"Any ambitious proposal - ranging from fixing crumbling infrastructure to Medicare for all or preventing the coming climate apocalypse - inevitably sparks questions: how can we afford it? How can we pay for it? Stephanie Kelton points out how misguided those questions really are by using the bold ideas of modern monetary theory (MMT), a fundamentally different approach to using our resources to maximize our potential as a society. We've been thinking...

In a sweeping narrative about the people and the politics behind the budget, Wessel looks at the 2011 fiscal year (which ended September 30) to see where all the money was actually spent, and why the budget process has grown wildly out of control. In a narrative about the people and politics behind the federal budget, Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel, author of the New York TImes bestseller In Fed We Trust, looks at where the money...

What, exactly, is the National Debt-and to whom do we owe the money-two trillion dollars’ worth? That's a pile of one thousand dollar bills 134 miles high, and climbing. Just paying the interest costs is equivalent to the entire federal income tax collected west of the Mississippi. How did we get into such a fix? This book explains why the government, politicians of both parties, and all the rest of us have delayed putting our house in order; how...

This hard-hitting documentary investigates why so many Americans - college and high school students in particular - are being strangled by debt. Zeroing in on how the mall has replaced the factory as America's dominant economic engine, Emmy Award-winning former ABC News and CNN producer Danny Schechter shows how college students are being forced to pay higher interest on loans while graduating, on average, with more than {dollar}20,000 in consumer...

When President James Monroe announced in his 1824 message to Congress that the [nation's] large public debt, [accumulated since the Revolution], would be extinguished on January 1, 1835, Congress crafted legislation to transform that prediction into reality. Yet John Quincy Adams, Monroe's successor, seemed not to share the commitment to debt freedom, resulting in the rise of opposition to his administration and his defeat for reelection in the bitter...

Beck makes the case that when you're traveling in the wrong direction, slight course corrections won't cut it. He exposes the idea of "transformation" for the progressive smokescreen that it is, while maintaining that a return to individual rights, an uncompromising adherence to the Constitution, and a complete rethinking about the role of government in a free society is the only way forward.

In a bracing work of history, a leading international finance expert reveals how our national security depends on our financial security More than two centuries ago, America's first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, identified the Revolutionary War debt as a threat to the nation's creditworthiness and its very existence. In response, he established financial principles for securing the country-principles that endure to this day. In...