An engaging look at how modern finance almost destroyed our global economy

Over the last thirty years, capital markets have been restructured through the tenets of modern finance. This has been enormously profitable for the financial services sector. However, these innovations, coupled with unsound risk and regulatory practices have proved disastrous for the global economy.

In a clear and accessible style, ex-investment banker and financial journalist Martin Hutchinson, and highly respected academic, Kevin Dowd show how modern finance combined with easy money threatened to bring down the world financial system. At the heart of the book is modern finance as a U.S. invention, the theories and practices associated with them, and the changes they made in business models and risk management on Wall Street and other major financial centers. * Breaks down the events involved in the 2007-08 financial collapse * Reveals how botched policy response made a bad situation worse * Focuses on lessons that the practice of finance must learn from recent events

The Alchemists of Loss will help you to understand how our financial system crashed and show you what it will take to make sure this won't happen again as we move forward.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements & Dedication.

Foreword.

Part One: Past Successes and Disasters.

1 Introduction.

2 Pre-Modern Finance.

3 Lessons from Past Financial Crises.

Part Two: The Modern Financial Theory Engine.

4 Theoretical Foundations of Modern Finance.

5 Modern Financial Theory s Hideous Flaws.

6 Risk Management: Daft Theory, Dodgy Practice.

Part Three: Interactions with the Real World.

7 The Real World Becomes Modern Finance-friendly.

8 Modern Finance Captures Wall Street.

9 And Wall Street Metamorphoses.

10 Derivatives and Other Disasters.

Part Four: Policy Accommodates Modern Finance.

11 Loose Money.

12 Government Meddling in the Financial System.

Part Five: Gotterdammerung.

13 Bubble, Burst, and Panic.

14 The Slope Down Which We're Heading.

Part Six: Charting a New Way Forward.

15 The Math of Proper Risk Management.

16 Back to the Future A New Vision of Finance.

17 A Blueprint for Reform.

18 Lessons to Take Away.

Bibliography.

Index.

Author Biography

Kevin Dowd is a former academic and policy economist who haswritten extensively on the areas of monetary, financial andmacro-economics, political economy and financial risk management.Professor Dowd s books include Competition and Finance: aNew Interpretation of Financial and Monetary Economics(Macmillan, 1996), Money and the Market: Essays on FreeBanking (Routledge, 2000) and Measuring Market Risk(Wiley, 2005). He has affiliations with the Cato Institute(Washington), the Cobden Centre (London), the Institute of EconomicAffairs (London), the Independent Institute (Oakland), the IstitutoBruno Leoni (Milan), the Pensions Institute (London) and theTaxpayers Alliance (London). He lives in Sheffield, Englandwith his wife and their two daughters.

Martin Hutchinson was a merchant/investment banker with morethan 25 years experience in London, New York and Zagreb,beginning with the merchant bank Hill Samuel, before moving intofinancial journalism in 2000. After working for US, Swedish andAustrian banks, he was a director of a Spanish private-equity firm,an advisor to a Korean conglomerate and Chairman of a US modularbuilding company. As the US Treasury Advisor to Croatia in 1996, hehelped the country establish its own T-bill program, launch itsfirst government bond issue, and start a forward currency market.He then set up the Corporate Finance Division for the Croatian bankPrivredna banka Zagreb and advised the Republic of Macedonia onrestitution of savings for 800,000 Macedonian savers.

In 2000 he moved into journalism, in October 2000 beginning hisweekly column The Bear s Lair, which nowappears on the website www.prudentbear.com. He is currently acolumnist for Reuters BreakingViews, writes for AgoraPublishing s financial website Money Morning and iseditor of the Permanent Wealth Report. He has appeared ontelevision on the BBC, Fox News, Fox Business, CNBC and RTVSlovenija. He is also the author of Great Conservatives(Academica Press, 2004) a study of the rise, triumph and decline ofBritish Conservatism.

Hutchinson has a degree in mathematics from Trinity College,Cambridge, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.