Satyajit Das Livres

First published 2015 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House Australia.

"The human race created money and finance. But our inventions re-create us. Mankind mistook money - a lubricant of society and human well-being - for an end in itself. Finance, the monetary shadow of real things, came to dominate human reality. Extreme Money tells the story of how this happened - and, in so doing, it tells the story of the modern world. Bestselling author Satyajit Das draws on 33 years of personal experience at the heart of modern global finance to narrate this story. Das reveals the spectacular, dangerous money games that have generated increasingly massive bubbles of fake growth, Ponzi prosperity, sophistication, and wealth - while endangering the jobs, possessions, and futures of virtually everyone outside the financial industry. Das shows how extreme money has become ever more unreal; how voodoo banking continues to generate massive phony profits even now; and how a new generation of Masters of the Universe has come to dominate the world."--Publisher's description

"[This book] is [an] ... exposé of the culture, games and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world. And played out with other people's money. [An] insider's view of the business of trading and marketing derivatives, this revised edition explains the frighteningly central role that derivatives and financial products played in the global financial crisis."--Back cover.

Australia’s prosperity relies on the continent’s extraordinary natural—primarily mineral—riches and good fortune. But economic, financial, environmental, geopolitical, and societal pressures now threaten the nation’s high living standards. The COVID-19 pandemic is the first of many trials to come. Lacklustre reform proposals are mired in ideological ideas which have been tried and failed. Politics is trading insults and slogans. Institutions lack the quality, skills, organisational memory, and courage to deliver the required solutions. A disengaged citizenry are focused on preserving their entitled way of life, refusing to accept that the well of plenty is approaching exhaustion. Written in accessible, acerbic prose, Fortune’s Fool cuts through these issues to expose Australia’s current dilemmas and choices. It dissects the pandemic, global trends, Australia’s narrow ‘house and holes’ economy and its dependency on China, spotlighting a political paralysis that must be overcome and the changes that are urgently needed. For Australians remotely concerned about their own future and their children’s, as well as the country’s, Fortune’s Fool is essential reading.