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Permanent Distortion
How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever
Description
A riveting exposé of a permanent financial dystopia, its causes, and real-world consequences
It is abundantly clear that our world is divided into two very different economies. The real one, for the average worker, is based on productivity and results. It behaves according to traditional rules of money and economics. The other doesn’t. It is the product of years of loose money, poured by central banks into a system dominated by financial titans. It is powerful enough to send stock markets higher even in the face of a global pandemic and threats of nuclear war.
This parting from reality has its roots in an emergency response to the financial crisis of 2008. “Quantitative Easing” injected a vast amount of cash into the economy—especially if you were a major Wall Street bank. What began as a short-term dependency became a habit, then a compulsion, and finally an addiction.
Nomi Prins relentlessly exposes a world fractured by policies crafted by the largest financial institutions, led by the Federal Reserve, that have supercharged the financial system while selling out regular citizens and leading to social and political reckonings. She uncovers a newly polarized world of the mega rich versus the never rich, the winners and losers of an unprecedented distortion that can never return to “normal.”
This parting from reality has its roots in an emergency response to the financial crisis of 2008. “Quantitative Easing” injected a vast amount of cash into the economy—especially if you were a major Wall Street bank. What began as a short-term dependency became a habit, then a compulsion, and finally an addiction.
Nomi Prins relentlessly exposes a world fractured by policies crafted by the largest financial institutions, led by the Federal Reserve, that have supercharged the financial system while selling out regular citizens and leading to social and political reckonings. She uncovers a newly polarized world of the mega rich versus the never rich, the winners and losers of an unprecedented distortion that can never return to “normal.”
Praise
“The timing of the release of Prins’ book could not be more appropriate as signs mount of how entrenched corruption has distorted the world in which we live to the point that it increasingly feels like a bad sci-fi movie…Prins brilliantly captures the insanity and mass hypnosis of regulators who have taken a hands-off approach to the Fed’s unlimited money spigot to the mega banks on Wall Street with indisputable facts and figures. She builds her case against the monetary policies of Bernanke and his successors (Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell) in the artful way that a master mason builds an exquisite rock wall—one carefully placed stone at a time.”
—Wall Street on Parade
“Readers curious about recent history and potential futures of the global economy will find much to capture their interest in Nomi Prins's Permanent Distortion, which is expansively researched, clear-eyed and conversational in tone… This comprehensive recent history is an informative and valuable work of observation, research, analysis and warning to financial experts and novices alike--and all who care about the structures of economic power.”
—Shelf Awareness
—Shelf Awareness
“A hard-hitting survey of the forces . . . that fuel financial markets at the expense of destabilizing the real economy. . . . Nomi Prins effectively dismantles the machinery of financial markets and explains how they operate in a secret world of their own.”
—Kirkus
"Prins... [gives] language to a period of accelerationism we are all living through but struggle to name… Prins reminds us that that Fed is ‘an organization established by elite bankers and led by unelected government officials who [face] minimal accountability for their decisions.’ Until we can begin to imagine a truly democratic alternative, we will remain at the mercy of this financial distortion, and all of the monsters it will unleash.”
—Jacobin
—Jacobin
“Prins has done it again. In her newest book, Permanent Distortion, [she] takes a hard look at the conflicts and corruption in the global financial system and banks in particular. She provides a tour d’horizon of the past ten years. . . . This book is a must-read for anyone looking to understand what’s really behind the financial chaos of the past decade.”
—James Rickards, author of Sold Out
“Prins breaks through the noise like no other historian. When I am looking to understand what’s really unfolding in the economy and finance, she’s where I turn. She’s from Wall Street and knows Washington—yet tells the truths that Main Street needs to hear.”
—Robert Kiyosaki, bestselling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad
“Prins is one of the only people in the world qualified to explain one of the biggest stories in the world, if not the biggest: the manipulation of central banking policies around the world. . . . Permanent Distortion describes the gradual replacement of the real economy with a kind of permanent Ponzi scheme, fueled by cheap money and selective regulation, that rewards insiders and disburses riches by access, not merit.”
—Matt Taibbi, award-winning author and investigative reporter
“Prins knows Wall Street. When she speaks, we should all listen. The story of Permanent Distortion exposes how corrupt our financial system is.”
—Richard D. Wolff, professor of economics emeritus, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and founder of democracyatwork.info
“Prins, former Goldman Sachs big shot, has come out of the cold to let you in on the con—and the clear and present danger that the Magic Money junkies and their central-bank pushermen are pulling us into a strange counter-reality where fantastical finance creatures copulate with finance fairy dust, creating a cancerous economic monstrosity. Yet, it’s weirdly fun to fly through the crazed new world Prins reveals. Every chapter is a new freaky adventure. She even makes the words ‘Quantitative Easing’ and ‘crypto blockchain ETFs’ into a fascinating game show . . . where They win and you, Mr. and Ms. go-to-work schmuck, lose. Jump in, I guarantee you a helluva ride.”
—Greg Palast, author of The Best Money Democracy Can Buy
“[P]ersuasive and intrinsically insightful… [Prins’s] literary style is readily accessible to both those well-versed in the nuances of the finance circles through which she moves so effortlessly as well as the generalist who is just looking to make sense of the economic realities they experience on a daily basis. I have always appreciated her ability to connect with the experienced professional as well as the unassuming novice; she is one of the best communicators I have ever had occasion to encounter in the publishing world.”
—Aaron Hughey, Bowling Green Daily News
Also by Nomi Prins
All the Presidents’ Bankers
A groundbreaking narrative of how an elite group of men transformed the American economy and government, dictated foreign and domestic policy, and shaped world history.…
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Collusion
In this searing exposéformer Wall Street insider Nomi Prins shows how the 2007-2008 financial crisis turbo-boosted the influence of central bankers and triggered a massive…
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