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We invited eighteen leading British thinkers on the reform of the world financial system and what a financial system is for to form a Future of Finance Group. They included journalists, academics, financiers and officials from the Financial Services Authority, the Bank of England and the Treasury. The result is this book.
The financial crash of 2008-9 has been the most damaging economic event since the Great Depression – affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The most immediate problem now is to prevent a repeat performance.
Much has been written about reforming the world financial system. But it is rarely based on a searching in-depth analysis of the underlying weaknesses within the system. Nor does it usually tackle the key question of what a financial system is for. To correct this omission, we invited eighteen leading British thinkers on these issues to form a Future of Finance Group. They included journalists, academics, financiers and officials from the Financial Services Authority, the Bank of England and the Treasury. We have met twelve times, for what many of those present described as the best and most searching discussions they had ever participated in. The result is this book.
The issues at stake are extraordinarily difficult and profound. The central question is what the financial system is for? Standard texts list five main functions – channelling savings into real investment, transferring risk, maturity transformation (including smoothing of life-cycle consumption), effecting payments and making markets. But if we study how financial companies make their money, it is extraordinarily difficult to see how closely this corresponds to the stated functions, and it is often difficult to explain why the rewards are often so high. Any explanation must also explain why the system is so prone to boom and bust.
This book offers a comprehensive overview of the transport system. It looks at how it has developed, at how it will need to evolve to meet our need for travel – sustainably and economically – and at what our options are for meeting those needs.
The Legal Team of the Future is the definitive guide to understanding and building the holistic skills required of those working in legal services now and in the future. Highlighting the importance of multidisciplinary teams working collaboratively to solve legal problems, the book introduces a ‘Law+’ model for the profession.
This book looks at house prices over the long term in several countries including the UK, the US, France, Holland, Norway, Germany and Australia to find out what has happened to house prices and why. The author illustrates his findings with authoritative data on trends and provides intriguing details including a century long index of UK house prices, an analysis of the value of the White House and a fascinating four-hundred-year story of houses in Amsterdam.
If you have ever wondered why the roads are congested, the trains are full and the buses are no longer running, this book provides the answers. The UK has never had a proper transport policy and it desperately needs one to address the twin challengers of getting people around cheaply and safely, while safeguarding the environment.
