Extreme Money

This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

The human race created money and finance: then, our inventions recreated us. In Extreme Money, best-selling author and global finance expert Satyajit Das tells how this happened and what it means. Das reveals the spectacular, dangerous money games that are generating increasingly massive bubbles of fake growth, prosperity, and wealth--while endangering the jobs, possessions, and futures of virtually everyone outside finance.

Prologue: Hubris     1

Part I: Faith    

Chapter 1: Mirror of the Times     21

Chapter 2: Money Changes Everything     38

Chapter 3: Business of Business     52

Chapter 4: Money for Sale     65

Chapter 5: Yellow Brick Road     78

Chapter 6: Money Honey     89

Part II: Fundamentalism

Chapter 7: Los Cee-Ca-Go Boys     101

Chapter 8: False Gods, Fake Prophecies     116

Part III: Alchemy

Chapter 9: Learning to Love Debt     133

Chapter 10: Private Vices     153

Chapter 11: Dice with Debt     168

Chapter 12: The Doomsday Debt Machine     188

Chapter 13: Risk Supermarkets     208

Chapter 14: Financial Arms Race     226

Chapter 15: Woodstock for Hedge Funds     239

Chapter 16: Minsky Machines     253

Part IV: Oligarchy

Chapter 17: War Games     264

Chapter 18: Shell Games     279

Chapter 19: Cult of Risk     294

Chapter 20: Masters of the Universe     307

Chapter 21: Financial Nihilism     321

Part V: Cracks

Chapter 22: Financial Gravity     337

Chapter 23: Unusually Uncertain     348

Epilogue: Nemesis     367

Notes     384

Select Bibliography     420

Index     429