A 'Crash' course in the top 50 economic theories. In these times of financial crisis, the economic consensus of the past 15 years has been destroyed. It's clear that there's a problem, but what's the solution? Once again, different economic theories are being debated and names such as Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes are being bandied about. What once seemed like an esoteric discipline relevant only to bankers and academics is now in our everyday lives and important to every one of us.

Does a truly free market exist and, if it did, what effect would that have on society? Is it possible to spend your way out of recession? What are our choices? 30-Second Economics takes the 50 most significant economic theories of the past 120 years, and challenges financial high-flyers to explain them to the general reader in half a minute, using nothing more than two pages, 300 words, and one picture. Economics will suddenly seem a lot more fun than the economy, and make a lot more sense, and along the way we'll meet the founding fathers of modern economics such as Adam Smith, J.S. Mills, David Ricardo, and Alfred Marshall. From neo-liberalism to Marxism, plus everything in between, this is the ultimate 'Crash' course in economic theory.