How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes
If you don't have your facts straight, explaining how an economy works can be like trying to catch brook trout with your bare hands. Watching the parade of self-appointed "experts" twist logic into pretzels in order to make useless economic forecasts is enough to make the average person change the channel. Could it be that the talking heads don't have a clue? Is it possible that the "dismal science," as economics has become known, is neither as complicated nor as dismal as you've been led to believe?According to the authors of this thoroughly entertaining introduction to economics, the answer is a resounding "Yes!" It's all a matter of where you start and how you tell the tale.In this expanded and colorizedCollector's Editionof their award-winning bookHow an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes, Peter Schiff, economic expert and bestselling author ofCrash Proof,The Little Book of Bull Moves, andThe Real Crash, once again teams up with brother Andrew Schiff to shed light on economic mysteries with an informative and extremely amusing allegory. The Schiffs' story takes place on a tropical island where hunter-gatherer cavemen struggle daily to catch fish for their basic survival. As the island economy develops and becomes increasingly dynamic, layer upon layer of institutions and government entities spring up to protect the islanders' savings and assets, leading to ever-increasing levels of complexity. But, at the core, the economic engines remain the same.Served up with lavish portions of wit—and a super-sized helping of common sense on the side—the Schiffs deftly explain many widely misunderstood aspects of economics, including the root causes of growth, the uses of capital, the destructive nature of consumer credit, the causes of inflation and deflation, and many others.The book is an expansion and update of the celebrated cartoon book written in the early 1980s by the Schiffs' father Irwin, a renowned economist and forecaster in his own right. For thisCollector's Edition, all of the book's existing illustrations (by graphic artist Brendan Leach) have been vibrantly colorized, and two new chapters (with new illustrations) have been added that wryly comment on recent economic developments. This edition also features a new introduction, in which the authors reflect on the dangers presented by the ever increasing reliance on expansive monetary policy.A book that proves that economics can be much easier to wrap your head around than you ever imagined—not to mention rousing good fun—How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes, Collector's Editiongives you the straight answers you've always craved and spares you the mind-numbing doublespeak that experts have used to cover up their own cluelessness.