Paul Blustein

An engrossing account of China's rise as an economic juggernaut and the saga leading to trade war with the United States.

China, America, and the Fracturing of the Global Trading System

Schism

Wall Street, the Imf, And the Bankrupting of Argentina

And the Money Kept Rolling in (And Out)

Inside the Crisis That Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the  Imf

The Chastening

China, America and the Fracturing of the Global Trading System

Lauded by reviewers and scholars alike, Paul Blustein's The Chastening examines the role of the International Monetary Fund in the series of economic crises that rocked the globe in the last decade. Based on hundreds of interviews with officials at the IMF, the World Bank, the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the White House, and many foreign governments, The Chastening offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Fund during an extraordinarily turbulent period in modern economic history and at a time when the IMF has become the object of intense political controversy. While the IMF and its overseers at the Treasury and the Fed have sought to cultivate an image of economic masterminds coolly dispensing effective economic remedies, the reality is that as markets were sinking and defaults looming, the guardians of global financial stability were often floundering, improvising, and feuding among themselves. The Chastening casts serious doubt on the IMF's ability to combat of investor panics at a time when massive flows of money traverse borders and oceans. A readable, compelling account of the deeply flawed workings of the international political system, The Chastening is vital reading for students and scholars of international diplomacy, government, and economic and public policy.

Inside The Crisis That Rocked The Global Financial System And Humbled The Imf

How Golobal Watchdogs Missed a World of Trouble

How Global Watchdogs Missed a World of Trouble

The latest book by journalist and author Paul Blustein to go behind the scenes at the highest levels of global economic policy making, Laid Low chronicles the International Monetary Fund’s role in the euro-zone crisis. Based on interviews with a wide range of participants and scrutiny of thousands of documents, the book tells how the IMF joined in bailouts that all too often piled debt atop debt and imposed excessively harsh conditions on crisis-stricken countries. As the author shows, IMF officials had grave misgivings about a number of these rescues, but went along at the insistence of powerful European policy makers — to the detriment of the Fund’s credibility, with disheartening implications for the management of future crises. The narrative ends with a tale of the clash between Greece’s radical Syriza government and the country’s creditor institutions that reached a dramatic climax in the summer of 2015.

Inside the Crisis That Overwhelmed Europe and the IMF

Laid Low

In the 1990s, few countries were more lionized than Argentina for its efforts to join the club of wealthy nations. Argentina's policies drew enthusiastic applause from the IMF, the World Bank and Wall Street. But the club has a disturbing propensity to turn its back on arrivistes and cast them out. That was what happened in 2001, when Argentina suffered one of the most spectacular crashes in modern history. With it came appalling social and political chaos, a collapse of the peso, and a wrenching downturn that threw millions into poverty and left nearly one-quarter of the workforce unemployed. Paul Blustein, whose book about the IMF, The Chastening, was called "gripping, often frightening" by The Economist and lauded by the Wall Street Journal as "a superbly reported and skillfully woven story," now gets right inside Argentina's rise and fall in a dramatic account based on hundreds of interviews with top policymakers and financial market players as well as reams of internal documents. He shows how the IMF turned a blind eye to the vulnerabilities of its star pupil, and exposes the conduct of global financial market players in Argentina as redolent of the scandals -- like those at Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing -- that rocked Wall Street in recent years. By going behind the scenes of Argentina's debacle, Blustein shows with unmistakable clarity how sadly elusive the path of hope and progress remains to the great bulk of humanity still mired in poverty and underdevelopment.

And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina

Award-winning journalist and author Paul Blustein has received wide acclaim for his books about the inner workings of international economic institutions, notably the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization. In Off Balance, he weaves a compelling narrative that details the failings of such institutions in the global financial crisis that erupted in 2008. Based on interviews with scores of policy makers and on thousands of pages of confidential documents to which Blustein obtained exclusive access, the book focusses mainly on the IMF and the Financial Stability Forum in the run-up to and early months of the crisis. Blustein exposes serious weaknesses in these and other institutions, which lead to sobering conclusions about the governability of the global economy.

Paul Blustein

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