Synopses & Reviews
A Financial Times Best Book of the Year Winner of the 2013 Lionel Gelber Prize
There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but in the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Alarmingly, the greatest income gap is not between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, but within the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation--as the merely wealthy are left behind by the rapidly expanding fortunes of the new global super-rich. Forget the 1 percent; Plutocrats proves that it is the wealthiest 0.1 percent who are outpacing the rest of us at break-neck speed.
Whats changed is more than numbers. Today, most colossal fortunes are new, not inherited--amassed by perceptive businessmen who see themselves as deserving victors in a cut-throat international competition. As a transglobal class of successful professionals, todays self-made oligarchs often feel they have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. Bringing together the economics and psychology of these new super-rich, Plutocrats puts us inside a league very much of its own, with its own rules.
The closest mirror to our own time is the late nineteenth century Gilded Age--the era of powerful robber barons like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Then as now, emerging markets and innovative technologies collided to produce unprecedented wealth for more people than ever in human history. Yet those at the very top benefited far more than others--and from this pinnacle they exercised immense and unchecked power in their countries. Todays closest analogue to these robber barons can be found in the turbulent economies of India, Brazil, and China, all home to ferocious market competition and political turmoil. But wealth, corruption, and populism are no longer constrained by national borders, so this new Gilded Age is already transforming the economics of the West as well. Plutocrats demonstrates how social upheavals generated by the first Gilded Age may pale in comparison to what is in store for us, as the wealth of the entire globalized world is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
Cracking open the tight-knit world of the new global super-rich is Chrystia Freeland, an acclaimed business journalist who has spent nearly two decades reporting on the new transglobal elite. She parses an internal Citigroup memo that urges clients to design portfolios around the international Plutonomy” and not the national rest”; follows Russian, Mexican, and Indian oligarchs during the privatization boom as they manipulate the levers of power to commandeer their local economies; breaks down the gender divide between the vast female-managed middle class and the worlds one thousand billionaires; shows how, by controlling both the economic and political institutions of their nation, the richest members of Chinas National Peoples Congress have amassed more wealth than every branch of American government combined--the president, his cabinet, the justices of the Supreme Court, and both houses of Congress.
Though the results can be shocking, Freeland dissects the lives of the worlds wealthiest individuals with empathy, intelligence, and deep insight. Brightly written, powerfully researched, and propelled by fascinating original interviews with the plutocrats themselves, Plutocrats is a tour-de-force of social and economic history, and the definitive examination of inequality in our time.
Review
"[T]he bright light shed by
More Money Than God is particularly welcome. Mr. Mallaby... brings a keen sense of financial theory to his subject and a vivid narrative style."
-The Wall Street Journal
"[S]plendid ... the definitive history of the hedge fund history, a compelling narrative full of larger-than-life characters and dramatic tales of their financial triumphs and reversals... Mallaby weaves into his narrative just the right amount of economic theory and market history, and he has a wonderful knack for explaining complex trading strategies in simple and elegant prose."
-The Washington Post
"[A] splendid account of the ups and downs of an industry in which few of the twenty-something hedge-fund wannabes know their history. They, and meddling politicians, should read this book before they are condemned to repeat it."
-The Financial Times
"Mallaby's book is informative and entertaining..."
-Newsweek
"More Money Than God is an expert primer on America's most obscenely lucrative investment tool... [Mallaby is] incisive, informative, and as good a financial writer as he is a storyteller."
-NPR's All Things Considered
"In MORE MONEY THAN GOD, his smart history of the hedge fund business, Mallaby does more than explain how finance's richest moguls made their loot. He argues that the obsessive, charismatic oddballs of the hedge fund world are Wall Street's future-and possibly its salvation."
-The New York Times Book Review
"Sebastian Mallaby's history of hedge funds is well written, smart, and balanced."
-Greg Mankiw,
"Sebastian Mallaby's in-depth research and clear writing style is engaging... With great insight into the lucrative world of hedge funds, More Money Than God is one of the best, most engrossing of the current financial books."
-The Finance Professional's Post (A publication of the New York Society of Security Analysts)
"[A] superb book"
-David Brooks, The New York Times
"Mallaby... effectively combines an insider's knowledge with a colorful storytelling ability... A lively, provocative examination of a little-understood financial realm."
