An empirical investigation of financial crises during the last 800 years.

"This book examines the struggle between President Obama and the United States Congress to manage federal spending and tax policy for the three and one half years between 2009 and the summer of 2012. More than half the book focuses on the intense 44-day crisis in June and July 2011 when the United States came to the brink of a potentially catastrophic default on its debt."--Note to readers.

June 12, 2030 started out like any other day in memory -- and by then, memories were long. Since cancer had been cured fifteen years before, America's population was aging rapidly. That sounds like good news, but consider this : millions of baby boomers, with a big natural predator picked off, were sucking dry benefits and resources that were never meant to hold them until their eighties and beyond ... until a massive earthquake devastated Los Angeles,...

As head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO)--"the nation's top auditor"-- David M. Walker warned Congress and the administration as the federal surplus became a giant deficit under George W. Bush. Now, Walker works full-time to raise public awareness regarding mounting debt burdens being imposed on future generations. This is his manifesto, a way to end out-of-control government spending and reform our tax, retirement, health care, defense,...

Publisher's description: Robert Rubin was sworn in as the seventieth U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in January 1995 in a brisk ceremony attended only by his wife and a few colleagues. As soon as the ceremony was over, he began an emergency meeting with President Bill Clinton on the financial crisis in Mexico. This was not only a harbinger of things to come during what would prove to be a rocky period in the global economy; it also captured the essence...