A polished and masterly work of historical narrative, The Marshall Plan is an instant classic of Cold War literature.\nWith Britain's empire collapsing and Stalin's ascendant, U.S. officials under new Secretary of State George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events.\nThis is the story behind the birth of the Cold War, and the U.S.-led liberal global order, told with verve, insight, and resonance for today. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Benn Steil's book will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan.\nFocusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Steil's gripping narrative takes us through the seminal episodes that marked the collapse of postwar U.S.-Soviet relations: the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, Stalin's determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe is vividly portrayed. And in a riveting epilogue, Steil shows how the forces which clove Europe in two after the Second World War have reasserted themselves since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War

Business & Money

Steil, Benn

Economics

Oxford University Press

Winner of the 2019 New-York Historical Society Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History Winner of the 2018 American Academy of Diplomacy Douglas Dillon Award Shortlisted for the 2018 Duff Cooper Prize in Literary Nonfiction With Britain's empire collapsing and Stalin's ascendant, U.S. officials under new Secretary of State George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events. This is the story behind the birth of the Cold War, and the U.S.-led liberal global order, told with verve, insight, and resonance for today. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Benn Steil's book will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan. Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Steil's gripping narrative takes us through the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar U.S.-Soviet relations: the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, Stalin's determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe is vividly portrayed. And in a riveting epilogue, Steil shows how the forces which clove Europe in two after the Second World War have reasserted themselves since the collapse of the Soviet Union. A polished and masterly work of historical narrative, The Marshall Plan is an instant classic of Cold War literature.

Marshall Plan Dawn Of The Cold War

Oxford

One of the most important recent developments in financial markets is the institutionalization of saving associated with the growth of pension funds, life insurance companies, and mutual funds. An increasing proportion of household saving is now managed by professional portfolio managers instead of being directly invested in the securities markets or held in the form of bank deposits. With the aging of the population and its adverse impact on public pension systems, the shift of individual savings to institutional investors is likely to become even more marked in the coming years.This book provides a comprehensive economic assessment of institutional investment. It charts the development and performance of the asset management industry and analyzes the implications of rising institutionalized saving for the development of the securities trading industry, the financial sector as a whole, and the wider economy. The book draws extensively on international experience, particularly in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.

Institutional Investors

Davis, E. Philip

Finance

Mit Pr

As trade flows expanded and trade agreements proliferated after World War II, governmentsmost notably the United Statescame increasingly to use their power over imports and exports to influence the behavior of other countries. But trade is not the only way in which nations interact economically. Over the past two decades, another form of economic exchange has risen to a level of vastly greater significance and political concern: the purchase and sale of financial assets across borders. Nearly $2 trillion worth of currency now moves cross-border every day, roughly 90 percent of which is accounted for by financial flows unrelated to trade in goods and servicesa stunning inversion of the figures in 1970. The time is ripe to ask fundamental questions about what Benn Steil and Robert Litan have coined as financial statecraft,” or those aspects of economic statecraft directed at influencing international capital flows. How precisely has the American government practiced financial statecraft? How effective have these efforts been? And how can they be made more effective? The authors provide penetrating and incisive answers in this timely and stimulating book.

Financial Statecraft: The Role of Financial Markets in American Foreign Policy

Litan, Robert E.

International

Yale University Press

As trade flows expanded and trade agreements proliferated after World War II, governments―most notably the United States―came increasingly to use their power over imports and exports to influence the behavior of other countries. But trade is not the only way in which nations interact economically. Over the past two decades, another form of economic exchange has risen to a level of vastly greater significance and political concern: the purchase and sale of financial assets across borders. Nearly $2 trillion worth of currency now moves cross-border every day, roughly 90 percent of which is accounted for by financial flows unrelated to trade in goods and services―a stunning inversion of the figures in 1970. The time is ripe to ask fundamental questions about what Benn Steil and Robert Litan have coined as “financial statecraft,” or those aspects of economic statecraft directed at influencing international capital flows. How precisely has the American government practiced financial statecraft? How effective have these efforts been? And how can they be made more effective? The authors provide penetrating and incisive answers in this timely and stimulating book.

Financial Statecraft: The Role of Financial Markets in American Foreign Policy (Council on Foreign Relations/Brookings Institution Books)

Money, Markets, and Sovereignty (Council on Foreign Relations Books)

Winner of the 2010 Hayek Book Prize given by the Manhattan Institute
"Money, Markets and Sovereignty is a surprisingly easy read, given the complicated issues covered. In it, Mr. Steil and Mr. Hinds consistently challenge today's statist nostrums."—Doug Bandow, The Washington Times
In this keenly argued book, Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds offer the most powerful defense of economic liberalism since F. A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom more than sixty years ago. The authors present a fascinating intellectual history of monetary nationalism from the ancient world to the present and explore why, in its modern incarnation, it represents the single greatest threat to globalization.
Steil and Hinds describe the current state of international economic relations as both unusual and precarious. Eras of economic protectionism have historically coincided with monetary nationalism, while eras of liberal trade have been accompanied by a universal monetary standard. But today, the authors show, an unprecedentedly liberal global trade regime operates side by side with the most extreme doctrine of monetary nationalism ever contrived—a situation bound to trigger periodic crises. Steil and Hinds call for a revival of the political and economic thinking that underlay earlier great periods of globalization, thinking that is increasingly under threat by more recent ideas about what sovereignty means.

