Recommendations based on "When McKinsey Comes to Town The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm"

Grand strategist and founder of modern Singapore offers key insights and controversial opinions on globalization, geopolitics, economic growth, and democracy.When Lee Kuan Yew speaks, presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and CEOs listen. Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has honed his wisdom during more than fifty years on the world stage. Almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Singapore into a Western-style economic success, he offers a unique perspective on the geopolitics of East and West. American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama have welcomed him to the White House; British prime ministers from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair have recognized his wisdom; and business leaders from Rupert Murdoch to Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, have praised his accomplishments. This book gathers key insights from interviews, speeches, and Lee's voluminous published writings and presents them in an engaging question and answer format.Lee offers his assessment of China's future, asserting, among other things, that “China will want to share this century as co-equals with the U.S.” He affirms the United States' position as the world's sole superpower but expresses dismay at the vagaries of its political system. He offers strategic advice for dealing with China and goes on to discuss India's future, Islamic terrorism, economic growth, geopolitics and globalization, and democracy. Lee does not pull his punches, offering his unvarnished opinions on multiculturalism, the welfare state, education, and the free market. This little book belongs on the reading list of every world leader—including the one who takes the oath of office on January 20, 2013.

An outrageous, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world - from someone who survived the trading game and then blew it all wide open 'If you were gonna rob a bank, and you saw the vault door there, left open, what would you do? Would you wait around? Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken footballs on the streets of East London in the shadow of Canary Wharf's skyscrapers, Gary wanted something better. Something a whole lot bigger. Then he won a competition run by a bank: 'The Trading Game'. The prize: a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader in the whole city. A place where you could make more money than you'd ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional maths geniuses, overfed public schoolboys and borderline psychopaths, yet they start to feel like family. Where soon you're the bank's most profitable trader, dealing in nearly a trillion dollars. A day. Where you dream of numbers in your sleep - and then stop sleeping at all. But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? When the easiest way to make money is to bet on millions becoming poorer and poorer - and, as the economy starts slipping off a precipice, your own sanity starts slipping with it? You want to stop, but you can't. Because nobody ever leaves. Would you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything?

A New York Times Bestseller!2019 was the last great year for the world economy.For generations, everything has been getting faster, better, and cheaper. Finally, we reached the point that almost anything you could ever want could be sent to your home within days - even hours - of when you decided you wanted it.America made that happen, but now America has lost interest in keeping it going.Globe-spanning supply chains are only possible with the protection of the U.S. Navy. The American dollar underpins internationalized energy and financial markets. Complex, innovative industries were created to satisfy American consumers. American security policy forced warring nations to lay down their arms. Billions of people have been fed and educated as the American-led trade system spread across the globe.All of this was artificial. All this was temporary. All this is ending.In The End of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food, secure their own energy, fight their own battles, and do it all with populations that are both shrinking and aging.The list of countries that make it all work is smaller than you think. Which means everything about our interconnected world - from how we manufacture products, to how we grow food, to how we keep the lights on, to how we shuttle stuff about, to how we pay for it all - is about to change.In customary Zeihan fashion, rather than yelling fire in the geoeconomic theatre, he narrates the accumulation of matchsticks, gasoline, and dynamite in the hands of the oblivious audience, suggesting we might want to call the fire department.A world ending. A world beginning. Zeihan brings readers along for an illuminating (and a bit terrifying) ride packed with foresight, wit, and his trademark irreverence.

Should we stop caring about fading regional powers like China, Russia, Germany, and Iran? Will the collapse of international cooperation push France, Turkey, Japan, and Saudi Arabia to the top of international concerns?Most countries and companies are not prepared for the world Peter Zeihan says we're already living in. For decades, America's allies have depended on its might for their economic and physical security. But as a new age of American isolationism dawns, the results will surprise everyone. In Disunited Nations, geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan presents a series of counterintuitive arguments about the future of a world where trade agreements are coming apart and international institutions are losing their power.Germany will decline as the most powerful country in Europe, with France taking its place. Every country should prepare for the collapse of China, not North Korea. We are already seeing, as Zeihan predicts, a shift in outlook on the Middle East: It is no longer Iran that is the region's most dangerous threat, but Saudi Arabia. The world has gotten so accustomed to the "normal" of an American-dominated order that we have all forgotten the historical norm: several smaller, competing powers and economic systems throughout Europe and Asia.America isn't the only nation stepping back from the international system. From Brazil to Great Britain to Russia, leaders are deciding that even if plenty of countries lose in the growing disunited chaos, their nations will benefit. The world isn't falling apart—it's being pushed apart. The countries and businesses prepared for this new every-country-for-itself ethic are those that will prevail; those shackled to the status quo will find themselves lost in the new world disorder.Smart, interesting, and essential reading, Disunited Nations is a sure-to-be-controversial guidebook that analyzes the emerging shifts and resulting problems that will arise in the next two decades. We are entering a period of chaos, and no political or corporate leader can ignore Zeihan's insights or his message if they want to survive and thrive in this uncertain new time.

