contemporary debt: from foreclosure to credit scoring, student debt to securitized risk, microeconomic theory to anti-eviction activism. A searing critique of the ideology of debt, Dead Pledges dismantles the discourse of moral obligation so often invoked to make us repay. Debt is no longer a source of economic credibility, it contends, but is a system of dispossession that threatens the basic fabric of social life.

Higher education should not be a business from which many profit while millions go into a lifetime of debt! American higher education is at the point of colossal failure. Thanks to the creation of “Higher Ed Inc.,” we now live in a dysfunctional country with millions of Americans struggling to pay or completely unable to pay their student loan debts. Millions of new students going to college will end up equally in debt, saddled with loans and unable to join the middle class and enjoy the American dream. The student loan debt crisis is no longer a matter that each student or family can solve on their own. We need everyone to put our voices together to push aggressively for change. Read this book and join us if you are among the millions of current student loan debtors, future students and parents about to take out loans, or policymakers and politicians who want to help fix our broken system of higher education.

Although banking and sovereign debt crises are not unusual, the crisis that has unfolded across the world since 2007 has been unique in both its scale and scope. It has also been unusual in being both triggered by, and mainly affecting, developed economies. Starting with the US subprime mortgage crisis, and the recession in 2007-2009, the problem soon erupted into financial crisis in Europe. A few of these countries came to the brink of bankruptcy, and were rescued by the EU and the IMF on the condition they adopt austerity measures. The detrimental social effects of the crisis in both the US and Europe are still emerging.

Although there have been several studies published on the US crisis in particular, there has so far been an absence of an accessible comparative overview of both crises. This insightful text aims to fill this gap, offering a critical overview of causes, policy responses, effects and future implications. Starting with the historical context and mutation of the crisis, the book explores the policies, regulations, and governance reforms that have been implemented to cope with the US subprime mortgage crises. A parallel analysis considers the causes of the European sovereign debt crisis and the responses of the European Union (EU), examining why the EU is as yet unable to resolve the crisis. This book is supported with eResources that include essay questions and class discussion questions in order to assist students in their understanding.

This uniquely comprehensive and readable overview will be of interest and relevance to those studying financial crises, financial governance, international economics and international political economy.

Although banking and sovereign debt crises are not unusual, the crisis that has unfolded across the world since 2007 has been unique in both its scale and scope. It has also been unusual in being both triggered by, and mainly affecting, developed economies. Starting with the US subprime mortgage crisis, and the recession in 2007-2009, the problem soon erupted into financial crisis in Europe. A few of these countries came to the brink of bankruptcy, and were rescued by the EU and the IMF on the condition they adopt austerity measures. The detrimental social effects of the crisis in both the US and Europe are still emerging.

Although there have been several studies published on the US crisis in particular, there has so far been an absence of an accessible comparative overview of both crises. This insightful text aims to fill this gap, offering a critical overview of causes, policy responses, effects and future implications. Starting with the historical context and mutation of the crisis, the book explores the policies, regulations, and governance reforms that have been implemented to cope with the US subprime mortgage crises. A parallel analysis considers the causes of the European sovereign debt crisis and the responses of the European Union (EU), examining why the EU is as yet unable to resolve the crisis. This book is supported with eResources that include essay questions and class discussion questions in order to assist students in their understanding.

This uniquely comprehensive and readable overview will be of interest and relevance to those studying financial crises, financial governance, international economics and international political economy.

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

Is it still worth it for low-income students to attend college, given the debt incurred? This book provides a new framework for evaluating the financial aid system in America, positing that aid must not only allow access to higher education, but also help students succeed in college and facilitate their financial health post-college.

• Reveals the inadequacy of the scope of the current educational and economic policy debates, including moves to funnel low-income children toward two-year degrees, structure alternative debt repayment schedules, and constrain increases in college tuition

• Answers the question: “Does the student who goes to college and graduates but has outstanding student debt achieve similar financial outcomes to the student who graduates from college without student debt?”

• Examines an important subject of interest to educators, students, and general readers that is related to the larger topics of education, economics, social problems, social policy, public policy, debt, and asset building

• Provides empirical evidence and theoretical support for a fundamental shift in U.S. financial aid policy, from debt dependence to asset empowerment, including an explanation of how institutional facilitation makes Children’s Savings Accounts potentially potent levers for children’s educational attainment and economic well-being, before, during, and after college

Our growing national debt has dropped out of the headlines recently—but that doesn’t mean that the problem has gone away. The national debt recently topped $17.5 trillion, and is projected to reach $27 trillion by 2024. Worse yet, if you include the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, the U.S. real indebtedness exceeds $83 trillion. Despite these undeniable facts, politicians from both parties continue to avoid making the difficult decisions that must be made.

