Finance and Philosophy

Finance and Philosophy PDF Author: Alex J. Pollock
Publisher: Paul Dry Books
ISBN: 1589881303
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Taking the 2008 financial crisis as his jumping off point, Alex Pollock deftly illustrates how private firms and governments alike have failed to understand the shifting risks that financial systems create. With candor, clarity, and wit, he uncovers the persistent uncertainties inherent in banking, central banking, and economics. “At the height of the 2008 financial panic, Queen Elizabeth plaintively asked why nobody saw it coming. In the winning pages of Finance and Philosophy, Her Majesty can find the answer. With a lightness of touch that belies the complexity of his subject, Alex Pollock shows why the financial future is now, why it has been and always must be a closed book. A successful banker and gifted writer, Pollock tells us all we need to know about money and banking, risk and uncertainty, debt and temptation, and science and economics. He delights as he instructs.”—James Grant, founder and editor, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer “Why can’t human beings take the lessons of boom and bust, bubbles and crashes that are clearly described in history books—and learn from experience? That’s where Mr. Pollock’s wry humor and philosophic bent help understand the hubris that makes every generation believe that not only can it predict the markets, but control them . . . [Finance and Philosophy] should be required reading in economics classes, or before opening an investment account—and by every member of Congress.”—The Washington Times Alex J. Pollock is a distinguished senior fellow at the R Street Institute in Washington, DC. He was a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute from 2004 to 2015, and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004.

Finance and Philosophy

Finance and Philosophy PDF Author: Alex J. Pollock
Publisher: Paul Dry Books
ISBN: 1589881303
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Get Book

Book Description
Taking the 2008 financial crisis as his jumping off point, Alex Pollock deftly illustrates how private firms and governments alike have failed to understand the shifting risks that financial systems create. With candor, clarity, and wit, he uncovers the persistent uncertainties inherent in banking, central banking, and economics. “At the height of the 2008 financial panic, Queen Elizabeth plaintively asked why nobody saw it coming. In the winning pages of Finance and Philosophy, Her Majesty can find the answer. With a lightness of touch that belies the complexity of his subject, Alex Pollock shows why the financial future is now, why it has been and always must be a closed book. A successful banker and gifted writer, Pollock tells us all we need to know about money and banking, risk and uncertainty, debt and temptation, and science and economics. He delights as he instructs.”—James Grant, founder and editor, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer “Why can’t human beings take the lessons of boom and bust, bubbles and crashes that are clearly described in history books—and learn from experience? That’s where Mr. Pollock’s wry humor and philosophic bent help understand the hubris that makes every generation believe that not only can it predict the markets, but control them . . . [Finance and Philosophy] should be required reading in economics classes, or before opening an investment account—and by every member of Congress.”—The Washington Times Alex J. Pollock is a distinguished senior fellow at the R Street Institute in Washington, DC. He was a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute from 2004 to 2015, and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004.

The Philosophy, Politics and Economics of Finance in the 21st Century

The Philosophy, Politics and Economics of Finance in the 21st Century PDF Author: Patrick O'Sullivan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135122520
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 509

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Book Description
Since 2008, the financial sector has been the subject of extensive criticism. Much of this criticism has focused on the morality of the actors involved in the crisis and its extended aftermath. This book analyses the key moral and political philosophical issues of the crisis and relates them to the political economy of finance. It also examines to what extent the financial sector can or should be reformed. This book is unified by the view that the financial sector had been a self-serving and self-regulating elite consumed by greed, speculation and even lawlessness, with little sense of responsibility to the wider society or common good. In light of critical analysis by authors from a variety of backgrounds and persuasions, suggestions for reform and improvement are proposed, in some cases radical reform. By placing the world of finance under a microscope, this book analyses the assumptions that have led from hubris to disgrace as it provides suggestions for an improved society. Rooted in philosophical reflection, this book invites a critical reassessment of finance and its societal role in the 21st century. This book will be of interest to academics, politicians, central bankers and financial regulators who wish to improve the morality of finance.

