Incisive commentary on the financial meltdown and its aftermath, from the author of the bestselling global phenomenon Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Thomas Piketty's work has proved that without meaningful regulation, capitalist economies will concentrate wealth in an ever smaller number of hands. Unfettered markets lead to increasing inequality. Armed with this knowledge, how can democratic societies fend off a new aristocracy? For years, Piketty has wrestled with this issue in the pages ofLiberation, one of France's leading news magazines. His monthly column pierces the surface of current events to reveal the economic forces underneath.Why Save the Bankers? brings together selections from eight years of these columns, now translated and annotated, beginning with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, and the title essay's provocative challenge. Along the way, Piketty weighs successes and failures of the Obama presidency, charts a course out of the European Union's debt crisis, questions whether or not debts must be paid, and asks what the career of Steve Jobs can teach us about economic inequality. Remarkable for their clarity and surprising wit, these brief essays offer a view of our recent history through the eyes of the most important economic thinker of our time.
