John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith's classic examination of the 1929 financial collapse.Arguing that the 1929 stock market crash was precipitated by rampant speculation in the stock market, Galbraith notes that the common denominator of all speculative episodes is the belief of participants that they can become rich without work. It was Galbraith's belief that a good knowledge of what happened in 1929 was the best safeguard against its recurrence.Atlantic Monthly wrote, "Economic writings are seldom notable for their entertainment value, but this book is. Galbraith's prose has grace and wit, and he distills a good deal of sardonic fun from the whopping errors of the nation's oracles and the wondrous antics of the financial community."

The world-renowned economist offers "dourly irreverent analyses of financial debacle from the tulip craze of the seventeenth century to the recent plague of junk bonds." — The Atlantic .With incomparable wisdom, skill, and wit, world-renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith traces the history of the major speculative episodes in our economy over the last three centuries. Exposing the ways in which normally sane people display reckless behavior in pursuit of profit, Galbraith asserts that our "notoriously short" financial memory is what creates the conditions for market collapse. By recognizing these signs and understanding what causes them we can guard against future recessions and have a better hold on our country's (and our own) financial destiny.

John Kenneth Galbraith's international bestseller The Affluent Society is a witty, graceful and devastating attack on some of our most cherished economic myths.As relevant today as when it was first published over forty years ago, this newly updated edition of Galbraith's classic text on the 'economics of abundance', lays bare the hazards of individual and social complacency about economic inequality.Why worship work and productivity if many of the goods we produce are superfluous - artificial 'needs' created by high-pressure advertising? Why begrudge expenditure on vital public works while ignoring waste and extravagance in the private sector of the economy? Classical economics was born in a harsh world of mass poverty, and has left us with a set of preconceptions ill-adapted to the realities of our own richer age. And so, too often, 'the bland lead the bland'. Our unfamiliar problems need a new approach, and the reception given to this famous book has shown the value of its fresh, lively ideas.'A compelling challenge to conventional thought' The New York Times'He shows himself a truly sensitive and civilized man, whose ideas are grounded in the common culture of the two continents, and may serve as a link between them; his book is of foremost importance for them both' The Times Literary SupplementJohn Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) was a Canadian-American economist. A Keynesian and an institutionalist, Galbraith was a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism and progressivism. Galbraith was the author of 30 books, including The Economics of Innocent Fraud, The Great Crash: 1929, and A History of Economics.

A book explaining the history of economics; including the powerful and vested interests which moulded the theories to their financial advantage; as a means of understanding modern economics.

With searing wit and incisive commentary, John Kenneth Galbraith redefined America's perception of itself in The New Industrial State, one of his landmark works. The United States is no longer a free-enterprise society, Galbraith argues, but a structured state controlled by the largest companies. Advertising is the means by which these companies manage demand and create consumer "need" where none previously existed. Multinational corporations are the continuation of this power system on an international level. The goal of these companies is not the betterment of society, but immortality through an uninterrupted stream of earnings.First published in 1967, The New Industrial State continues to resonate today.

John Kenneth Galbraith has long been at the center of American economics, in key positions of responsibility during the New Deal, World War II, and since, guiding policy and debate. His trenchant new book distills this lifetime of experience in the public and private sectors; it is a scathing critique of matters as they stand today.Sounding the alarm about the increasing gap between reality and "conventional wisdom" -- a phrase he coined -- Galbraith tells, along with much else, how we have reached a point where the private sector has unprecedented control over the public sector. We have given ourselves over to self-serving belief and "contrived nonsense" or, more simply, fraud. This has come at the expense of the economy, effective government, and the business world.Particularly noted is the central power of the corporation and the shift in authority from shareholders and board members to management. In an intense exercise of fraud, the pretense of shareholder power is still maintained, even with the immediate participants. In fact, because of the scale and complexity of the modern corporation, decisive power must go to management. From management and its own inevitable self-interest, power extends deeply into government -- the so-called public sector. This is particularly and dangerously the case in such matters as military policy, the environment, and, needless to say, taxation. Nevertheless, there remains the firm reference to the public sector.How can fraud be innocent? In his inimitable style, Galbraith offers the answer. His taut, wry, and severe comment is essential reading for everyone who cares about America's future. This book is especially relevant in an election year, but it deeply concerns the much longer future.

