Why the World Economy Needs a Financial Crash and Other Critical Essays on Finance and Financial Economics

The essays in this volume explain the key structural features of financial inflation that give rise to financial crisis. These features include excessive reliance on finance to maintain economic activity through rising asset prices. Reliance on asset inflation induces a preoccupation with property values and a new social divide between the asset-rich and the asset-poor that determines the culture of the welfare state. When debt can no longer be supported by cash flow from asset markets, excess debt plunges economies into depression. This collection features the title article `Why the World Economy Needs a Financial Crash', which achieved notoriety when first published in the Financial Times in 1986, and has since proved prophetic of recent events.

Jan Toporowski is Reader in Economics and Chair of the Economics Department at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He studied Economics at Birkbeck College, University of London and at the University of Birmingham. Jan Toporowski has worked in fund management, international banking and central banking.