The Alchemists of Loss

Kevin Dowd is a former academic and policy economist who has written extensively on the areas of monetary, financial and macro-economics, political economy and financial risk management. Professor Dowd s books include Competition and Finance: a New Interpretation of Financial and Monetary Economics (Macmillan, 1996), Money and the Market: Essays on Free Banking (Routledge, 2000) and Measuring Market Risk (Wiley, 2005). He has affiliations with the Cato Institute (Washington), the Cobden Centre (London), the Institute of Economic Affairs (London), the Independent Institute (Oakland), the Istituto Bruno Leoni (Milan), the Pensions Institute (London) and the Taxpayers Alliance (London). He lives in Sheffield, England with his wife and their two daughters. Martin Hutchinson was a merchant/investment banker with more than 25 years experience in London, New York and Zagreb, beginning with the merchant bank Hill Samuel, before moving into financial journalism in 2000. After working for US, Swedish and Austrian banks, he was a director of a Spanish private-equity firm, an advisor to a Korean conglomerate and Chairman of a US modular building company. As the US Treasury Advisor to Croatia in 1996, he helped the country establish its own T-bill program, launch its first government bond issue, and start a forward currency market. He then set up the Corporate Finance Division for the Croatian bank Privredna banka Zagreb and advised the Republic of Macedonia on restitution of savings for 800,000 Macedonian savers. In 2000 he moved into journalism, in October 2000 beginning his weekly column The Bear s Lair, which now appears on the website www.prudentbear.com. He is currently a columnist for Reuters BreakingViews, writes for Agora Publishing s financial website Money Morning and is editor of the Permanent Wealth Report. He has appeared on television on the BBC, Fox News, Fox Business, CNBC and RTV Slovenija. He is also the author of Great Conservatives (Academica Press, 2004) a study of the rise, triumph and decline of British Conservatism. Hutchinson has a degree in mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

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.