Written by respected portfolio manager and longtime investment professional Michael Lewitt, The Death of Capital looks at how, in recent years, the U.S. economy has increasingly been dominated by short-term speculation rather than productive investment, debt rather than equity, and short-term thinking rather than long-term planning. These disastrous trends, described here as "financialization," ignore the fact that capital is a highly unstable social process rather than a fixed, historical object or category. As a result of our failure to understand the true nature of capital, we have developed a financial and regulatory system that does exactly the opposite of what it should be doing—favoring obscurity over transparency and fomenting instability rather than a stable path to growth.
In explaining where we have gone wrong, Lewitt pulls few punches in criticizing some of the counterproductive forces that have led to the death of capital—including Wall Street practices such as private equity and derivatives trading—which he views both as economically unproductive and morally bankrupt. This timely audio:
Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, The Death of Capital is not just a play-by-play of the recent financial crisis, but also an original and passionate analysis of the trends that led to it and how the financial system can be reformed to avoid future crises.