Editorial Reviews
Provides a unique comparative survey of financial systems in Europe and the US, unified under a rigorous theoretical framework.
Order Economics of Money, Banking and Finance: Peter Howells, Keith Bain form Amazon.
Real World Banking and Finance: A Dollars & Sense Reader, 5th Edition: The Dollars & Sense Collective, Daniel Fireside, Amy Gluckman
- Filed under: Recommended
Editorial Reviews
Review
As textbooks become more conservative and less topical, I find that Dollars & Sense readers and books are more useful than ever in my undergraduate classes. They are jargon-free, up-to-date, and inexpensive–as well as consistently and thoughtfully progressive. I recommend them highly. –Robin Hahnel, American University
I have been using Dollars & Sense publications for nearly 20 years. I find them absolutely necessary for students to understand progressive, critical, real-world perspectives that are sorely absent in mainstream texts and readers. These magnificently clear and relevant articles open many students’ eyes and cause others to reexamine their adopted views. –Geroge A. Jouganatos, California State University, Sacramento
I thoroughly enjoy using Real World Banking in class. The readings allow students to critically appraise the conventional wisdom and traditionally sacrosanct institutions such as the Fed and the ‘free market.’ –Kurt Keiser, Western State College
Where is the financial services industry headed? What does the subprime lending crisis that exploded in 2007 have in common with the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s? Can the stock market fund the baby boomers’ retirement? Does it matter if the dollars falls in value? How do the actions of the major global financial institutions compare to their stated missions of fostering economic development and fighting poverty?
Real World Banking and Finance, 5th edition provides lively answers to these questions, assembling 55 sharply written, well-researched articles on banking and finance from the pages of Dollars & Sense, the leading magazine of popular economics.
In these pages you will follow the continued consolidation of the banking industry in the post-Glass Steagall era, examine the subprime and predatory lending sector, and take an in-depth look at retirement finance. You will also find thoughtful proposals for restructuring the financial system to make it more effective and more democratic. And you will grasp the basics–money, the Fed, interest rates, the stock market–more clearly thanks to Dollars & Sense’s accurate, jargon-free explanations.
Capital Moves: Rca’s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor: Jefferson R. Cowie
- Filed under: Recommended
From Library Journal
Cowie (industrial and labor relations, Cornell Univ.) highlights the power of financial capital in his examination of four RCA factory sites: Camden, NJ; Bloomington, IN; Memphis, TN; and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. RCA moved production from one site to the next in search of cheap, compliant, and usually female labor; as workers developed a sense of entitlement to their jobs and demanded better conditions, the company saw them as less desirable and looked for less-sophisticated substitute workers. Cowie outlines the history of labor relations at each site along with the surrounding political conditions. He also takes a wider look at labor organization and its ties to politics, noting that while capital became international, labor organization remained local, giving workers less power. In describing one company in depth, Cowie provides valuable insight into the increasingly global work force. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.AA.J. Sobczak, Covina, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Much has been written to document and lament the loss of American jobs to cheap labor abroad. Cowie’s study of RCA, though, shows that U.S. companies have a long history of seeking out inexpensive labor. Before moving to Juarez, Mexico, in the 1970s, RCA had already moved its television manufacturing operations twice within the U.S. Cowie traces RCA’s journey from Camden, New Jersey, to Mexico. After its manufacturing facilities were successfully unionized in the 1930s, RCA decided to decentralize operations and relocated a major factory to nonunion southern Indiana in 1940. In the 1960s, the company experimented with expansion into the South, but operations in Memphis were shut down within five years. Cowie shows how the same factors that determined RCA’s first two moves were the same ones that influenced the move to Mexico. He does not focus, however, on the painful economic consequences of plant closures. In spite of the shutdowns, he shows that wherever RCA opened a new plant, each community was permanently transformed by the economic empowerment of its workforce. David Rouse
order Capital Moves: Rca’s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor: Jefferson R. Cowie form Amazon.
