Speculative Capital - Hardcover

Saber, Nasser

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0273641557 ISBN 13: 9780273641551

Publisher: Financial Times Prentice Hall, 1999

Synopsis

The first book to make sense of the invisible hand of global finance

About this title

From the Publisher:

Speculative Capital: The invisible hand of global finance

(Vol. 1 ISBN: 0273641557) The effects of speculative capital-deregulation of markets, rise of derivatives, emergence of a solution to option valuation methodology, increase in market volatility, just to name a few-are all around us. Academic theorist has mistaken these effects for cause and weaved a "theory" around each. The collection of the theories is the bulk of "modern finance." But with the cause remaining hidden, the theories have no explanatory power. They are, furthermore, contradictory and inconsistent with one another. Only when we discover speculative capital and its central place in finance the theoretical fog clears.

There is no mention of speculative capital in finance and economics textbooks. There is, of course, the obligatory reference to speculation in all of them; without that reference, their hedging argument would not work. But speculation in these books is always defined as the action of speculators, those beneficent rascals of finance who bring liquidity to markets the way Prometheus brought fire to humans. That is their brief role on the economic stage. Then they are heard of no more.

But the subject of finance is not people. It is capital in circulation. When we shift our focus from the speculator as a person to capital as a thing, it becomes readily apparent that speculative capital-the sum total of capital in markets earmarked for speculation-is quite a different thing. In discovering speculative capital, we discover the potent force of the invisible hand in the markets and the momentous consequences of its operation.

In this groundbreaking work, Nasser Saber constructs the theory of speculative capital. It is only through this theory that the realities of global finance can be understood and its turbulent waters navigated.

From the Back Cover:

The theories of modern finance often succeed only in obscuring the subject; they deflect the facts and conceal their origin. Finance has become a self-contained discipline, firmly resisting any evidence from the markets that might contradict its theories.

In nature, when a body is disturbed from its equilibrium position, it produces a harmonic motion. Disturbance from the equilibrium models in finance and economics produces quite a different reaction: the screams of investors who have been betrayed by conventional theories.

In discovering the hitherto unexplained subject of speculative capital and the laws of its movement, this book constructs a unified and coherent theory of finance. It is only through this theory that the realities of global finance can be understood and its turbulent waters navigated.

About this edition

• Publisher: Financial Times Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0273641557
• ISBN 13: 9780273641551
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 284