The noted economist-diplomat traces the evolution of money and of the institutions and techniques for its management and mismanagement from Lydian coinage to current inflation.

Galbraith also recognizes human weakness, differences in ability and motivation, and the formidable obstacles facing those who challenge the status quo. No one else explains the interplay of economic and political forces with Galbraith's exquisite clarity.

ForewordThe Prophets & Promise of Classical CapitalismThe Manners & Morals of High CapitalismThe Dissent of Karl MarxThe Colonial IdeaLenin & the Great UngluingThe Rise & Fall of MoneyThe Mandarin RevolutionThe Fatal CompetitionThe Big CorporationLand & PeopleThe MetropolisDemocracy, Leadership, CommitmentA Major Word of ThanksNotesList of IllustrationsIndex

Discusses the many sources and instruments of power, and explains how power is utilized by organizations and businesses and in economics and political and military life

This book traces the course of America's current sense of contentment, stemming from the economic comfort achieved by the fortunate, politically dominant community during the Reagan-Bush era of the 1980s. Galbraith focuses on the results of this stasis, including short-term thinking and investment, government as a burden, and corporate sclerosis. The author also explores international issues, such as the parallels between the denial of trouble in Eastern Europe and problems unrecognized in America. This book is a groundbreaking assessment of the future of America.

John Kenneth Galbraith's third novel, A Tenured Professor, is at once an intriguing tale of morality and a comic delight. Montgomery Martin, a Harvard economics professor, creates a stock forecasting model, which makes it possible for him to uncover society's hidden agendas. Seeking proof that human folly has no limit when motivated by greed, Martin initiates mass hysteria that causes investors to assume that up is the only direction. Hailed as "Galbraith's wisest and wittiest" novel (New York Times), A Tenured Professor is an impudently satirical tale.

THE ESSENTIAL GALBRAITH includes key selections from the most important works of John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the most distinguished writers of our time - from THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, the groundbreaking book in which he conined the tern "conventional wisdom," to THE GREAT CRASH, an unsurpassed account of the events that triggered America's worst economic crisis. Galbraith’s new introductions place the works in their historical moment and make clear their enduring relevance for the new century. THE ESSENTIAL GALBRAITH will delight old admirers and introduce one of our most beloved writers to a new generation of readers. It is also an indispensable resource for scholars and students of economics, history, and politics, offering unparalleled access to the seminal writings of an extraordinary thinker.

In his new introduction to this classic text on political economy, Galbraith reasserts the validity of the core thesis of American Capitalism: The best and established answer to economic power is the building of countervailing power. The trade union remains an equalizing force in the labor markets, and the chain store is the best answer to the market power of big food companies. This work remains an essential guidepost of American mores as well as that as of the American economy.

A sparkling, readable introduction to the average citizen, of the otherwise arcane subject of economics, explaining economic theory, institutions, ideas, concepts, applications via monetary policy & other means, much more. Indexed.

"Names? You want names? No one knows better ones than John Kenneth Galbraith” (San Diego Union-Tribune). With the dazzling insight, humor, and literary skill that mark Galbraith as one of the most distinguished writers of our time, Name-Dropping charts the political landscape of the past sixty-five years. Drawing on a lifetime of access to many great public figures, the famous economist offers a clear-eyed, unsparing, and amusing “look at prominent people . . . [he] has known, from FDR on” (Larry King, USA Today) and offers a rich and uniquely personal history of the century — a history he helped to shape.