Capital Moves: Rca’s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor: Jefferson R. Cowie
- Filed under: Recommended
From Library Journal
Cowie (industrial and labor relations, Cornell Univ.) highlights the power of financial capital in his examination of four RCA factory sites: Camden, NJ; Bloomington, IN; Memphis, TN; and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. RCA moved production from one site to the next in search of cheap, compliant, and usually female labor; as workers developed a sense of entitlement to their jobs and demanded better conditions, the company saw them as less desirable and looked for less-sophisticated substitute workers. Cowie outlines the history of labor relations at each site along with the surrounding political conditions. He also takes a wider look at labor organization and its ties to politics, noting that while capital became international, labor organization remained local, giving workers less power. In describing one company in depth, Cowie provides valuable insight into the increasingly global work force. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.AA.J. Sobczak, Covina, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Much has been written to document and lament the loss of American jobs to cheap labor abroad. Cowie’s study of RCA, though, shows that U.S. companies have a long history of seeking out inexpensive labor. Before moving to Juarez, Mexico, in the 1970s, RCA had already moved its television manufacturing operations twice within the U.S. Cowie traces RCA’s journey from Camden, New Jersey, to Mexico. After its manufacturing facilities were successfully unionized in the 1930s, RCA decided to decentralize operations and relocated a major factory to nonunion southern Indiana in 1940. In the 1960s, the company experimented with expansion into the South, but operations in Memphis were shut down within five years. Cowie shows how the same factors that determined RCA’s first two moves were the same ones that influenced the move to Mexico. He does not focus, however, on the painful economic consequences of plant closures. In spite of the shutdowns, he shows that wherever RCA opened a new plant, each community was permanently transformed by the economic empowerment of its workforce. David Rouse
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One World Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism: William Greider
- Filed under: Recommended
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The world is in the midst of an industrial and economic revolution more far-reaching than the one that transformed Europe and North America in the 19th century. According to William Greider, this revolution is a juggernaut that neither multinational corporations nor governments can control. Greider looks at the impact of the global revolution in terms of human struggle. While huge amounts of wealth are being generated, there is a downside, too: social dislocation; economic uncertainty; and the oldest, rawest form of exploitation–that of the weak by the strong. Greider proposes a number of steps governments of the world can take to avert disaster: moderate the flow of goods by imposing tariffs to rectify trade deficits, change labor practices in developing countries, and allow labor to share in the ownership of capital.
From Publishers Weekly
Greider (Secrets of the Temple) here surveys the dynamics and contradictions of the corporate-driven global economy, which, he says, is heading toward “an economic or political cataclysm.” His selective tour?he avoids Africa and much of South America, and focuses on U.S. corporations?nonetheless vividly introduces this changing economic world and suggests populist reforms well worth discussion. In developing Malaysia, Greider sees multinational corporations seeking not just cheaper workers but another power base. He observes that technological improvement has actually led to overcapacity in the global auto industry. He notes that the industrialization of China?substituting low-paid workers for higher-paid Westerners?will erode the world’s purchasing power. He perceives the U.S. as ominously failing to decrease its trade deficit or to defend domestic producers and jobs. Then Greider looks at the metastasizing world of finance capital and proposes a transaction tax to slow down the “furious pace” of computer-driven traders impelled to seek higher returns. He suggests debt forgiveness for poor nations. To foster a more responsible capitalism, he proposes taxes on capital, not payrolls, reciprocity with mercantilist countries such as Japan and labor rights for workers in poor countries. Greider devotes a final section to emerging examples (e.g., employee ownership) of his proposed “global humanism.” But he skirts the question of how religious and ethnic nationalism might affect global economic convergence.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Real World Banking and Finance: A Dollars & Sense Reader, 5th Edition: The Dollars & Sense Collective, Daniel Fireside, Amy Gluckman
- Filed under: Recommended
Editorial Reviews
Review
I thoroughly enjoy using Real World Banking in class. The readings allow students to critically appraise the conventional wisdom and traditionally sacrosanct institutions such as the Fed and the ‘free market.’ –Kurt Keiser, Western State College
I have been using Dollars & Sense publications for nearly 20 years. I find them absolutely necessary for students to understand progressive, critical, real-world perspectives that are sorely absent in mainstream texts and readers. These magnificently clear and relevant articles open many students’ eyes and cause others to reexamine their adopted views. –Geroge A. Jouganatos, California State University, Sacramento
As textbooks become more conservative and less topical, I find that Dollars & Sense readers and books are more useful than ever in my undergraduate classes. They are jargon-free, up-to-date, and inexpensive–as well as consistently and thoughtfully progressive. I recommend them highly. –Robin Hahnel, American University
Product Description
Where is the financial services industry headed? What does the subprime lending crisis that exploded in 2007 have in common with the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s? Can the stock market fund the baby boomers’ retirement? Does it matter if the dollars falls in value? How do the actions of the major global financial institutions compare to their stated missions of fostering economic development and fighting poverty?
Real World Banking and Finance, 5th edition provides lively answers to these questions, assembling 55 sharply written, well-researched articles on banking and finance from the pages of Dollars & Sense, the leading magazine of popular economics.
In these pages you will follow the continued consolidation of the banking industry in the post-Glass Steagall era, examine the subprime and predatory lending sector, and take an in-depth look at retirement finance. You will also find thoughtful proposals for restructuring the financial system to make it more effective and more democratic. And you will grasp the basics–money, the Fed, interest rates, the stock market–more clearly thanks to Dollars & Sense’s accurate, jargon-free explanations.
See all Editorial Reviews
See all Editorial Reviews&order