Includes bibliographical references (p. 337-358) and index.

Boom and Bust: Seeds of Destruction -- Miracleworkers, or Lucky Mistakes? -- The All-Powerful Fed and Its Role in Inflating the Bubble -- Deregulation Run Amok -- Creative Accounting -- The Banks and the Bubble -- Tax Cuts: Feeding the Frenzy -- Making Risk a Way of Life -- Globalization: Early Forays -- Enron -- Debunking the Myths -- Toward a New Democratic Idealism: Vision and Values -- Epilogue: Further Lessons on How to Mismanage the Economy.

WITH HIS BEST-SELLING Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph E. Stiglitz showed how a misplaced faith in free-market ideology led to many of the recent problems suffered by the developing nations. Here he turns the same light on the United States. This groundbreaking work by the Nobel Prize-winning economist argues that much of what we understood about the 1990s' prosperity is wrong, that the theories that have been used to guide world leaders and anchor key business decisions were fundamentally outdated. Yes, jobs were created, technology prospered, inflation fell, and poverty was reduced. But at the same time the foundation was laid for the economic problems we face today. Trapped in a nearideological commitment to free markets, policymakers permitted accounting standards to slip, carried deregulation further than they should have, and pandered to corporate greed. These chickens have now come home to roost.