Extreme Money The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk

A definitive cultural history of high finance from one of theindustry's most astute analysts Written by internationally respected financial expert SatyajitDas, Extreme Money shows how real engineering was replacedby financial engineering in the twentieth century, enabling vastfortunes to be made not from goods produced or services performed,but from supplying and trading money. Extreme Money focuses on this evisceratedreality—the monetary shadow of real things—and what itmeans today. The high levels of economic growth and the wealth thatinevitably follows, driven by cheap debt, financial engineering,and speculation, were never sustainable, and the last few yearshave borne this out. The book shows how policy makers andregulators unknowingly underwrote the risks, substantially reducingtheir ability to control economic outcomes. Extreme moneyconcentrated economic power, wealth, and risk in the hands of asmall community of gifted, dynamic financiers largely outside theregulatory purview and the democratic process, and there's no goingback. Explains the extreme money games (via private equity,securitization, derivatives, hedge funds, and other means) inventedby the elite financiers of last century Raises deeper questions about the nature of the economicstructure and assumptions about ongoing financially engineeredprosperity that readers, politicians, and financial figures need tobe asking The book is timed to coincide with the next phase of thefinancial crisis, as prospects of recovery diminish and the globaleconomy becomes mired in a Western version of Japan's "LostDecade" Ambitious in scope and coverage, the book is the indispensible,in-depth guide to the age of modern money. An age defined byextremes of financial behavior.