-Kirkus
"A superbly researched history of hedge-fund heroes stretching back to the 1950s, it is a fascinating tale of the contrarian and cerebral misfits who created successful, flexible businesses in an otherwise conventional financial world."
-The Economist
"More Money than God shines a fascinating light on what is still the most obscure route to becoming a billionaire--the mysterious world of hedge funds. Sebastian Mallaby's rollicking tour of industry legends--famous and otherwise-- tells the improbable story of A.W. Jones, the vagabond journalist-sociologist and daring anti-Nazi activist who, after the war, would create the first "hedged" investment fund. From there, we get rip-roaring profiles of investing titans from the full-throated gambler Michael Steinhardt to the bold TmigrT George Soros and the courtly stockpicker Julian Robertson to the ill-fated intellects of LTCM and the hedge fund stars of the present day. Even as Mallaby entertains he advances an unorthodox yet compelling brief: rich as they are, hedge funds are probably the best vehicles society has for assuming risk. Any who disagree will have to contend with the evidence of the recent Wall Street collapse. If one shudders at the prospect of concentrating risk inside giant banks whose chieftains wager other people's money and cavalierly call for taxpayer bailouts then, as Mallaby points out, hedge funds are a necessary antidote."
-Roger Lowenstein, author of The End of Wall Street
"Sebastian Mallaby takes us into the secretive world of hedge funds and the result is a wonderful story and an education in finance. The book is full of colorful characters playing high stakes' games. Throughout, with his customary intelligence, Mallaby helps us understand this important transformation of the financial industry."
-Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post American World
"When Alfred Winslow Jones started the first hedge fund, he had no idea where it would lead. Sebastian Mallaby, who must be the keenest student of hedge funds anywhere, now does-and he shares it with you in this crackling good read."
-Dr. Alan S. Blinder, Professor of Economics, Princeton University, and Former Vice Chairman, Federal Reserve
"A fascinating history. Mallaby combines vivid description of key personalities and episodes with thoughtful discussion of the sources of advantage for different investment styles in different periods of financial history. I enthusiastically recommend this book to colleagues and students in academia and asset management."
-John Y. Campbell, Chairman of the Department of Economics, Harvard University, and Partner, Arrowstreet Capital
Review
" Before regulators throw block trades, bond swaps, bridge financing, butterfly spreads and Black-Scholes out with the bathwater, they should find time to read Niall Ferguson's
The Ascent of Money."
-The Wall Street Journal
"[An] excellent, just in time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis."
-The Washington Post
" Shrewdly anticipates many aspects of the current financial crisis, which has toppled banks, precipitated gigantic government bailouts and upended global markets."
-Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Review
One of Financial Times' Best Books of 2012 A Booklist Editor's Choice of 2012
"Rising inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our time. Chrystia Freeland's Plutocrats provides us with a glimpse of the lives of America's elites and a disquieting look at the society that produces them. This well-written and lively account is a good primer for anyone who wants to understand one extreme of America today."
--Joseph Stiglitz, author of The Price of Inequality; University Professor, Columbia University
"Mix crisp economics, ripe history, and two pinches of salty gossip, and you have the flavor of Chrystia Freelands entertaining book. From the opulent Bradley Martin ball of 1897 to its modern echoes in Sun Valley and Davos, Plutocrats chronicles the habits of the workaholic overclass—its taste for British public schools, its immodest philanthropy, its fundamental rootlessness. Even as she describes this gilded tribe, Freeland advances a paradoxical warning. Open societies may allow super-achievers to pile up extraordinary riches—and to feel that they have more or less deserved them. But the more these meritocrats succeed, the more likely they are to entrench their own offspring at the top of the heap, negating the very meritocracy that afforded them their chances. Already in the United States, graduating from college is more closely linked to having wealthy parents than to grades in high school. When class matters more than going to class, Freelands message must be treated with the utmost seriousness."
