The US economy has disintegrated, and with it into the abyss plummet the blueprints of neoliberal economists, whose theories about "the free market" have now gone the way of medieval alchemy. No voice has been stronger, no prose more forceful, than that of Paul Craig Roberts in predicting collapse. His weekly columns in CounterPunch have won an audience of millions around the world, grateful for a trained economist who can explain lucidly how the well-being of the planet has been held hostage by the gangster elite. Now Dr. Roberts has written the shortest, sharpest outline of economics for the twenty-first century ever put between book covers. He traces the path to ruin and lays out the choices that must be made. There is the "empty world" of corporate exploitation, abetted by the vast majority of economists; or the "full world" of responsible management and distribution of our resources. Amid crisis, this is the guide you've been waiting for.

Paul Craig Roberts was assistant secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was associate editor of The Wall Street Journal and has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University; and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President François Mitterrand and is the co-author, with Lawrence M. Stratton, of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.