Bubble Economy: Is Sustainable Growth Possible?

The global economy has become increasingly, perhaps chronically, unstable. Since 2008, we have heard about the housing bubble, subprime mortgages, banks "too big to fail," financial regulation (or the lack of it), and the European debt crisis. Wall Street has discovered that it is more profitable to make money from other people's money than by investing in the real economy, which has limited access to capital--resulting in slow growth and rising inequality. What we haven't heard much about is the role of natural resources--energy in particular--as drivers of economic growth, or the connection of "global warming" to the economic crisis. In The Bubble Economy, Robert Ayres--an economist and physicist--connects economic instability to the economics of energy.