The Philosophy of Taxation and Public Finance

The Philosophy of Taxation and Public Finance PDF Author: Robert W. McGee
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1441991409
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Most public finance books are texts, which are aimed at undergraduate or graduate students. They are overly technical in nature and appeal only to a narrow range of bureaucrats and academics. Books on taxation are written for tax practitioners and usually emphasize either what the law is or how to maneuver through the labyrinth of tax law to minimize taxes for clients. Philosophy books on taxation or public finance simply do not exist. The Philosophy of Taxation and Public Finance is different. It is written in nontechnical language and is aimed to appeal to a wide range of readers, including practitioners, academics and students in the fields of taxation, public finance, economics, law, philosophy and political science as well as general readers who are interested in learning why they are being taxed the way they are. The author addresses the major issues and topics in taxation and public finance and injects them with philosophical insights. He discusses questions such as: -What arguments have been used to justify taxation? -When is tax evasion unethical? -Are some taxes better than others? -What are the proper functions of government? -How much is enough? Is the ability to pay concept valid? -When can punitive taxes be justified?

Methods and Finance

Methods and Finance PDF Author: Emiliano Ippoliti
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331949872X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
The book offers an interdisciplinary perspective on finance, with a special focus on stock markets. It presents new methodologies for analyzing stock markets’ behavior and discusses theories and methods of finance from different angles, such as the mathematical, physical and philosophical ones. The book, which aims at philosophers and economists alike, represents a rare yet important attempt to unify the externalist with the internalist conceptions of finance.

Specters of the Atlantic

Specters of the Atlantic PDF Author: Ian Baucom
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822387026
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
In September 1781, the captain of the British slave ship Zong ordered 133 slaves thrown overboard, enabling the ship’s owners to file an insurance claim for their lost “cargo.” Accounts of this horrific event quickly became a staple of abolitionist discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Ian Baucom revisits, in unprecedented detail, the Zong atrocity, the ensuing court cases, reactions to the event and trials, and the business and social dealings of the Liverpool merchants who owned the ship. Drawing on the work of an astonishing array of literary and social theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Giovanni Arrighi, Jacques Derrida, and many others, he argues that the tragedy is central not only to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the political and cultural archives of the black Atlantic but also to the history of modern capital and ethics. To apprehend the Zong tragedy, Baucom suggests, is not to come to terms with an isolated atrocity but to encounter a logic of violence key to the unfolding history of Atlantic modernity. Baucom contends that the massacre and the trials that followed it bring to light an Atlantic cycle of capital accumulation based on speculative finance, an economic cycle that has not yet run its course. The extraordinarily abstract nature of today’s finance capital is the late-eighteenth-century system intensified. Yet, as Baucom highlights, since the late 1700s, this rapacious speculative culture has had detractors. He traces the emergence and development of a counter-discourse he calls melancholy realism through abolitionist and human-rights texts, British romantic poetry, Scottish moral philosophy, and the work of late-twentieth-century literary theorists. In revealing how the Zong tragedy resonates within contemporary financial systems and human-rights discourses, Baucom puts forth a deeply compelling, utterly original theory of history: one that insists that an eighteenth-century atrocity is not past but present within the future we now inhabit.

Research Handbook on Law and Ethics in Banking and Finance

Research Handbook on Law and Ethics in Banking and Finance PDF Author: Costanza A. Russo
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1784716545
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The global financial crisis evidenced the corrosive effects of unethical behaviour upon the banking industry. The recurrence of misbehaviour in the financial sector, including fraud and manipulations of market indices, suggests the need to establish a banking culture that conforms to the highest standards of ethical and professional behaviour. This Research Handbook on Law and Ethics in Banking and Finance focuses on the role that law should play and the effectiveness of newly introduced regulations and supervisory actions as a driver for ethical conduct so as to reconnect the interests of bankers and financiers with the interests of society.

