21ST CENTURY ECONOMY, THE(ISBN=9780307387905) 下载 pdf 百度网盘 epub 免费 2025 电子书 mobi 在线

　　A comprehensive guide to understanding today's global economy

from the author of the bestselling A Beginner's Guide to the World

Economy.

While reporting on today's world, business and mainstream media

alike use terms and mention trends that even the savviest consumer

may find baffling. In his latest book, Randy Charles Epping uses

compelling narratives and insightful analogies to clearly and

concisely explain the rapidly changing way business is done in the

twenty-first century, without a single chart or graph.

Epping defines key ideas and commonly used words and phrases

like:

Carbon footprint

　 WTO

Economy of scale

NAFTA

Outsourcing

Epping also illustrates how central banks help navigate global

crises and drive the global economy, discusses the benefits of

Green Economics, shows how trade wars can be avoided, and explains

the virtual economy, where multimillion dollar transactions take

place in the blink of an eye.

Complete with 89 easy-to-master tools for surviving and thriving

in the new global marketplace and an extensive glossary, The 21st

Century Economy—A Beginner's Guide is essential reading for anyone

interested in understanding the complex economy of the world in

which we live.

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　　Randy Charles Epping, based in Zurich, Switzerland and S?o

Paulo, Brazil, has worked in International Finance for over 25

years, holding management positions in European and American

investment banks in London, Geneva, and Zurich. He has a master's

degree in International Relations from Yale University, in addition

to degrees from the University of Notre Dame and the University of

Paris-La Sorbonne. He is currently the manager of IFS Project

Management AG, a Switzerland-based international consulting

company. He is also the president of the Central Europe Foundation,

which provides assistance to students and economic organizations in

Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to several other books on

the world economy, he has written a novel, Trust, a financial

thriller based in Zurich and Budapest. Mr. Epping holds dual U.S.

and Swiss citizenship and is fluent in six languages: English,

French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

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　　CHAPTER 1

　　WHAT IS THE FUSION ECONOMY?

　　The converging world economy has created a whole new paradigm for

the 21st century. Global warming, credit crunches, currency

meltdowns, food crises, and trade wars are just a few examples of

how our everyday lives are being altered by a myriad of forces,

many of which are economic in nature. And like nuclear fusion,

which joins together hydrogen molecules and releases enormous

amounts of energy in the process, the converging global economy is

releasing a lot of new energy-we just need to figure out how to use

it.

　　This new fusion economy brings together forces and reactions in

ways that are impossible to understand using normal linear forms of

approach. It used to be that we could follow a fairly simple path

to arrive at an economic conclusion: A better product or a more

efficient company meant more productivity, which meant a higher

standard of living for all. But today, things aren't so simple. How

can we say that economic growth in China or India is a good thing

if it increases global pollution or leads to food scarcity? How can

we say that increased access to mortgage financing is a good thing

if it entices subprime borrowers to buy houses they can't afford to

pay for, leading to failing banks in Europe and the United States,

stock market crashes in Asia, and a worldwide credit crisis?

　　With hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed

securities being traded annually, the market for subprime debt

became, at one point, bigger than the entire market for U.S.

Treasury bonds-the biggest bond market in the world. When banks and

mortgage companies realized they could pass on the risk of the

mortgages they were issuing, they became more concerned about

increasing volume and less concerned about whether the borrowers

could pay back their loans. Consequently, credit standards were

relaxed and many poor and low-income borrowers were given mortgages

to buy homes-leading to ever-increasing home prices. Many borrowers

bought homes they knew they couldn't afford, but assumed that

rising home prices would cover their loan commitments, allowing

them to refinance at a later date, once the house's value had gone

up.

　　When the housing market began to cool, many subprime borrowers

were unable to refinance their loans and were unable to make the

interest payments on their original loans. Delinquencies-borrowers'

failure to make their mortgage payments-began to rise, and the

value of the bonds that were based on subprime mortgages began to

decline. When large numbers of these subprime borrowers started

going bankrupt, the subprime mortgage securities had to be revalued

downward.

　　In the end, the banks and investment houses around the world that

had bought these mortgage-backed securities were forced to write

off large portions of their debt-up to 80 percent of their original

value in some cases-leading to a credit crisis that spread around

the world as other banks and investment houses refused to provide

the cash that the world's companies and financial institutions need

to keep running. Banks around the world had to be rescued by

cash-strapped governments. In the United States, Lehman Brothers,

one of the largest investment banks in the country, was forced into

bankruptcy, and another investment bank, Bear Stearns, had to be

sold off with help from the U.S. Federal Reserve-for a fraction of

its previous value. AIG, the largest insurance company in the

world, also had to be bailed out by the Federal Reserve. Once the

financial meltdown had started it was impossible to stop.

　　In addition to financial meltdowns, even cataclysmic events such

as hurricanes and global warming are influenced by the expanding

21st-century economy, which is bringing forces to bear that are

making it impossible to predict what will happen in the future. For

example, the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, primarily for

economic reasons, has led to a sharp increase in the release of

carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And industrial pollution in the

United States, Europe, and China has contributed to the shrinking

of the Arctic ice cap and an unprecedented melting of the

permafrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide and methane gas into

the atmosphere, leading to even more global warming. This

greenhouse effect has led to ever higher temperatures-literally a

“meltdown” in some parts of the world. And no one seems to know

where it will all end.

