The Default Line
The Inside Story of People, Banks and Entire Nations on the Edge
1st Edition
Published on 29. August 2013
448 pages
978-1-78185-409-9 (ISBN)
Description
How can a banking system become so unregulated that it offers a gold credit card to a dog? For Channel 4's Economics Editor Faisal Islam, these are examples of nations, institutions, and individuals crossing the 'default line', the point at which the optimism of economic boom flips into fiscal madness.
Having exposed the Icelandic banking crisis, watched Lehman Bros crash, investigated emerging economies in India and China and interviewed a host of key international players from the Governor of the Bank of England to the head of the the Chinese sovereign wealth fund, Faisal Islam is the perfect guide to the global economic crisis.
Juxtaposing vivid anecdotes with high-level exclusive interviews and trenchant economic analysis, THE DEFAULT LINE is a really accessible way of understanding the economic shape of the contemporary world.
Having exposed the Icelandic banking crisis, watched Lehman Bros crash, investigated emerging economies in India and China and interviewed a host of key international players from the Governor of the Bank of England to the head of the the Chinese sovereign wealth fund, Faisal Islam is the perfect guide to the global economic crisis.
Juxtaposing vivid anecdotes with high-level exclusive interviews and trenchant economic analysis, THE DEFAULT LINE is a really accessible way of understanding the economic shape of the contemporary world.
More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
ISBN-13
978-1-78185-409-9 (9781781854099)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
08/2013
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€19.00
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Person
Faisal Islam is Channel 4 News' Economics Editor. He won the WorkWorld Foundation's 'Broadcast News Reporter of the Year' in 2010, and collected numerous awards for his coverage of the Icelandic banking crisis in 2009.
Content
- Intro
- Welcome Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- How to read this book
- Chapter 1: How the Euro Stole the Greek Sun
- The tax inspectors and the Troikan Horse
- 'Wow, we're going to save Greece!'
- A nation on the edge
- From demos kratos to technos kratos
- Chapter 2: Of Fiscal Criminals and Bond Vigilantes
- Bondman begins: how the vigilantes started
- PFI: paying over the odds for schools and hospitals to keep the vigilantes calm
- Debts private, debts public: the nature of the UK deficit
- How Obama's America chose to ignore the bond sirens
- The Apprentice Chancellor and the spending cuts
- A tale of lost ratings
- Chapter 3: The Real Northern Rock
- In the office of the Central Bank governor
- Mr Hauksson's whiteboard
- Chapter 4: 12/11: The Chinese Root Canals of Crisis
- From petrodollar to Sinodollar
- The new Chinese empire strikes back
- Gangnanomics
- Chapter 5: The House Trap
- Esther's story
- Jay's story
- From democracy to domocracy: Britain's mortgage frenzy
- Handing out credit like it's crack
- The helping hand of no house-building
- Buy-to-let and the myth of the property-owning democracy
- Rise of the domocracy
- Chapter 6: Three Funerals, Two Banking Systems and a Wedding
- The Bankers' Last Supper that changed little
- HBoS: bailing out a basket case
- New Labour, light touch
- All roads lead to London
- Mis-selling mortgages to poor African Americans
- London: capital of the shadow banking world
- How Barclays scraped through the stress test and escaped state ownership
- Chapter 7: The Formula that Created the Shadow Banking System
- The formulae that made complex credit derivatives possible
- The Tyne: rolling river of mortgage credit
- Earthquakes real and earthquakes economic
- The pseudo-science that led to default
- Chapter 8: The Gates of Hell
- Homes without people, towns without communities
- Señor Hernando and the giant mortgage
- The politicians who tried to burst the bubble
- Northern Europe fans the flames
- The blister and the bailout balm
- A lost generation of milleuristas
- Chapter 9: Mervyn's Magic Money Machine
- Britain: world champion of QE
- QE: a bandage for a burst credit bubble?
- Political and diplomatic impacts of QE
- Professor Werner's view
- A monetary policy for the wealthy
- Chapter 10: The Reluctant Imperium
- How to flourish in a financial crisis: the new German Wirtschaftswunder
- The euro crisis spreads
- Cautious does it: stable money, low inflation and low debt
- The wages of restraint.
- Germany always writes the cheque in the end
- Chapter 11: Ground Control to Eurotower
- The price of pizzas and the incoherence of the Eurozone
- The view from 'Main-hattan': The ECB and the Eurozone crisis
- Silvio versus the ECB
- The ECB, Ireland's bailout and the world's worst bank
- Refinancing the Eurozone banking system
- The de facto president of Europe
- Chapter 12: The Great Carbon Wars
- In the land of black gold
- Gazprom: a new breed of energy giant
- Midnight in Novi Urengoy
- Gazpromland: from state socialism to Kremlin-commanded capitalism
- Energy becomes power: Russia as petrostate
- India's power surge and the global debate about climate change
- The carbon traders of Kingston upon Thames
- Chapter 13: Lent in Larnaca: The Cypriot Job
- The island laboratory
- A cesspit of money laundering?
- Muscovites on the Med: the Russian connection
- Northern Cyprus: the Turkish connection
- Bank Holiday Island's man-made disasters
- From big bang to basket case
- A Big Fat Greek Shredding
- The strange case of the monks and the bankers
- 'Troika go home!': the deal at gun-point
- A second bailout, not a second chance
- A magnet for dodgy money?
- Lose-lose for everyone
- Epilogue: New Default Lines
- DEFAULT LINE #1: Living standards and working wages
- DEFAULT LINE #2: Housing and intergenerational equity
- DEFAULT LINE #3: Austerity and spending
- DEFAULT LINE #4: Banking and the sovereign doom loop
- DEFAULT LINE #5: Superstates and city-states
- DEFAULT LINE #6: The role of economics
- Ten ideas to chew on
- Acknowledgements
- About this Book
- About the Author
- An Invitation from the Publisher
- Copyright