The richly adventurous memoirs of one of the most dazzling public figures to dominate the American scene over the last decades “As a raconteur and a literary stylist he stands with the best. . . . As entertainment, the book is a total success.” — The New York Times Book Review “Absorbing and irresistible.” — The New Yorker “A highly perceptive commentary on all our yesterdays . . . anecdotal, amusing, animated and above all, illuminating.” — John Barkham Reviews “An enjoyable book, full of fun, full of wisdom, and full of rare insights into the history of our times.” — The New Republic “A delightfully teeming book . . . [John Kenneth] Galbraith’s comic voice is a distinctive and durable literary achievement.” — Atlantic Monthly

Economics and the Public Purpose is a 1973 book by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith advocates a "new socialism" as the solution, nationalising military production & public services such as health care. He also advocates introducing disciplined wage, salary, profit & price controls on the economy to reduce inequality & restrain the power of giant corporations. Socialisation of the "unduly weak industries & unduly strong ones" together with planning for the remainder would allow the public interest to be accorded its rightful preference over private interests. He adds that this can only be achieved when there is a new belief system that rejects the orthodoxy of economics in the past. The new socialism needs to be achieved thru gradual democratic political change.

A renowned economist presents an accessible, far-reaching history of the century's economics from World War I and the Russian Revolution, through the Depression and Keynesian theory, to colonialism's collapse and the rise of the Third World.

The Galbraith incisibeness, clarity, and wit are here brought to bear on the central aspects of the most important economic and social probelms of our time. The Nature of Mass Poverty proceeds from the author's conviction that most explanations of conditions in poor countries do not explain. They reflect, instead, the experience of the rich countries. Or they create cause out of cure. Capital and technical expertise being available from the rich countries, shortage of these becomes the cause of povery in the poor.

Incisive and original, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote with an eloquence that burst the conventions of his discipline and won a readership none of his fellow economists could match. This Library of America volume, the first devoted to economics, gathers four of his key early works, the books that established him as one of the leading public intellectuals of the last century. In American Capitalism, Galbraith exposes with great panache the myth of American free-market competition. The idea that an impersonal market sets prices and wages, and maintains balance between supply and demand, remained so vital in American economic thought, Galbraith argued, because oligopolistic American businessmen never acknowledged their collective power. Also overlooked was the way that groups such as unions and regulatory agencies react to large oligopolies by exerting countervailing power—a concept that was the book’s lasting contribution.The Great Crash, 1929 offers a gripping account of the most legendary (and thus misunderstood) financial collapse in American history, as well as an inquiry into why it led to sustained depression. Galbraith posits five reasons: unusually high income inequality; a bad, overleveraged corporate structure; an unsound banking system; unbalanced foreign trade; and, finally, “the poor state of economic intelligence.” His account is a trenchant analysis of the 1929 crisis and a cautionary tale of ignorance and hubris among stock-market players; not surprisingly, the book was again a bestseller in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse.In The Affluent Society, the book that introduced the phrase “the conventional wisdom” into the American lexicon, Galbraith takes on a shibboleth of free-market conservatives and Keynesian liberals alike: the paramount importance of production. For Galbraith, the American mania for production continued even in an era of unprecedented affluence, when the basic needs of all but an impoverished minority had easily been met. Thus the creation of new and spurious needs through advertising—leading to skyrocketing consumer debt, and eventually a private sector that is glutted at the expense of a starved public sector.The New Industrial State stands as the most developed exposition of Galbraith’s major themes. Examining the giant postwar corporations, Galbraith argued that the “technostructure” necessary for such vast organizations—comprising specialists in operations, marketing, and Research & Development—is primarily concerned with reducing risk, not with maximizing profits; it perpetuates stability through “the planning system.” The book concludes with a prescient analysis of the “educational and scientific estate,” which prefigures the “information economy” that has emerged since the book was published.

In 1908, in Dunwich Township, a patch of rural southern Ontario that was more Scottish than much of Scotland, the renowned economist and public servant John Kenneth Galbraith was born. In 1963, Galbraith wrote The Scotch, a memoir of the tight (in every sense) community in which he was raised.Galbraith tells how the men were distinguished by the amount of land they’d accumulated, how hard they worked, how hard they drank, but mainly by how frugal they were. It was said that Codfish John McKillop was so economical that when he died and was being lowered into his grave, he lifted the cover of his coffin and handed out his clothes. Educated himself first at the one-room Willey School, where team sports were held to be “bad for a youngster,” and later at Dutton High School under the aegis of an incompetent teacher who believed in learning through terror, Galbraith raced through the early grades and left for the Ontario Agricultural College, en route, eventually, to Harvard. He may have left the community, but, it’s clear from this affectionate, if pointed, portrait, it never left him.

