ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks into the disjunction more deeply. Why is it that the market economy can process countless transactions over many decades involving real, every-day goods and services without blowing up, and increase the wealth and wellbeing of the nations which participate; and yet the same or very similar processes, when applied in the realm of finance, end up not adding to but subtracting from this same wealth of nations, with periodic crises. When the link between gold and the dollar was broken in 1971, there was an immediate impact on the price of oil, an essential ingredient in the world economy. The 1990s saw the market system consolidate in Europe, with several countries of the former Soviet bloc merging into it.