Finance and the Good Society

Finance and the Good Society PDF Author: Robert J. Shiller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140084617X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Nobel Prize-winning economist explains why we need to reclaim finance for the common good The reputation of the financial industry could hardly be worse than it is today in the painful aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. New York Times best-selling economist Robert Shiller is no apologist for the sins of finance—he is probably the only person to have predicted both the stock market bubble of 2000 and the real estate bubble that led up to the subprime mortgage meltdown. But in this important and timely book, Shiller argues that, rather than condemning finance, we need to reclaim it for the common good. He makes a powerful case for recognizing that finance, far from being a parasite on society, is one of the most powerful tools we have for solving our common problems and increasing the general well-being. We need more financial innovation—not less—and finance should play a larger role in helping society achieve its goals. Challenging the public and its leaders to rethink finance and its role in society, Shiller argues that finance should be defined not merely as the manipulation of money or the management of risk but as the stewardship of society's assets. He explains how people in financial careers—from CEO, investment manager, and banker to insurer, lawyer, and regulator—can and do manage, protect, and increase these assets. He describes how finance has historically contributed to the good of society through inventions such as insurance, mortgages, savings accounts, and pensions, and argues that we need to envision new ways to rechannel financial creativity to benefit society as a whole. Ultimately, Shiller shows how society can once again harness the power of finance for the greater good.

Justice Is an Option

Justice Is an Option PDF Author: Robert Meister
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022673451X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
More than ten years after the worst crisis since the Great Depression, the financial sector is thriving. But something is deeply wrong. Taxpayers bore the burden of bailing out “too big to fail” banks, but got nothing in return. Inequality has soared, and a populist backlash against elites has shaken the foundations of our political order. Meanwhile, financial capitalism seems more entrenched than ever. What is the left to do? Justice Is an Option uses those problems—and the framework of finance that created them—to reimagine historical justice. Robert Meister returns to the spirit of Marx to diagnose our current age of finance. Instead of closing our eyes to the political and economic realities of our era, we need to grapple with them head-on. Meister does just that, asking whether the very tools of finance that have created our vastly unequal world could instead be made to serve justice and equality. Meister here formulates nothing less than a democratic financial theory for the twenty-first century—one that is equally conversant in political philosophy, Marxism, and contemporary politics. Justice Is an Option is a radical, invigorating first page of a new—and sorely needed—leftist playbook.

The Ontology and Function of Money

The Ontology and Function of Money PDF Author: Leonidas Zelmanovitz
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739195123
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
The central thesis of the book is that in order to evaluate monetary policy, one should have a clear idea about the characteristics and functions of money as it evolved and in its current form. That is to say that without an understanding about how money evolved as a social institution, what it is today, and what is possible to know about monetary phenomena, it is not possible to develop a meaningful ethics for money; or, to put it differently, to find what kind of institutional arrangements may be deemed good money for the kind of society we are in. And without that, one faces severe limitations in offering a normative position about monetary policy. The project is, consequently, an interdisciplinary one. Its main thread is an inquiry of moral philosophy and its foundations, as applied to money, in order to create tools to evaluate public policy in regard to money, banking, and public finance; and the views of different schools on those topics are discussed. The book is organized in parts on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics of money to facilitate the presentation of all the subjects discussed to an educated readership (and not necessarily just one with a background in economics).

The Philosophy of Debt

The Philosophy of Debt PDF Author: Alexander X. Douglas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317398866
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
I owe you a dinner invitation, you owe ten years on your mortgage, and the government owes billions. We speak confidently about these cases of debt, but is that concept clear in its meaning? This book aims to clarify the concept of debt so we can find better answers to important moral and political questions. This book seeks to accomplish two things. The first is to clarify the concept of debt by examining how the word is used in language. The second is to develop a general, principled account of how debts generate genuine obligations. This allows us to avoid settling each case by a bare appeal to moral intuitions, which is what we seem to currently do. It requires a close examination of many institutions, e.g. money, contract law, profit-driven finance, government fiscal operations, and central banking. To properly understand the moral and political nature of debt, we must understand how these institutions have worked, how they do work, and how they might be made to work. There have been many excellent anthropological and sociological studies of debt and its related institutions. Philosophy can contribute to the emerging discussion and help us to keep our language precise and to identify the implicit principles contained in our intuitions.