In Unwarranted Intrusions, well-known financial commentator Martin Fridson turns his sharp eye for investment deceptions and accounting ruses to subterfuges practiced by the U.S. government. His exhaustive research reveals politicians from both sides of the aisle basing legislation on elementary economic fallacies. George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton play their parts in the story, along with less likely figures such as Al Jolson and Bozo the Clown.

The opening part, A Nation of Subsidies, focuses on government meddling that ranges from trade protection and publicly financed athletic stadiums to subsidies for the arts. You'll chuckle as Fridson gleefully debunks the supposed market failures that officeholders use to justify their machinations.

Part two, Restraint of Trade, assails government intrusions into ordinary commercial activities, such as apartment rentals, the operation of automatic teller machines, and even television audience ratings. You'll be forced to reexamine your assumptions about protecting the public against volatile stock markets and music industry payola.

In the final part, Telling It Like It Isn't, Fridson details how politicians rely on misrepresentations to foist badly conceived policies on the electorate. From exaggerating their impact on the nation's economic performance to periodically pretending to clean up campaign finance, Fridson shows that politicians repeatedly prove themselves to be masters of false advertising. Costly government intervention operates on such a vast scale that there is no chance of immediately dismantling it all. The good news is that one small victory can represent a huge gain in public well-being. Filled with in-depth insight and practical advice, Unwarranted Intrusions will open your mind to the possibility of putting our dysfunctional system back on track.

Get the knowledge and skills taught in today's top MBA programs--without ever setting foot inside a classroom

What the Best MBAs Know presents the key concepts, tools, and wisdom being taught in leading MBA programs from Northwestern's Kellogg School and the Wharton School to Stanford and USC. Featuring contributions from the most accomplished business school professors, each chapter takes you inside their classrooms for a detailed look at topics from marketing, finance, and managerial economics to leadership, corporate strategy, and more. Theoretically solid and applications-based, What the Best MBAs Know is both a valuable resource and a ready reference to the core knowledge obtained with an MBA.

Includes contributions by:

• Charles P. Bonini, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
• Leslie K. Breitner, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington
• Jeffrey F. Jaffe, The Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania
• Richard J. Lutz, Warrington College of business Administration, University of Florida
• Steven L. McShane, Graduate School of Management, University of Western Australia
• Steven Nahmias, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University
• Peter Navarro, Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine
• Stephen A. Ross, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Daniel F. Spulber, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
• Mary Ann Von Glinow, Florida International University
• Barton Weitz, Warrington College of business Administration, University of Florida
• Randolph W. Westerfield, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

What the Best MBAs Know covers the breakthrough strategies, techniques, and ideas that are being taught in the classrooms of today's top MBA programs. University of California business professor Peter Navarro joins more than a dozen of his colleagues--including Stephen A. Ross of MIT's Sloan School, Daniel Spulber of Northwestern's Kellogg School, and Charles P. Bonini of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business--to provide you with the key concepts, tools, and knowledge that, until now, could only be obtained through an MBA degree. This comprehensive book--as engaging as it is informative--covers virtually every subject taught in an intensive MBA program, including:

• The Big Picture: An Overview of the MBA Curriculum
• Management Strategy: Five Steps to Successful Strategic Analysis
• Macroeconomics & the Well-Timed business Strategy
• Strategic Marketing: Delivering Customer Value
• Operations and Supply Chain Management: Getting the Stuff Out the Door
• Financial Accounting: "Doing the Numbers" for Investors, Regulators and Other External Users
• Managerial Accounting: "Doing the Numbers" for Decision Making and Control
• Corporate Finance: Big Questions and Key Concepts
• Organizational Behavior: The Power of People and leadership
• Statistics, Decision Analysis, and Modeling: How the Numbers Help Us Manage
• Managerial Economics: Microeconomics for Managers

In each chapter, What the Best MBAs Know first identifies the key concepts of a subject like strategy or finance. One of the world's top business professors then illustrates how these concepts are applied on a daily basis in the rough-and-ready world of international business. The insights of these top professors throw open the doors of the best business schools as they highlight the latest strategies and tactics driving today's intensely competitive landscape.

Whether you are currently pursuing an MBA, already have an MBA but need to refresh and update your information, or simply want to arm yourself with MBA-level knowledge without the time and financial commitments involved in obtaining the degree, this all-in-one resource will help to place you on the same strategic playing field as your competitors.

"Eamonn Kelly's imagination is grave, prehensile, and informed by a splendid breadth of context. This is an absolutely fascinating book, and one I look forward to re-reading at the earliest opportunity."

—William Gibson, science fiction writer, author of Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition

"The world is changing fast in ways we dimly comprehend. Eamonn Kelly provides us with the ideas to better understand what is going on. He lays out the dilemmas we face and hints at ways in which the global agenda might evolve. He is a master of the 'big picture.' This is must reading for those who need to know about the future of planet Earth."

—Ged Davis, Managing director and head, Centre for Strategic Insight, World Economic Forum

"This book is a wake-up call for all who may not recognize the powerful uncertainties that are shaping our future. Those of us in business will need to upgrade our skills to learn how to balance market and moral wisdom, and to move from our narrow focus on competition to embracing adaptiveness as well."

