Over the past three decades, governments have ceded economic control to a new elite of free-market operatives and their colleagues in national and international institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. They promised economic stability but have delivered chaos. Their speculation has left the global economy more vulnerable to a financial collapse than any time since 1929.

Two leading financial journalists dissect this financial elite, tracing their origins to a secretive gathering of free-market economists in 1947, and propose a series of far-reaching reforms that can save us from a new depression.