Author Description

The Devil's Dictionary of Economics and Finance can be categorised under both reference and humour. It was written as an independent sequel to the well-known Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. With wit, satire and tongue in cheek it explains the most basic—and some of the more advanced—terms of finance and economics, as well as everyday things such as money, debt and taxation, banks and investments funds, and (because they have certain financial implications) love, marriage and sex workers. The Dictionary covers topics from the Austrian economic school to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s opinion about Austria. Politics does not go ignored either. Topics of interest here include bureaucrats, the common good, the European Union, democracy, the Parliament, and the welfare state, among others. Last but not least, the book explains what it is that drives stock prices (and it’s not what they told you at business school). The definitions are interspersed with a sprinkling of surprising and curious facts ranging from the question Queen Elizabeth II asked professors of the famous London School of Economics, to the bubble in grave prices in New York. There are two addenda to the Dictionary. The first—A Xenophobe’s Concise Atlas of the World—will extend your range of prejudice just in case you felt a certain lack in that area. And the other—A Panoptic of Luminaries and their Famous Failures & Fiascos—explains how to identify a really important person by the number of truly whopping mistakes they have made. Clement Attlee meets Margaret Thatcher, John Maynard Keynes meets Milton Friedman, Mahatma Gandhi meets Henry Ford and yes, each of these great men and women made at least one highly memorable blunder in their glittering professional careers.