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Historians have not convincingly explained modern capitalism's two major economic crises, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008-2009. Accounting for Crises offers a new explanation, why both began and were more severe in the USA ('America'), based on an accounting interpretation of Marx's theory of crises. It explains their origins in capitalists'control of accumulation, which reveals important overlooked roles for Irving Fisher's accounting theory. This theory, by allowing discretion in accounts, in the context of falling rates of profit, encouraged'swindling', overstating reported profits, and understating their risk, which facilitated and aggravated both crises. Framed by Fisher's theory, during the 1920s American accounting theorists justified discretion, which Creating the'Big Mess'(the companion volume) concluded it management used to conservatively smooth earnings. Accounting for Crises shows that Fisher's theory, also underlays the popular new theory of investment that justified valuing shares using reported earnings, which encouraged their manipulation and legitimized'speculation'. This, it argues, underlays America's exceptional late-1920s stock market boom, the 1929 Great Crash, and the depth and length of its Great Depression. Prominently associated with the boom, Fisher became unpopular after the crash, his name disappearing from public debate. Nevertheless, the book concludes, his theory hindered economic recovery, weakened 1930s reforms, undermined accounting regulation from the late-1930s, and following his rehabilitation from the late-1950s, underlies the Financial Accounting Standards Board's conceptual framework, which by allowing off-balance-sheet accounting for securitization-SPEs, fostered the 2007'credit crunch'that triggered the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC).

Empire of the Fund is an exposé and examination of the way we save now. With the rise of the 401(k) and demise of the pension, the United States has embarked upon the richest and riskiest experiment in our financial history. Over the next twenty years, nearly eighty million baby boomers will retire at a pace of ten thousand per day. The hypothesis of our experiment is that millions of ordinary, untrained, busy citizens can successfully manage trillions of dollars in a financial system dominated by wealthy, skilled, and powerful financial institutions, many of which have a record of treating individual investors shabbily. The key tools in our 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts are mutual funds, which have ballooned to hold more than $16 trillion. But these funds pose dangers to our savings in three ways: through structural vulnerabilities that give money managers the incentive to focus on marketing over investing; through the very human challenges of managing our savings decades into the future; and through the peril of financial professionals behaving badly, to our economic harm. Though Americans often hear of the importance of low fees in fund investing, few are aware of the astonishing panoply of ways that some financial advisers have illegally diverted money out of mutual funds: from abetting hedge funds to trade after the legal deadline, to inflating the assets on which they are paid a percentage, to paying kickbacks for brokers to sell their funds. This book will forewarn and forearm Americans by illustrating the structural flaws, perverse incentives, and litany of scandals that have bedeviled mutual funds. And by setting forth a pair of policy solutions to improve Americans'financial literacy and bargaining power, it will also attempt to safeguard our individual financial destinies and our nation's fiscal strength.

Accumulation and Power analyses America's economic development across three great waves of economic expansion: the Grand Traverse 1850-1900, the New Era 1916-1929 and the Great Postwar Boom, 1945-1972. Drawing on the work of Keynes, Schumpeter, Marx it departs radically from the'new economic history'model, focusing instead on capitalist decision making and its social consequences. It argues that the accumulation process is far more important than competitive markets in explaining resource allocation and growth. This innovative book is essential reading for all students and scholars of American economic history.