The 21st Century Economy – A Beginner’s Guide

Well known and respected author, speaker and television economist Randy Charles Epping explains fusion economics in a way we can all comprehend in his new book, The 21st Century Economy - A Beginner's Guide. The economics of our fledgling 21st century breaks away from all we thought we understood and takes a new and unknown path that we need to understand if we're to survive and prosper.

Epping explains fusion economics as when energies and forces that we don't understand come together on a collision course that alters our every day lives in ways that we never dreamed of in the past. In The 21st Century Economy, Epping makes a solid case that our world isn't as simple as it used to be. For example, he explains - how can we advocate that people sign up for easy-to-get mortgages if the thousands who acquire those mortgages can't pay for them, causing global banking failures and credit crises?

The 21st Century Economy is a comprehensive guide that provides a much-needed explanation about how our economy has changed and that the only way we'll survive is to develop an understanding about how it works - minus the charts and graphs that only confuse us. Epping provides simple explanations for complicated phrases and ideas that we may hear on news reports every day, but that we don't fully understand. If you desire to gain an understanding of today's economy without burying yourself in a book too complicated to understand, try this well-written and easy to read beginner's guide, The 21st Century Economy.

Randy Charles Epping has written a beginner's guide for those of us who once had a rudimentary understanding of yesterday's economy, but find it difficult to grasp the complex explanations of today's economy. The 21st Century Economy - A Beginner's Guide is a book for those of us who want to better understand what's going on in this new global economy - and also for those who want to survive financially in this tumultuous time.

Epping covers such lofty subjects as fusion economics, health and global pandemics, hedge funds, eradicating poverty and how to invest in the global economy. Even if you only have a few dollars to invest, it's imperative that you know what you're up against during the 21st century and beyond in order to plan our futures and to protect the futures of our children and grandchildren. You'll learn about macroeconomics, subprime mortgages, budget and trade deficits - and you'll gain the tools you need to understand what you're hearing on news reports every day.

Global economics isn't just about money and investing. It's about all of us being connected in a way we've never been before. We don't have to be in business to benefit from an understanding of global economics. Farmers, homemakers, environmental experts, teachers and anyone who cares about how our decisions will affect us today or in the future should endeavor to understand what role we'll play and how to go about it.

Epping's comprehensive guide, The 21st Century Economy was written for all of us who want to make a difference in the future of our planet and our lives.

In his new book, The 21st Century Economy - A Beginner's Guide, author, speaker and financial news commentator, Randy Charles Epping, explains the new global economics in a way that helps even the savviest investor or consumer understand our complex new world. His former book, A Beginner's Guide to the World Economy is also concisely and innovatively written to explain the fast-moving changes taking place in our world.

Epping chose International Finance for his life's work and has held management positions all over the world, including Europe, America, London and Geneva. His degrees include a Master's in International Relations from Yale and from the University Of Notre Dame and the University of Paris-Sorbonne. Epping has been a contributor to such magazines as Newsweek and various world-wide newspapers.

Epping's understanding of global economics and his down-to-earth way of explaining a complex subject has led him to various speaking engagements and as a guest speaker on television news reports. The 21st Century Economy includes 101 easy-to-grasp tools and a comprehensive glossary that you can use to master terminology and explanations.

Everything that you may have been confused about seems to be explained in The 21st Century Economy - A Beginner's Guide. Epping skillfully writes about the benefits of Green Economics, how to avoid trade wars and especially fusion economics - making complex subjects such as multi-million dollar transactions understandable. It's essential to know about these subjects if we're to survive.

Besides Epping's books and articles on the new world economy, he's also written a novel called, Trust, a thriller that delves into the financial world of Zurich and Budapest.

For many businesses and citizens around the world, corruption and other illegal activities are a way of life. From the subsistence coca farmer in Peru to a government official in Africa or the Middle East for whom bribes are the major source of income, illegal activities form a big, and growing, part of the world economy. Even purchases of counterfeit Viagra and fake Swiss watches or French handbags- on the street or on the Web- are part of the trilliondollar economy that is made up of all the world's illegal and semilegal activities.

Drugs are by far the most commonly traded commodity on the world's black markets. Hundreds of billions of dollars of illegal drugs are sold every year- from the back streets of Kabul to dorm rooms in Ohio. With the amount of trade in illegal drugs surpassing the total economic output of most developing countries, it is impossible to ignore their importance to many global citizens' daily lives. Poor farmers in Afghanistan or Peru, for example, have a difficult time switching from coca or poppy production once they have gotten used to crops that generate more than ten times the income they would receive from planting traditional crops such as corn or wheat.