--Sebastian Mallaby, author of More Money than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite
"Our world increasingly revolves around global elites who not only have an oversized effect on our politics but also set the trends and furnish us with the dominant discourse. In this delightful book, Chrystia Freeland tells the story of how we got here and what distinguishes our elites from those of previous epochs. Most importantly, she explains why the elites' dominance, even when it appears benign, is a challenge to our institutions and gives us clues about how we can overcome it."
--Daron Acemoglu, co-author of Why Nations Fail; economics professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"The worlds wealthy elite are more wealthy, more knit together, more separate from their fellow citizens and probably more powerful than ever before. This very important book describes their lives and more important how their lives affect all of ours. It should be read by anyone concerned with how their world is being shaped and how it will evolve."
--Lawrence Summers, Former U.S. Treasury Secretary; Charles W. Eliot , University Professor, Harvard University
"Chrystia Freeland has written a fascinating account of perhaps the most important economic and political development of our era: the rise of a new plutocracy. She explains that todays wealthy are different from their predecessors: more skilled and more global; and more often employees than owners, notably so in finance and high technology. By putting together stories of individuals with reading of the scholarly evidence, she gives us a clear view of what many will view as a not so brave new world."
--Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator for the Financial Times
Review
“I consider DiMuzio to be potentially one of the most significant emerging figures on the critical flank of the fields of international relations and global political economy.”
Synopsis
"Splendid...the definitive history of the hedge fund, a compelling narrative full of larger-than-life characters and dramatic tales." -- The Washington Post Wealthy, powerful, and potentially dangerous, hedge fund moguls have become the It Boys of twenty-first- century capitalism. Beating the market was long thought to be impossible, but hedge funds cracked its mysteries and made fortunes in the process. Drawing on his unprecedented access to the industry, esteemed financial writer Sebastian Mallaby tells the inside story of the hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009.
Synopsis
The first authoritative history of hedge funds-from their rebel beginnings to their role in defining the future of finance. Based on author Sebastian Mallaby's unprecedented access to the industry, including three hundred hours of interviews, More Money Than God tells the inside story of hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s and 1970s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007-2009.
Wealthy, powerful, and potentially dangerous, hedge fund moguls have become the It Boys of twenty-first century capitalism. Ken Griffin of Citadel started out trading convertible bonds from his dorm room at Harvard. Julian Robertson staffed his hedge fund with college athletes half his age, then he flew them to various retreats in the Rockies and raced them up the mountains. Paul Tudor Jones posed for a magazine photograph next to a killer shark and happily declared that a 1929-style crash would be "total rock-and-roll" for him. Michael Steinhardt was capable of reducing underlings to sobs. "All I want to do is kill myself," one said. "Can I watch?" Steinhardt responded.
Finance professors have long argued that beating the market is impossible, and yet drawing on insights from physics, economics, and psychology, these titans have cracked the market's mysteries and gone on to earn fortunes. Their innovation has transformed the world, spawning new markets in exotic financial instruments and rewriting the rules of capitalism.
More than just a history, More Money Than God is a window on tomorrow's financial system. Hedge funds have been left for dead after past financial panics: After the stock market rout of the early 1970s, after the bond market bloodbath of 1994, after the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, and yet again after the dot-com crash in 2000. Each time, hedge funds have proved to be survivors, and it would be wrong to bet against them now. Banks such as CitiGroup, brokers such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, home lenders such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, insurers such as AIG, and money market funds run by giants such as Fidelity-all have failed or been bailed out. But the hedge fund industry has survived the test of 2008 far better than its rivals. The future of finance lies in the history of hedge funds.
Synopsis
Watch the PBS program based on
Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.
Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it’s the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it’s the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.
Through Ferguson’s expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world’s first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.
With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What’s the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do?
This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can’t provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Perhaps most important, The Ascent of Money documents how a new financial revolution is propelling the world’s biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generation—an economic transformation unprecedented in human history.
Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts—sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that’s why, whether you’re scraping by or rolling in it, there’s never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.
Synopsis
A richly original look at the origins of money and how it makes the world go ?roundNiall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of our financial system, from its genesis in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance. What?s more, Ferguson reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history, arguing that the evolution of credit and debt was as important as any technological innovation in the rise of civilization. As Ferguson traces the crisis from ancient Egypt?s Memphis to today?s Chongqing, he offers bold and compelling new insights into the rise? and fall?of not just money but Western power as well.