The CBC Massey Lectures, an annual broadcasting fixture for more than 45 years and Canada’s preeminent public lecture series, featured some of the finest talks by some of the greatest minds of modern times. In this extraordinary collection, major thinkers offer passionate polemics on the major issues of the 20th century. Here are King on race and prejudice; Galbraith on economics and poverty; Jacobs on Canadian cities and Quebec separatism; Goodman on the moral ambiguity of America; Brandt on international peace; Kierans on globalism and the nation-state; and much more. Their words not only have considerable historical significance but also remain hugely relevant to the problems we face today. At last, a selection of these “lost” lectures is available to a world so hungry for, and yet in such short supply of, innovative ideas. The Lost Massey Lectures includes an introduction by veteran CBC producer Bernie Lucht.

A compilation of the lengthy diary kept by Galbraith and his letters to President Kennedy after he was appointed ambassador to India in 1960

This is a topical fiction work by the prolific and influential economist. It is a novel about diplomacy, taking place both in the United States and a mythical Latin American nation that suffers from the same instability that many such nations in the region experienced during the postwar period.

Wage freezes and price controls, ecology and big business, U.S. diplomacy and the Third World, inflation and recession, Wall Street booms and busts, the doubletalk of economists, the transformations of Richard Nixon and the host of other subjects of present concern are illuminated by one of the brilliant minds and devastating wits of our time...--Back cover...observations of various Presidents, Secretaries of State, the New Left and U.S. foreign policy, as well as classic contributions to economics--The New Republic

A comprehensive look at the world economy since World War I. Galbraith traces economic development from the Russian Revolution, Great Depression, and Roosevelt's New Deal, through to the end of colonialism and the emergent Third World, Reagan and Thatcher, and the new Economic Global Village.

Un texte brillant et passionnant de Galbraith, considéré comme l’un des plus grands économistes du 20eme siècle, mort en 2006, qui montre comment toute société cherche à ignorer ses pauvres. Aujourd’hui, à travers un capitalisme financier outrancier qui privilégie la rente au détriment des pauvres et du travail. Un texte promis à devenir un grand classique. Par l’auteur de livres célèbres : Le Nouvel État industriel, Les mensonges de l’économie. Puis le texte de Laurent Cordonnier : Alors que s’ouvre une nouvelle campagne présidentielle, le niveau de vie des catégories populaires continue à se dégrader, en particulier à cause du coût du logement. Et quand le chômage recule, cela tient pour beaucoup à l’importance des classes d’âge qui partent à la retraite, à la généralisation des stages et contrats sous-payés, enfin à la rigueur punitive de l’indemnisation des chômeurs. On ne présente plus le texte de Swift, qui dans un récit satirique, explique que la meilleure façon de régler le problème des pauvres, est de les manger.The Art of ignoring the poor / John Kenneth Galbraith. suivi de Économistes en guerre contre les chômeurs / de Laurent Cordonnier. Du bon usage du cannibalisme / de Jonathan Swift ; préface de Serge Halimi.

AcknowledgmentsIntroductionSpacious issuesHow to reread historyThe nostalgic farmer

In Economics in Perspective , renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith presents a compelling and accessible history of economic ideas, from Aristotle through the twentieth century. Examining theories of the past that have a continuing modern resonance, he shows that economics is not a timeless, objective science, but is continually evolving as it is shaped by specific times and places. From Adam Smith's theories during the Industrial Revolution to those of John Maynard Keynes after the Great Depression, Galbraith demonstrates that if economic ideas are to remain relevant, they must continually adapt to the world they inhabit. A lively examination of economic thought in historical context, Economics in Perspective shows how the field has evolved across the centuries.