Alchemists of Loss: How Modern Finance and Government Intervention Crashed the Financial System

Kevin Dowd, Martin Hutchinson

John Wiley & Sons, Apr 27, 2010 - Business & Economics - 432 pages

An engaging look at how modern finance almost destroyed our global economy

Over the last thirty years, capital markets have been restructured through the tenets of modern finance. This has been enormously profitable for the financial services sector. However, these innovations, coupled with unsound risk and regulatory practices have proved disastrous for the global economy.

In a clear and accessible style, ex-investment banker and financial journalist Martin Hutchinson, and highly respected academic, Kevin Dowd show how modern finance combined with easy money threatened to bring down the world financial system. At the heart of the book is modern finance as a U.S. invention, the theories and practices associated with them, and the changes they made in business models and risk management on Wall Street and other major financial centers.

• Breaks down the events involved in the 2007-08 financial collapse
• Reveals how botched policy response made a bad situation worse
• Focuses on lessons that the practice of finance must learn from recent events

The Alchemists of Loss will help you to understand how our financial system crashed and show you what it will take to make sure this won't happen again as we move forward.

Contents

• Introduction: 3
• PreModern Finance: 17
• Lessons from Past Financial Crises: 33
• The Modern Financial Theory Engine: 63
• Theoretical Foundations of Modern Finance: 65
• Modern Financial Theorys Hideous Flaws: 87
• Daft Theory Dodgy Practice: 111
• Interactions with the Real World: 137
• The Real World Becomes Modern Financefriendly: 139
• Modern Finance Captures Wall Street: 159
• And Wall Street Metamorphoses: 199
• Derivatives and Other Disasters: 225
• Policy Accommodates Modern Finance: 245
• Loose Money: 247
• Government Meddling in the Financial System: 269
• Götterdämmerung: 295
• Bubble Burst and Panic: 297
• The Slope Down Which Were Heading: 331
• Charting a New Way Forward: 349
• The Math of Proper Risk Management: 351
• Back to the Future A New Vision of Finance: 373
• A Blueprint for Reform: 389
• Lessons to Take Away: 403
• Bibliography: 407
• Index: 413

About the author

Kevin Dowd is a former academic and policy economist who has written extensively on the areas of monetary, financial and macro-economics, political economy and financial risk management. Professor Dowd’s books include Competition and Finance: a New Interpretation of Financial and Monetary Economics (Macmillan, 1996), Money and the Market: Essays on Free Banking (Routledge, 2000) and Measuring Market Risk (Wiley, 2005). He has affiliations with the Cato Institute (Washington), the Cobden Centre (London), the Institute of Economic Affairs (London), the Independent Institute (Oakland), the Istituto Bruno Leoni (Milan), the Pensions Institute (London) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance (London). He lives in Sheffield, England with his wife and their two daughters.

Martin Hutchinson was a merchant/investment banker with more than 25 years’ experience in London, New York and Zagreb, beginning with the merchant bank Hill Samuel, before moving into financial journalism in 2000. After working for US, Swedish and Austrian banks, he was a director of a Spanish private-equity firm, an advisor to a Korean conglomerate and Chairman of a US modular building company. As the US Treasury Advisor to Croatia in 1996, he helped the country establish its own T-bill program, launch its first government bond issue, and start a forward currency market. He then set up the Corporate Finance Division for the Croatian bank Privredna banka Zagreb and advised the Republic of Macedonia on restitution of savings for 800,000 Macedonian savers.

In 2000 he moved into journalism, in October 2000 beginning his weekly column “The Bear’s Lair,” which now appears on the website www.prudentbear.com. He is currently a columnist for Reuters BreakingViews, writes for Agora Publishing’s financial website Money Morning and is editor of the Permanent Wealth Report. He has appeared on television on the BBC, Fox News, Fox Business, CNBC and RTV Slovenija. He is also the author of Great Conservatives (Academica Press, 2004) a study of the rise, triumph and decline of British Conservatism.

Hutchinson has a degree in mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Alchemists of Loss: How Modern Finance and Government Intervention Crashed the Financial System
• Authors: Kevin Dowd, Martin Hutchinson
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2010
• ISBN: 047068996X, 9780470689967
• Length: 432 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Accounting / General; Business & Economics / Finance / General; Business & Economics / General