Synopsis
A deeply researched and profoundly timely exposé of income inequality
Alarmingly insightful and refreshingly nonpartisan, PLUTOCRATS is the missing piece in our political conversation, a groundbreaking examination of wealth disparity. There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but in the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. While the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans now receive half the nation’s income—the largest percentage in our history—the real money flows even higher up. Forget the 1 percent; it’s the wealthiest .1 percent who are outpacing the rest of us at breakneck speed.
What’s changed is more than numbers. Instead of inheritance, today’s colossal fortunes are amassed by the diligent toiling of smart, perceptive businesspeople who see themselves as deserving victors in a cut-throat international competition. As a transglobal class of highly successful professionals, today’s self-made oligarchs often have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home.
Cracking open this tight-knit world is Chrystia Freeland, an acclaimed business journalist on both sides of the Atlantic. At ease in Davos or Dubai, Freeland has reported on the lives and minds of these new super elites for nearly a decade. Grounding her interviews in the economics and history of modern capitalism, Freeland provides countless examples of the new wealth and its consequences. She reveals the internal Citigroup memo that urges clients to design portfolios around the international “Plutonomy” and not the national “rest”; discusses the auction of a massive ex-Soviet steel mill contested between a Luxembourg company, an Indian company registered in the Netherlands, and a consortium of Russians and Ukranian companies; showcases the three-million-dollar birthday party of a New York financier months before the financial meltdown; and details the closed-door 2005 SEC meeting in which the U.S. government allowed investment banks to write their own regulatory laws, with devastating consequences.
A consummate journalist and industry specialist, Freeland dissects the lives of the world’s wealthiest individuals with empathy, intelligence, and deep insight. Brightly written and powerfully researched, Freeland’s PLUTOCRATS will be a lightning rod event in the midst of this contested election season.
Synopsis
Plutocrats is the missing piece in our political conversation, a groundbreaking examination of wealth disparity and income inequality. There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but in the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Alarmingly, the fact is that the greatest income gap is not between the 1% and the 99%, but within the wealthiest 1% of our nation--as the merely wealthy are left behind by the rapidly expanding fortunes of the new global super-rich. Forget the 1%; Plutocrats proves that it is the wealthiest .1% who are outpacing the rest of us at break-neck speed.
What’s changed is more than numbers. Instead of inheritance, today’s colossal fortunes are amassed by the diligent toiling of smart, perceptive businessmen who see themselves as deserving victors in a cut-throat international competition. As a transglobal class of highly successfully professionals, today’s self-made oligarchs often have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home.
Cracking open the tight-knit world of the new super-rich is Chrystia Freeland, an acclaimed business journalist on both sides of the Atlantic. After reporting on the lives and minds of the world’s wealthiest for two decades, Freeland now looks deeper to understand the rise of this new transglobal elite, and the consequences for everyone else. She reveals the internal Citigroup memo that urges clients to design portfolios around the international “Plutonomy” and not the national “rest”; discusses the auction of a massive ex-Soviet steel mill contested between a Luxembourg company, an Indian company registered in the Netherlands, and a consortium of Russians and Ukranian companies; showcases the three million dollar birthday party of a New York financier months before the financial meltdown; and details the discreet but phenomenal wealth of the “red oligarchs,” China’s new ruling political class.
Freeland traces the roots of our modern plutocracy to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, the era of powerful ‘robber barons’ like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Then as now, the rewards of plutocracy are immense, with radical technologies and emerging markets colliding to produce unprecedented wealth for more people then ever in human history. Yet the social upheavals and political corruption generated by these first plutocrats may pale in comparison to what is in store for us, as the wealth of the entire globalized world is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.
A consummate journalist and industry specialist, Freeland dissects the lives of the world’s wealthiest individuals with empathy, intelligence, and deep insight. Brightly written, powerfully researched, and impelled by fascinating original interviews, Plutocrats is a tour-de-force of social and economic history, and the definitive guide to inequality for our time.
Synopsis
Watch the PBS program based on The Ascent of Money.
Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.
Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it’s the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it’s the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.