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone account for 48 percent of federal spending today, a portion that will only increase more rapidly with the newest entitlement program, Obamacare. The truth is that there is no way to address America’s debt problem without reforming entitlements.

Going for Broke provides a critical, in-depth analysis of these entitlement programs and lays out much needed solutions for real reform.

How did Greece, with less than 3% of the population of the European Union, become the epicenter of Europe’s “existential crisis?” Why did Greece opt for an obligation-laden bailout rather than default or leave the Eurozone, as many said it should? Could it have avoided the disappointments that followed, including needing a second bailout, holding repeat elections, and swearing in its fourth prime minister in a year? The conventional narrative answered these questions by viewing the Greek crisis as the result of a “flawed currency union.” Many economists, moreover, thought Greece was foolish to seek a bailout rather than renege on its debts or leave the Eurozone. And as the crisis deepened, economists again blamed the international community for pushing “austerity” onto Greece. Beyond Debt offers a different account of this crisis. It sees it, first and foremost, as a Greek crisis, best understood through the lens of Greek history, politics and economics. The crisis was triggered by global events, but it was not caused by them. As the book shows, Greece’s chosen path—a bailout—made infinitely more sense than either a default or the abandonment of the common currency that many economists called for. And while others see “austerity” as the problem for Greece’s woes after the bailout, Beyond Debt blames instead an indecisive government that could not see reform through to the end.

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?Despite clear danger and explicit warnings, the United States of America?distracted by short-term challenges and its own political dysfunction?is steaming toward its own collision, one with long-term debt.”
Philanthropist, businessman, and former secretary of commerce Peter G. Peterson argues that we can no longer ignore the long-term debt challenges facing our country, because our economic future depends on it. The gross federal debt now exceeds $17 trillion and it is expected to rise rapidly in the decades to come. If the growing gap between projected spending and revenues continues to widen, our federal debt is projected to soar to the highest levels in our nation’s history?more than four times its average over the past forty years. This growing debt and the associated interest costs divert resources away from important public and private investments that are critical to our global competitiveness, threatening our future economy.
Peterson has made it his life’s work to bring awareness to America’s key economic and fiscal challenges. He makes clear that if we continue to ignore America’s long-term debt, we will diminish economic opportunities for future generations, weaken our ability to protect the most vulnerable, and undermine the competitive strength of our businesses globally.
The drama-filled, economically damaging budget battles of the last few years have focused almost entirely on the short term?putting aside the more difficult, but much more important, long-term issues. Peterson offers nonpartisan analysis of our economic challenges and a robust set of options for solving our long-term debt problems. He looks at the impact of aging baby boomers, growing healthcare costs, outdated military spending, a flawed tax code, and our divided political system. And he offers hopeful, durable, and achievable solutions for improving our fiscal outlook through a mix of progrowth reform options that would reduce government spending and increase revenue, and could be phased in gradually in the years to come.
There’s still time to restore the United States as a land of opportunity. Peterson’s diagnosis and recommendations can help us confront our fiscal reality, address our long-term debt, and steer the country safely toward a more secure and dynamic economic future.

From the chief economic commentator for the Financial Times, a brilliant tour d’horizon of the new global economy and its trajectory

There have been many books that have sought to explain the causes and courses of the financial and economic crisis which began in 2007?8. The Shifts and the Shocks is not another detailed history of the crisis, but the most persuasive and complete account yet published of what the crisis should teach us about modern economies and economics.

The book identifies the origin of the crisis in the complex interaction between globalization, hugely destabilizing global imbalances and our dangerously fragile financial system. In the eurozone, these sources of instability were multiplied by the tragically defective architecture of the monetary union. It also shows how much of the orthodoxy that shaped monetary and financial policy before the crisis occurred was complacent and wrong. In doing so, it mercilessly reveals the failures of the financial, political and intellectual elites who ran the system.

The book also examines what has been done to reform the financial and monetary systems since the worst of the crisis passed. ?Are we now on a sustainable course?” Wolf asks. ?The answer is no.” He explains with great clarity why ?further crises seem certain” and why the management of the eurozone in particular ?guarantees a huge political crisis at some point in the future.” Wolf provides far more ambitious and comprehensive plans for reform than any currently being implemented.

Written with all the intellectual command and trenchant judgment that have made Martin Wolf one of the world’s most influential economic commentators, The Shifts and the Shocks matches impressive analysis with no-holds-barred criticism and persuasive prescription for a more stable future. It is a book no one with an interest in global affairs will want to neglect.