The Impoverishment of Nations (Ebook)
The issues facing the post meltdown global economy
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Early in 2007 Leigh Skene warned of the danger of a meltdown in global markets. Now, while governments spend furiously to rescue the global economy, he again challenges received wisdom. In The Impoverishment of Nations, he prescribes a different solution, outlining a plan to deal with a very different economic future, following the financial crisis that ended the longest period of prosperity for some five hundred years.
We have entered a period of uncertainty, which has placed a huge burden on public finances. Governments have spent $10 trillion on bailing out financial institutions and other firms, including General Motors. We are at a tipping point and the future will be unlike the past - one of the most dangerous economic stages any generation can face.
In his penetrating analysis, Leigh Skene traces how we got here and what has to happen for the global economy to recover the ground it has lost in less than two years. He looks at the shift of economic power to emerging nations, the inevitability of deflation, the unfitness for purpose of the financial markets, how governments' share of output must shrink, how solvency not liquidity caused the current crisis, and how it is wrong to think you can borrow your way to growth.
Leigh Skene
Leigh Skene is a Canadian who has been involved in financial markets ever since he first purchased equities when he was a teenager. He became involved in debt analysis and trading at the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada. He moved to the sell side and became Head of Fixed Income Trading at investment bank Burns, Fry and Company (now BMO Nesbitt Burns), then became Chief Economist. In 1980, he left Burns Fry and established himself as an independent economic consultant specializing in financial markets and wrote articles for several publications.
He has been a director of Lombard Street Associates since 2004, and wrote three key reports in 2007; The ABC of 21st Century Risk; The Sub-prime Mortgage Fiasco – The Start of Something Big; and Credit and Credibility which pointed out the dangers of the new financial system, warned of the impending credit crunch and forecast the ensuing financial turmoil. He has written five books on money and credit. His latest, The Impoverishment of Nations (2009) is a treatise on the long term outlook.