Extreme Money

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. Extreme Money is about: The new financial fundamentalism: false gods, false prophets - Faith in money, faith in risk, faith in shadows The cult of risk and the growth engine that isn't - How financial engineering replaced real engineering and illusions replaced reality Financial alchemy and the "Doomsday Debt Machine"- The rise of the global financial machine we cannot escape The new global oligarchy--and the nihilistic games they play - Too smart, too fast, too greedy, too self-absorbed--and far too dangerous