Europe’s Financial Crisis: A Short Guide to How the Euro Fell Into Crisis, and the Consequences for the World

Introduction

This brief e-book started as an update and sequel to The Fearful Rise of Markets, which was published in early 2010. That book described how a giant speculative bubble came to encompass virtually all world markets and then burst. It followed the story until the end of 2009, when markets were bouncing back.

Now, writing in the summer of 2012 more than three years after markets hit bottom, the crisis has migrated across the Atlantic. Its epicenter is in the Eurozone, which is the center of this book. It can be read in its own right, telling the story of how Europe slipped into crisis, how developments in the United States and the emerging markets contributed to its problems, and why this matters for the rest of the world, notably the ...