Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2016

We all depend on the financial sector. It is required for storing our money, managing our payments, financing housing stocks, restoring infrastructure, funding pensions, and supporting new businesses. However, these roles constitute only a small portion of the sector's activities: the overwhelming majority of loans are within the financial sector. What is the purpose of this activity, then? Why is it so profitable?

John Kay, a distinguished economist with extensive experience in the financial sector, argues that the perceived profitability of the industry is partly an illusion and partly an appropriation of wealth that has been created elsewhere - from other people's money. The financial sector, as he demonstrates, stands apart from the regular business world and everyday life, and has become an industry that primarily deals with itself, talks to itself, and is judged by standards it has itself created. The outside world has also adopted these standards, bailing out financial institutions that have failed all of us through greed and mismanagement.

We need finance, but today we have much more than a good thing. In Other People's Money, John Kay shows with his inimitable style what has gone wrong in the shadowy heart of finance.

Pages: 368, Dimensions: 12.8x12.8cm