Award-winning business journalist Rana Foroohar shows how the shortsighted and misguided financial practices and mentality that nearly toppled the global economy in 2008 have come to infiltrate all corners of American business and how this "financialization of America" is putting us on a dangerous collision course to another catastrophic economic meltdown.
Drawing on in-depth reporting and exclusive interviews at the highest rungs of Wall Street and Washington, Foroohar shows how this phenomenon of our best and brightest companies behaving like glorfied banks is solidifying Wall Street's reign over Main Street, widening the gap between rich and poor, hampering economic progress, and threatening the future of the American Dream. Exploring the forces that have led American businesses to favor banking over innovating, balancing-sheet engineering over the actual kind, and the pursuit of short-term corporate profits over job creation, she shows how the infiltration of financialized thinking is so gravely harming our economy and society and why these issues matter so deeply and urgently to us all.
Through colorful stories of both "Takers"-the financiers destroying jobs, increasing economic inequality, and stiflng job creation-and also of "Makers"-the companies and communities where finance has been put back into the service of the real economy-she'll reveal how we can reverse these trends for a better path forward.
Author Biography
RANA FOROOHAR is an assistant managing editor and columnist at Time magazine, reaching a readership of 50 million in both print and digital editions. Foroohar also speaks to hundreds of millions of television news viewers around the world every week as CNN's global economic analyst. She has her own weekly radio show, Money Talking, on New York City's public radio station WNYC, and is a frequent commentator on NPR, as well as CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, and the BBC. She has appeared numerous times on programs such as Real Time with Bill Maher, Face the Nation, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Fareed Zakaria GPS, and MSNBC's Morning Joe.
Prior to coming to Time, Foroohar spent thirteen years at Newsweek as an economic and foreign affairs editor. She has received awards and fellowships from institutions such as the German Marshall Fund, the Johns Hopkins School of International Affairs, the East-West Center, and the Newswomen's Club of New York (best columnist, 2013). She is also a frequent speaker to high-level corporate and academic audiences.