Zhengyuan

At a glance, the dwarves and gnomes of the Horkensaft Kingdom are two peoples who are worlds apart. The former are seen as hardcore traditionalists hell-bent on maintaining the status quo, while the latter only look ever forward and upward as they grasp at the future with both hands. And yet, these two seemingly opposing cultures serve as a counter-balance to each other, creating a civilization that draws upon the wisdom of the past to face new challenges.

In this controversial, hard-hitting account of today’s explosive market, Robert J. Shiller, a leading expert on market volatility, evokes Alan Greenspan’s infamous 1996 reference, “irrational exuberance,” to explain the alternately soaring and declining stock market. Shiller’s unconventional yet persuasive argument credits an unprecedented confluence of events with driving stocks to uncharted heights, and he analyzes the structural, cultural, and psychological factors behind these levels of growth not reflected in any other sector of the economy.

The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.