After the global financial panic and recession of 2007-2009, you don't have to be president or a hedge fund manager to know that “It's the economy, stupid.” Yet while the economy dominates the headlines, how it works and who influences it remain a mystery to most people. In The Little Book of Economics, Greg Ip, an award-winning journalist renowned for making complex economics easy to understand, walks you through how the economy really works. You'll learn:
• How psychology and the Federal Reserve drive business cycles
• How a financial crisis can transform a recession into a depression
• The surprising effects of fertility rates, lawyers, and ideas on economic growth
• Whether the United States faces a lost decade like Japan did in the 1990s
• The causes of inflation, how it destabilizes society, and why deflation is even worse
• How government debt can sometimes help end a recession but, other times, bring on disaster-and how to tell the difference
• The symptoms of financial crises