● The Little Book of Sideways Markets: How to Make Money in Markets that Go Nowhere
By Vitaliy N. Katsenelson
Excerpt via publisher, John Wiley & Sons
Get ready for a great roller-coaster rise in the markets. For the next decade or so the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 index will likely do what they did over the preceding decade: go up and down, setting all-time highs and multiyear lows along the way. But at the end of the rise, index and buy-and-hold stock investors, having experienced ups and downs and swings akin to those on an amusement park rise, will find themselves pretty much back where they started.

● A Call for Judgment: Sensible Finance for a Dynamic Economy
By Amar Bhide
Review via Library Journal
Bhidé draws heavily on Friedrich Hayek’s seminal essay, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” to argue that lending decisions had become overly mechanistic and centralized prior to the financial crisis that began in 2007 and that this was an important causal factor in the crisis. He traces this trend to an overreliance on statistical models, developed by financial economists, that often made unrealistic assumptions or were misused by practitioners, and to relatively recent changes in securities and banking regulations. Bhidé’s central thesis is that the dialog and judgment required in lending are best exercised closer to the actual applicant. He suggests that banks be required to qualify loans in a more old-fashioned way—making personal, case-by-case evaluations of applicants—to prevent them from taking outsize risks. In addition, banks that accept short-term deposits from the public should be restricted in their business to lending and simple hedging.
● The Rise and Fall of an Economic Empire: With Lessons for Aspiring Economies
By Colin Read
Excerpt via publisher, Palgrave
The Law of Diminishing Returns proves that no institution can grow too big. At some point, greater size inevitably introduces inefficiencies. The very forces that ensured growth and dominance of an institution in one era can contribute to its decline in another. History has demonstrated this phenomenon over and over. From the extinction of the dinosaurs and the fall of the Roman Empire, to the transformation of the United Kingdom from an entity that dictated foreign policy to one that dealt in foreign policy, the eventual downfall or the surrender of dominance by the largest and most powerful military empires seems to be inevitable.
Economic empires are no different. Just like the dinosaurs, economies evolve and are governed by the harsh Darwinist law of survival of the fittest. This book documents the creation and evolution of economic empires and their eventual demise.
● A Moderate Compromise: Economic Policy Choice in an Era of Globalization
By Steven Suranovic
Summary via publisher, Macmillan
Looking at all sides of the globalization debate, Suranovic analyzes how international economic policy is made and how it has become so controversial. He offers a solution to the debate between free trade/unregulated markets and the push for greater government involvement that is consistent with both economic efficiency and social justice.
● Architects of Ruin: How big government liberals wrecked the global economy–and how they will do it again if no one stops them
By Peter Schweizer
Summary via publisher, HarperCollins
In Architects of Ruin, New York Times bestselling author and conservative historian Peter Schweizer argues that the economic crisis was caused by liberals who used the power of government to create a subprime mortgage bubble that has ravaged the global economy. Rebutting charges that the financial collapse was caused by conservative deregulatory zeal, Schweizer, the author of Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, shows that it was actually the result of “do-good capitalism.”