Other People's Money

A scathing and well-informed critique of the financial industry by leading economist John Kay.

We all depend on the finance sector. We need it to store our money, manage our payments, finance housing stock, restore infrastructure, fund retirement and support new business. But these roles comprise only a tiny sliver of the sector's activity: the vast majority of lending is within the finance sector. So what is it all for? What is the purpose of this activity? And why is it so profitable?

John Kay, a distinguished economist with wide experience of the financial sector, argues that the industry's perceived profitability is partly illusory, and partly an appropriation of wealth created elsewhere - of other people's money. The financial sector, he shows, has grown too large, detached itself from ordinary business and everyday life, and has become an industry that mostly trades with itself, talks to itself, and judges itself by reference to standards which it has itself generated. And the outside world has itself adopted those standards, bailing out financial institutions that have failed all of us through greed and mismanagement.

We need finance, but today we have far too much of a good thing. In Other People's Money, John Kay shows, in his inimitable style, what has gone wrong in the dark heart of finance.

About the Author

John Kay is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, and a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. He is a director of several public companies and contributes a weekly column to the Financial Times. He chaired the UK government review of Equity Markets which reported in 2012 recommending substantial reforms. He is the author of many books, including The Truth about Markets (2003) and The Long and the Short of It (2009) and Obliquity (2010), published by Profile Books.