Eliminating the production of illegal drugs is a bit like squeezing a balloon. Restricting illegal activity in one place at a time- as authorities do sporadically in the world's drugproducing regions- often just pushes production somewhere else. Eradication efforts can also have unintended and undesired consequences. Efforts by Western governments to eradicate opium production in Afghanistan, for example, have been criticized by some as driving the local populace into the arms of the Taliban, which began promoting heroin production after the post- 9/11 invasion as a way of undermining the United States' influence in the region.

Can anything be done to stop the drug trade? Some leaders point out that drugs, like alcohol, will always be a part of society and that it is a waste of resources to try to eliminate their production. Others say that instead of trying to suppress the supply, more efforts should be made to reduce the demand through more education or stricter enforcement of drug laws in the countries where they are consumed.

Demand- side solutions can also be applied to limit the trade in a wide variety of products found on the world's markets, from shark fin to elephant tusks. But the results can also be mitigated by unintended secondary effects. Making it illegal to sell ivory from elephant tusks on the international market, for example, helped to stop the slaughter of elephants in many African countries, but progress was mitigated by the fact that the price for ivory on the world's black markets rose dramatically- providing, for some, even more incentive for poachers to kill elephants in defiance of international bans. In response, some environmental groups decided to try to experiment with a controlled sale of ivory, allowing legally harvested ivory- from overpopulated elephant herds, for example- to be sold in carefully controlled conditions.

Poorly policed borders or poorly enforced legislation often lead to thriving black markets or semilegal gray- market economic activity. Many porous borders- such as the border between Paraguay and Brazil and between Pakistan and Afghanistan, not to mention the U.S.- Mexican border- provide many opportunities for importing anything from heroin to counterfeit handbags- even animal parts such as sea- turtle eggs, which are poached in great numbers because of their supposed aphrodisiac qualities, and rhinoceros horn, which is ground up and sold as male potency medication. In some countries, legal drugs, such as those used to treat HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, are also sold on black markets, as long as they can be obtained cheaply in one country and sold for a large profit in another. As strange as it may seem, international black- market trading can involve human body parts. In Malaysia, for example, where the average wait for a new kidney is over a decade, patients often turn to the black market to buy new kidneys in China and other neighboring countries- some coming from executed criminals. The process usually involves paying bribes to doctors or prison officials in the countries that are providing the body parts. The Transplantation Society, a leading international medical group based in Montréal, has banned the use of organs from executed criminals and other unwilling donors, calling the practice barbaric. But as long as there are patients around the world whose only alternative is a life tied to a dialysis machine, or an early death, the illicit trade in body parts will certainly continue.

Some black- market activity can lead to war- or help finance wars that have already begun. In several African countries, for example, rebels have used illegally mined diamonds to purchase guns and other war material. And some conflicts, such as that in Sierra Leone, have been shown to have their roots in access to local riches, including lucrative diamond mines. The UN Security Council has banned the sale of diamonds from war- torn countries, but the difficulty of differentiating "illegal" diamonds from legally mined diamonds has made enforcement difficult.

One black- market commodity can actually be used to fight wars: highly enriched uranium, which has become a subject of special concern in the post- 9/11 world. The possibility of dangerous nuclear material falling into terrorists' hands, for example, has led some countries, principally the United States and its NATO allies, to work closely with officials from the former Soviet Union to make sure that weapons- usable uranium isn't sold on the world's black markets. Even though most terrorists lack the capability to build a nuclear bomb, fears that a "dirty bomb" could be easily constructed- by packing conventional explosives around nuclear waste or other radioactive materials, for example- have led world leaders to push for a world moratorium on the trade of hazardous radioactive materials, overseen by the United Nations's nuclear guardian, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Human trafficking and slavery is another major problem in the modern global economy. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, more that $30 billion was being earned from illegal human trafficking at the beginning of the 21st century. Basically, there are two kinds of modern- day slavery: forced labor and debt enslavement. Forced labor may involve anything from prison labor to traditional slavery- such as that practiced in southern Sudan, where slave traders literally kidnap young men and women, exactly as slave traders did centuries ago, and force them to work for their new masters, far from their families- sometimes for the rest of their lives.

Another practice is to entice young people to leave their families on the pretext of being given a job in another city- or another country. Once they get to their new home, however, they realize that they have been sold as virtual slaves, being forced to work off their transportation and other expenses incurred. Many end up in the sex industry, where they work for years- often being released only when they have gotten too old or when they contract an incurable sexual disease. By then, it is often too late: Many cannot go home because of the ostracism they would face for "dishonoring" their families.