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9781469095950

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The theme of broken governance and accountability is echoed in economist John Kay's Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance, which provides an accessible expose of the complex and layered modern financial system and the failure of laws and regulations to protect the public. Whether his specific proposals are the best approach, policy won't change unless many more people recognize the issues and demand better. Lack of political will remains the biggest challenge. -- Anat Admati, George G. C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business Sobering and lucid. If you're moved to keep your money in a sock after reading this, you'd have cause. -- Kirkus Reviews A challenging book that will add to ongoing discussion and debate. -- Booklist Kay's insistence on stepping back, on judging finance by the humdrum standards of any other industry, with its self-serving mystique and aura of inevitability stripped away, makes Other People's Money one of the best two or three books I've read on the crash. -- Bloomberg View A clear primer on modern financial systems and a scathing indictment of them. -- Foreign Affairs Kay is both a first-class economist and an excellent writer. -- Financial Times [Other People's Money] should be read by everyone concerned with preventing the next crisis...[Kay] skewers the pretensions of the finance sector and questions whether its high rewards reflect its true economic contribution. Barely a page goes by without an acute observation or pithy aphorism...Above all, the finance sector should be judged on the same basis as other industries; if an activity is unprofitable without taxpayer support, it should not occur. 'Our willingness to accept uncritically the proposition that finance has a unique status has done much damage, ' the author wisely says. Let us hope those in authority will listen. -- Economist Other People's Money is not merely another broadside content to denounce finance's dysfunction, but rather a masterly attempt to locate its various origins and connect them with analytical and theoretical rigor. Kay provides by way of context a panoptic overview of the history, evolution and structure of the financial system in the United States and Britain, one that is impressive in its ability to weave together a comprehensive range of material, from the mechanics of banking to the Gaussian copula, in elegant, jargon-free prose. -- New York Times Book Review Mr. Kay is a brilliant writer with an ability to explain the role in the 2007-08 financial crisis of such concepts as credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations and moral hazard...[He] is at his best in reminding us that the financial system is still fragile and in explaining that more regulation is not the answer...We can applaud his call for a cultural change that will enhance ethical standards and put the customer first. -- Wall Street Journal Kay is an admirable debunker of myths and false beliefs-he can see substantial things that others don't. -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, New York Times bestselling author

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John Kay is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and a fellow of St. John's College, Oxford University. He writes a weekly column for the Financial Times and is the author of several books, including Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly. He lives in London. Walter Dixon is a broadcast media veteran of more than twenty years' experience with a background in theater and performing arts and voice work for commercials. After a career in public radio, he is now a full-time narrator with more than fifty audiobooks recorded in genres ranging from religion and politics to children's stories.

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