　　Even efforts to reduce global warming, such as the promotion of

biofuels, have led to unintended and unforeseen consequences. In

addition to the use of massive amounts of water to produce sugar-or

corn-based biofuels, the reduction of farmland for the production

of food for human consumption led to rising shortages of rice,

corn, and wheat on the world markets, resulting in riots in some

countries and calls for increased protectionism in others.

　　The converging global economy is also shaking up traditional

patterns of trade and investing. Before the 21st century, for

example, people tended to limit their investments to purchases of

domestic stocks and bonds. They then waited patiently for their

investments to increase in value or provide a safe, fixed income

over time. But in today's fusion economy, our money is being

invested-whether we're aware of it or not-in pension funds,

governments, and banks that buy an increasingly complex array of

securities and investment vehicles.

　　The 21st-century economy has brought strange new correlations

between investors and between markets. And the results can be

catastrophic. Investors who are losing money in one sector tend to

sell investments in another sector-or another part of the world-to

pay their debts. When stocks fall sharply in the United States and

Europe, for example, emerging-market funds from Brazil to

Bangladesh can decline sharply as investors sell their shares

abroad in order to raise cash to pay for losses at home. Currencies

in previously healthy economies around the world often crash as

speculators rush to safe haven currencies such as dollars and

yen.

　　It has been said that a butterfly flapping its wings over Tokyo

could cause a rainstorm over New York's Central Park several days

later. The 21st-century economy has taken this linear correlation

to another level. Causes and effects are converging, fusing

together in a complex web that no one-not even the experts-are able

to fully understand. Just as Metcalfe's Law, which says that the

value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of

its users, the expanding global economy is growing and expanding in

ways we are unable to control.

　　And the speed of change is increasing exponentially. In today's

modern economy, events have an almost immediate effect. If stocks

fall sharply in China, markets around the world plunge instantly.

Political events, such as an assassination or an unexpected

election result-or even random events such as earthquakes or

terrorist attacks-can cause the “invisible hand” of the marketplace

to buy or sell precipitiously.

　　Like the aforementioned butterfly flapping its wings over Tokyo,

even small investment decisions can affect the global marketplace.

With China holding more than a trillion dollars of U.S. government

securities, any sign that the dollar could lose value in the years

ahead-a decision by the U.S. Federal Reserve to lower interest

rates, for example, or a move in Congress to force China to revalue

its currency-may set in motion political and economic changes that

could end up dethroning the dollar as the world's preferred reserve

currency.

　　At the beginning of the 21st century, the euro had already begun

supplanting the dollar as the world's currency of choice-there are

now more euro notes and coins in circulation than dollars. And the

international bond markets have begun issuing more euro-denominated

securities than dollar-denominated securities. Many countries are

now accounting for their purchases and sales of commodities and

other goods on the international marketplace in euros instead of

the almighty greenback-leading to an eventual decline in value of

the dollar as countries sell the U.S. currency to buy others to use

in the global marketplace.

　　In many ways, old paradigms have become obsolete and a new world

order has been established. Asia's export boom at the beginning of

the 21st century, for example, was mainly based on sales of

products to U.S. consumers. Without them, it was assumed, the

booming Asian economies would slow, engendering economic and

political turmoil. In order to keep the U.S. economy afloat-and in

part to ensure the safety of the foreign reserves sitting in Asian

central banks' vaults-Asian nations became the United States'

biggest creditor.

　　Trillions of dollars of U.S. government securities have been sold

to mercantilist Asian and oil-rich Middle East nations, allowing

the United States to fund its huge budget and trade deficits. The

decision by foreign investment funds and central banks to subsidize

the U.S. economy-providing the credit to fuel the U.S. housing

bubble, leading eventually to a worldwide financial meltdown

affecting even the cash-rich economies in Asia and the Middle

East-shows how much the balance of power has shifted and how

interconnected the world has become.

　　In one of the biggest economic revolutions in history, the

expanding 21st-century economy has begun shifting power from the

developed world to the developing world-with Brazil, Russia, India,

and China, the so-called BRIC countries, leading the way. Adjusting

for purchasing power, the economies of the emerging markets have

surpassed the economic output of the developed world. Their

economic machine is already consuming over half of the world's

energy, and they have been responsible for 80 percent of the

increase in oil consumption during the first years of the 21st

century. The export-oriented powerhouses of the developing world

have been able to acquire more than three-quarters of the world's

foreign currency reserves and increase the stock market valuations

of their companies enormously. This led fund manager...

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　　From Publishers Weekly

　　Epping (

A

Beginner's Guide to the World Economy

) offers a comprehensive

guide to the global economy, arguing that economic literacy is a

survival imperative in a fusion economy, where what happens in one

corner of the globe can have unprecedented impact on the rest of

the world. He gives a thorough and easy-to-understand explanation

of the rudiments of global finance and provides readers with the

tools to be able to make sense of future economic events. Sidebars

scattered throughout the book go deeper into such terms and

concepts as subprime mortgages, mortgage-backed securities and the

difference between budget deficit and trade deficit. Epping also

explores macroeconomics, the virtual economy, private equity and

public good—and even how to eliminate poverty. A refreshing look at

the present economic situation, minus the often confusing graphs,

charts and jargon typical in works of this type, this book provides

a solid understanding of economic basics, giving readers the

much-needed tools they need to stay on top of future developments.

(Mar.)

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