—Crawford Beveridge, Senior Vice President of People and Places, Sun Microsystems

"The world around us is a very confusing and complex place; making sense of where we are, let alone where we are headed, is fraught with uncertainty. In Powerful Times, Eamonn Kelly has given us a something far better than predictions that can be proven wrong. He has crafted an insightful map of the plausible landscapes unfolding in front of us, a map that enables us to navigate these surprising times. Kelly helps us to understand and prepare for the often contradictory and paradoxical cross currents shaping our future so that we are equipped to make better decisions today that will stand up to an uncertain tomorrow."

—Peter Schwartz, co-founder, Global business Network; author, Inevitable Surprises

"History is unleashed, the future is unwritten, and this is the best assessment of today's highly turbulent driving forces that you are likely to find anywhere. Reading Eamonn Kelly's book is like watching him break a kaleidoscope and number the bits."

—Bruce Sterling, science fiction writer (Holy Fire, The Hacker Crackdown); Viridian design activist; Wired blogger

"I love this book; it is an easy and thought-provoking read. In a world seemingly torn by multiple uncertainties and tensions, Powerful Times sorts them out for us into a clear map of outcomes and consequences. And rather than dispense formulas—like so many business books—Kelly challenges us to think for ourselves about strategies we might not have otherwise imagined."

—Luis Jimenez, senior vice president and chief strategy officer, Pitney Bowes

"Eamonn Kelly's Powerful Times could as well have been called The art of the Wide View. In times of great upheaval, he demonstrates, the critical skill for decision makers is to avoid being prisoner of one's expectations. Kelly shows us how to array our forces so as to be prepared not just for rose petals being strewn at our feet, but also road bombs. Kelly's profound lesson is that 'both/and' thinking is the only way to make hard decisions in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty."

—Joel Garreau, author of Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human

"Any company that bets on a single future is likely to be blindsided by events that fall outside their peripheral vision. Eamonn Kelly's insights will help organizations tune their peripheral vision, perhaps even see out the back of their heads, so they can anticipate the most lethal threats or take advantage of a currently hidden opportunity."

—Daniel Rasmus, director of information work vision, Microsoft; IT industry observer; former vice president of Forrester Research

"Kelly carries on the rich tradition of Global business Network in raising the important questions that society, business, and government will be facing in the future. Powerful Times does a masterful job of framing these questions with a richly illustrated story of how the future is unfolding right before us."

—Andrew Hines, executive director, Association of Professional Futurists; lecturer in future studies, University of Houston

"In Powerful Times, the practical realities of scenario thinking instruct the reader from start to finish. Kelly's storytelling makes easy reading of the otherwise daunting realities of future challenges and proposes frameworks for the decisions we must make as individuals and corporations in a changing and interdependent world."

—Nancy Ramsey, author, The Futures of Women

"Anyone trying to anticipate the future—to seize the great investment opportunities or to dodge potentially enterprise-ending risks—should pay attention to Eamonn Kelly's insights, honed from years of scenario thinking on the world business stage. A distinguished futurist, Kelly has filled his canvas so richly that any perspective will gain from his explication of the global forces that envelop all human enterprise—from the impacts of India, China, and AIDS to the range of energy or meteorologic futures that could unfold from this moment forward. Kelly argues cogently that while continued wealth and prosperity are plausible, they are no one country's or region's manifest destiny."

—Eric Best, global scenario strategist, Morgan Stanley

Prepare for a revolutionary global transformation

History is truly in motion, unfolding before us at a breathtaking pace and leaving us to wonder and worry about what will come next. In this book, Eamonn Kelly illuminates a set of dynamic tensions that will transform tomorrow's global economy, culture, geopolitics—and your life.

• Will fundamentalists of all stripes obliterate secularism and usher in a new age of faith?

• How will the emergence of china and India change everything from economics to values?

• Will U.S. military hegemony prevail or be trumped by non-state actors?

• Will scientific and technical advances accelerate or be slowed down by concerns over their risks and ethics?

• What will happen as developed nations rapidly age?

• Will global markets increase prosperity for all, or plunge some areas into decline?

• Can humanity manage its growing planetary footprint?

• And how can we, as individuals and organizations, mobilize and align our passions and power to create better futures?

Kelly has spent 15 years helping organizations understand what's coming next so they can embrace risk, master uncertainty, and act with confidence to shape their own destinies. After reading this book, you'll never hear the news, peruse the papers, or make decisions in the same way again.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Eamonn Kelly is CEO and president of Global business Network, the renowned future-oriented network and consulting firm. For over a decade, he has been at the forefront of exploring the emergence of a new, knowledgeintensive economy, and its far-reaching consequences for society, organizations and individuals. He has consulted with senior executives at dozens of the world's leading corporations in virtually every leading business sector; with key global and national public agencies, and with major philanthropic foundations. Kelly co-authored What's Next: Exploring the New Terrain for business and The Future of the Knowledge Economy, and authored GBN's 2003 Scenario Book.