Preface

Summary

This book arises out of my fascination with social theory, the ever-changing artifice of finance, and the question of how this artifice is constructed and reconstructed. Since leaving my native country in 2003 for Oxford's old stone walls I have been fascinated by economic differences between my native and adoptive countries. I have been fascinated by what money will and won't buy on either side of the Atlantic, and by the fact that the price of goods other than property and petrol has been relatively stable, though food prices and other commodity prices have also risen in recent years. Food, fuel, and housing are not accounted for in “core inflation” indices in either country. Presumably so long as one does not need a roof over one's head, to travel to work, or to eat, inflation is no great issue?

The past half decade or more saw people pay exorbitant prices for quite modest homes and count themselves wealthy and confident that “bricks and mortar” would assure their future wealth – with never a thought that they might be purchasing shockingly overpriced property with badly debased currency. In a financial world awash with liquidity, actors in the global bond markets have snapped up highly risky developing world sovereign debt issues, whose quite significant risks of default might relegate them to junk bond status, at trivial yield spreads above US Treasuries.