Fortune's Fool

Fortune's Fool

by Satyajit Das
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date: 01/03/2022

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Australia's prosperity relies on the continent's extraordinary natural - primarily mineral - riches and good fortune. But economic, financial, environmental, geopolitical and societal pressures now threaten the nation's high living standards. The COVID-19 pandemic is the first of many trials to come. Lacklustre reform proposals are mired in ideological necrophilia: ideas which have been tried and failed. Politics is trading insults and slogans. Institutions lack the quality, skills, organisational memory and courage to deliver the required solutions. A disengaged citizenry are focused on preserving their entitled way of life, refusing to accept that the well of plenty is approaching exhaustion. Critics are derided as permanent professional pessimists, the doubting Irishman Hanrahan in John O'Brien's poem warning of 'roon'. Cognitive dissonance is a national religion.


Written in accessible, acerbic prose, Fortune's Fool cuts through these issues to expose Australia's current dilemmas and choices. It dissects the pandemic, global trends, Australia's narrow 'house and holes' economy and its dependency on China, spotlighting a political paralysis that must be overcome and the changes that are urgently needed. For Australians remotely concerned about their own future and their children's, as well as the country's, Fortune's Fool is essential reading.

ISBN:
9781922633095
9781922633095
Category:
Politics & government
Format:
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date:
01-03-2022
Language:
English
Publisher:
Monash University Publishing
Satyajit Das

Satyajit Das is a globally respected former banker and consultant with over forty years’ experience in financial markets. In 2014, Bloomberg nominated him as one of the fifty most influential financial thinkers in the world.

Das presciently anticipated, as early as 2006, the Global Financial Crisis. Subsequently, he accurately described the evolution of the post-crisis world – sluggish growth, disinflation, the increasing ineffectiveness of policy measures and retrenchment from globalisation. He identified the increasing political and social dimensions of the crisis, especially the growing democracy deficit and the end of trust. In 2016, in the context of the SARS and Ebola epidemics, he drew attention to the risk of disease and the lack of preparedness to deal with a global health crisis.

In his writings and public talks, he highlighted the linkages between the economic challenges and environmental, resource, and socio-political constraints, such as inequality and inter-generational tensions. The extend-and-pretend model, he argued, had reached the end of its utility, and rising complacency combined with the reluctance to make difficult choices made a serious future crisis inevitable.

Das is the author of two international bestsellers, Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives (2006) and Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011). He was featured in Charles Ferguson’s 2010 Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job, the 2012 PBS Frontline series Money, Power & Wall Street, the 2009 BBC TV documentary Tricks with Risk, and the 2015 German film Who’s Saving Whom?

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