The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Finance

No-Nonsense Guides

by Peter Stalker

An incisive introduction to global finance—where money comes from, the current mechanisms, and the need for control and reform. It traces the origins of money as a source of exchange and a store of value and the many weird forms it now takes—visible and invisible. The guide sets recent events into context, indicating how the flows of money directed by an unaccountable elite increasingly shape economic, political, and social activity. Peter Stalker is a former co-editor of the New Internationalist who now works as a consultant to a number of UN agencies. He is author of the No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration .

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Mat Freimuth]

This book is a bit overly ambitious and packs an immense amount of material for something you can carry around in your back pocket. I have a minor in economics, and it covers a lot that I never even touched in undergrad. That said, it is useful in helping someone gain a basic understanding of many politically-fraught topics that they can then dive into deeper later.

[Liz]

loses points for being fairly dramatically wrong about the pre-modern history of money & debt but still a clear, readable introduction to global finance. written after the GFC, which is nice. a lot of politically engaged people I know, including me, lack really basic economic knowledge and I want that to end. so you're not allowed to make disparaging comments about the wishy-washy politics of the New Internationalist set until you can explain, let's say, a) how hedge funds operate b) how subprime loans seemed like a profitable idea c) how futures trading in currency affects national economies and d) how banks create money through fractional reserve banking. you don't want a reader of the Australian to walk away thinking he's smarter than you, do you?

[Victoria]

I found it a useful overview of international finance. Easy to digest. With a useful historical perspective.