'One of the greatest, most radical public thinkers of our time. When the sun sets on the American empire, as it will, as it must, Noam Chomsky's work will survive' Arundhati Roy From one of the world's most prominent thinkers comes an urgent warning of the threat that US power poses to humanity's future The land of the free. The home of the brave. But what has America achieved in the aim of 'spreading democracy' -- except wreak havoc across the globe and establish a reckless foreign policy that serves the interest of few and has endangered all too many? In this timely book, Noam Chomsky writing with Nathan J. Robinson, vividly traces America's pursuit of global domination, offering an incisive critique of the self-serving myths that dominant elites in the United States continue to push. Offering penetrating accounts of Washington's role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they examine how interventions such as these have been justified with noble stories about humanitarian missions and benevolent intentions but are now driving us closer to wars with Russia and China. At once thorough and devastating, urgent and provocative, The Myth of American Idealism offers a highly readable entry to the conclusions Noam Chomsky has come to after a lifetime of thought and activism. 'The west's most prominent critic of US imperialism . . . the closest thing in the English-speaking world to an intellectual superstar' Guardian

WINNER OF THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK "An intelligent explanation of the mechanisms that produced the crisis and the response to it...One of the great strengths of Tooze's book is to demonstrate the deeply intertwined nature of the European and American financial systems."--The New York Times Book Review From the prizewinning economic historian and author of Shutdown and The Deluge, an eye-opening reinterpretation of the 2008 economic crisis (and its ten-year aftermath) as a global event that directly led to the shockwaves being felt around the world today. We live in a world where dramatic shifts in the domestic and global economy command the headlines, from rollbacks in US banking regulations to tariffs that may ignite international trade wars. But current events have deep roots, and the key to navigating today’s roiling policies lies in the events that started it all—the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath. Despite initial attempts to downplay the crisis as a local incident, what happened on Wall Street beginning in 2008 was, in fact, a dramatic caesura of global significance that spiraled around the world, from the financial markets of the UK and Europe to the factories and dockyards of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, forcing a rearrangement of global governance. With a historian’s eye for detail, connection, and consequence, Adam Tooze brings the story right up to today’s negotiations, actions, and threats—a much-needed perspective on a global catastrophe and its long-term consequences.

The story of Steve Schwarzman, Blackstone, and a financial revolution, King of Capital is the greatest untold success story on Wall Street.   In King of Capital, David Carey and John Morris show how Blackstone (and other private equity firms) transformed themselves from gamblers, hostile-takeover artists, and ‘barbarians at the gate’ into disciplined, risk-conscious investors while the financial establishment—banks and investment bankers such as Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Lehman, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley—were recklessly assuming risks, leveraging up to astronomical levels and driving the economy to the brink of disaster. Now, not only have Blackstone and a small coterie of competitors wrested control of corporations around the globe, but they have emerged as a major force on Wall Street, challenging the likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for dominance.  Insightful and hard-hitting, filled with never-before-revealed details about the workings of a heretofore secretive company that was the personal fiefdom of Schwarzman and Peter Peterson, King of Capital shows how Blackstone and private equity will drive the economy and provide a model for how financing will work in the years to come.

Charles Wheelan’s wonderfully whimsical, best-selling Naked series tackles the weird, surprisingly colorful world of money and banking. Consider the $20 bill. It has no more value, as a simple slip of paper, than Monopoly money. Yet even children recognize that tearing one into small pieces is an act of inconceivable stupidity. What makes a $20 bill actually worth twenty dollars? In the third volume of his best-selling Naked series, Charles Wheelan uses this seemingly simple question to open the door to the surprisingly colorful world of money and banking. The search for an answer triggers countless other questions along the way: Why does paper money (“fiat currency” if you want to be fancy) even exist? And why do some nations, like Zimbabwe in the 1990s, print so much of it that it becomes more valuable as toilet paper than as currency? How do central banks use the power of money creation to stop financial crises? Why does most of Europe share a common currency, and why has that arrangement caused so much trouble? And will payment apps, bitcoin, or other new technologies render all of this moot? In Naked Money, Wheelan tackles all of the above and more, showing us how our banking and monetary systems should work in ideal situations and revealing the havoc and suffering caused in real situations by inflation, deflation, illiquidity, and other monetary effects. Throughout, Wheelan’s uniquely bright-eyed, whimsical style brings levity and clarity to a subject often devoid of both. With illuminating stories from Argentina, Zimbabwe, North Korea, America, China, and elsewhere around the globe, Wheelan demystifies the curious world behind the paper in our wallets and the digits in our bank accounts.

Defense policy makers from Britain and the Gulf analyze different aspects of British policy and its repercussions for Gulf security. Seeking to nurture defense and security dialogue, contributors examine both immediate and potential threats to Gulf security and underline the need for the Gulf countries to develop a greater range of consultative mechanisms. This book offers valuable perspectives on some of the more critical issues involved and provides interesting insight on the views held by prominent decision-makers, including Lord Robertson, General Sir Charles Guthrie, HH Sheikh Salman of Bahrain and HH Sheikh Salem of Kuwait.

What happens to the rural folk--to their power and economic well-being--when development takes place in a democratic framework? Focusing on India where, unlike most of the developing world, a democratic system has flourished for four decades, this book investigates how the rural sector uses its numbers in a democracy to further its economic and political interests. The book also argues that identities constitute a powerful constraint on the pursuit of economic interests.