Hinds, Manuel

Winner of the 2010 Hayek Book Prize given by the Manhattan Institute 
"Money, Markets and Sovereignty is a surprisingly easy read, given the complicated issues covered. In it, Mr. Steil and Mr. Hinds consistently challenge today's statist nostrums."—Doug Bandow, The Washington Times 
In this keenly argued book, Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds offer the most powerful defense of economic liberalism since F. A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom more than sixty years ago. The authors present a fascinating intellectual history of monetary nationalism from the ancient world to the present and explore why, in its modern incarnation, it represents the single greatest threat to globalization. 
Steil and Hinds describe the current state of international economic relations as both unusual and precarious. Eras of economic protectionism have historically coincided with monetary nationalism, while eras of liberal trade have been accompanied by a universal monetary standard. But today, the authors show, an unprecedentedly liberal global trade regime operates side by side with the most extreme doctrine of monetary nationalism ever contrived—a situation bound to trigger periodic crises. Steil and Hinds call for a revival of the political and economic thinking that underlay earlier great periods of globalization, thinking that is increasingly under threat by more recent ideas about what sovereignty means.

A sweeping history of the drama, intrigue, and rivalry behind the creation of the postwar economic order
When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for 'a new Bretton Woods' to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the remote New Hampshire town where representatives of forty-four nations gathered in July 1944, in the midst of the century's second great war, has become shorthand for enlightened globalization. The actual story surrounding the historic Bretton Woods accords, however, is full of startling drama, intrigue, and rivalry, which are vividly brought to life in Benn Steil's epic account.
Upending the conventional wisdom that Bretton Woods was the product of an amiable Anglo-American collaboration, Steil shows that it was in reality part of a much more ambitious geopolitical agenda hatched within President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Treasury and aimed at eliminating Britain as an economic and political rival. At the heart of the drama were the antipodal characters of John Maynard Keynes, the renowned and revolutionary British economist, and Harry Dexter White, the dogged, self-made American technocrat. Bringing to bear new and striking archival evidence, Steil offers the most compelling portrait yet of the complex and controversial figure of White―the architect of the dollar's privileged place in the Bretton Woods monetary system, who also, very privately, admired Soviet economic planning and engaged in clandestine communications with Soviet intelligence officials and agents over many years.
A remarkably deft work of storytelling that reveals how the blueprint for the postwar economic order was actually drawn, The Battle of Bretton Woods is destined to become a classic of economic and political history.

The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Council on Foreign Relations Books (Princeton University Press))

Princeton University Press

The story of the financial crisis will be retold endlessly as one of widespread greed, corruption, and incompetence, enabled by a policy agenda dominated by an ideology of deregulation. Yet even if the marketplace had been populated by more ethical and conscientious individuals, and even if their activities had been more carefully scrutinized by regulators, the world would still have wound up with a major boom and bust —such is the power, as history attests, of cheap money.
In Lessons of the Financial Crisis, Benn Steil argues that we are seeing a classic bust of a credit boom created by policies whose combined effects increased the demand for debt to unsustainable levels. U.S. monetary policy, taxation policy, and homeownership promotion policy were so conducive to credit expansion that to lay the blame on regulators who were "asleep at the switch" is dangerously simplistic. The United States in particular, given that it effectively sets monetary and credit conditions for a significant portion of the global economy, needs to put in place policies that can better recognize and curtail an incipient credit boom, and ensure that systemically important financial institutions can withstand its unwinding.

Lessons of the Financial Crisis (Council on Foreign Relations (Council on Foreign Relations Press))

Council on Foreign Relations

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Steil, Benn. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Steil, Benn

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Steil, Benn. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War

Marshall Plan Dawn Of The Cold War

Institutional Investors

Financial Statecraft: The Role of Financial Markets in American Foreign Policy

Financial Statecraft: The Role of Financial Markets in American Foreign Policy (Council on Foreign Relations/Brookings Institution Books)

Money, Markets, and Sovereignty (Council on Foreign Relations Books)

Money, Markets, and Sovereignty (Council on Foreign Relations Books)

The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Council on Foreign Relations Books (Princeton University Press))

The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Council on Foreign Relations Books (Princeton University Press))

Lessons of the Financial Crisis (Council on Foreign Relations (Council on Foreign Relations Press))