Through Ferguson’s expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world’s first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.
With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What’s the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do?
This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can’t provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Perhaps most important, The Ascent of Money documents how a new financial revolution is propelling the world’s biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generation—an economic transformation unprecedented in human history.
Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts—sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that’s why, whether you’re scraping by or rolling in it, there’s never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.
Synopsis
"Splendid...the definitive history of the hedge fund, a compelling narrative full of larger-than-life characters and dramatic tales." -- The Washington Post Wealthy, powerful, and potentially dangerous, hedge fund moguls have become the It Boys of twenty-first- century capitalism. Beating the market was long thought to be impossible, but hedge funds cracked its mysteries and made fortunes in the process. Drawing on his unprecedented access to the industry, esteemed financial writer Sebastian Mallaby tells the inside story of the hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009.
Synopsis
A Financial Times Best Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize
There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but recently what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Forget the 1 percentPlutocrats proves that it is the wealthiest 0.1 percent who are outpacing the rest of us at breakneck speed. Most of these new fortunes are not inherited, amassed instead by perceptive businesspeople who see themselves as deserving victors in a cutthroat international competition. With empathy and intelligence, Plutocrats reveals the consequences of concentrating the worlds wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Propelled by fascinating original interviews with the plutocrats themselves, Plutocrats is a tour de force of social and economic history, the definitive examination of inequality in our time.
Synopsis
While the Occupy movement faces many strategic and organizational challenges, one of its major accomplishments has been to draw global attention to the massive disparity of income, wealth and privilege held by 1% of the population in nations across the world. In The 1% and the Rest of Us, Tim Di Muzio explores what it means to be part of a socio-economic order presided over by the super-rich and their political servants.
Incorporating provocative and original arguments about philanthropy, social wealth and the political role of the super-rich, Di Muzio reveals how the 1% are creating a world unto themselves in which the accumulation of ever more money is really a symbolic drive to control society and the natural environment.
A timely and innovative book that provides readers with the first global political economy of the 1%, whilst demonstrating how resistance can continue to challenge their rule.
Synopsis
One of the major accomplishments of the Occupy movement has been to draw global attention to the massive disparity of income, wealth, and privilege concentrated in one percent of the world’s population. In
The 1% and the Rest of Us, Tim Di Muzio offers the first empirical and theoretical study of the culture, politics, built environments, and social behavior of this extremely wealthy minority. In doing so, he examines the fallout of this socio-economic order and its devastating consequences for the other ninety-nine percent of the population.
Drawing on case studies and incorporating provocative insights into the worldviews, politics, and lifestyles of the economic elite, Di Muzio reveals how the one percent is creating a world unto themselves in which the accumulation of wealth has become a powerful symbol of control over society and the natural environment. This timely and thought-provoking book offers the first in-depth analysis of the global political economy of the one percent, and, at the same time, demonstrates how unflagging resistance can continually challenge and call into question its power and dilute its influence.
Synopsis
A groundbreaking examination of wealth disparity, income inequality, and the new global elite There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but recently what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Forget the 1 percentPlutocrats proves that it is the wealthiest 0.1 percent who are outpacing the rest of us at breakneck speed. Most of these new fortunes are not inherited, amassed instead by perceptive businesspeople who see themselves as deserving victors in a cutthroat international competition. With empathy and intelligence, Plutocrats reveals the consequences of concentrating the worlds wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Propelled by fascinating original interviews with the plutocrats themselves, Plutocrats is a tour de force of social and economic history, the definitive examination of inequality in our time.
About the Author
Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. The bestselling author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire, and Colossus, he also writes regularly for newspapers and magazines all over the world. Since 2003 he has written and presented three highly successful television documentary series for British television: Empire, American Colossus, and, most recently, The War of the World.
Table of Contents
Tables and figures
Introduction: Towards a Global Political Economy of the 1%
1. The Unusual Suspects: Identifying the Global 1%
2. Capital as Power and the 1%
3. Wealth, Money and Power
4. Differential Consumption: The Rise of Plutonomy
5. Society vs. the Superman Theory of Wealth
6. The Party of the 99%: Resistance and Future Prospects
Notes
Bibliography
Index