MONEY FOR NOTHING

The world is at a critical juncture, poised between a surge in wealth and descent into outright slump. Now Roger Bootle embraces controversy again with a fascinating and far-reaching book which analyses the prospect of both deflation and depression after the great illusion of the bubble - 'money for nothing'.

Yet Bootle argues that if we can avoid the twin perils of protectionism and a deflationary slump, there is a positive prospect for a global leap in real wealth in the future through an acceleration in global trade and in the new, intangible economy - money for nothing. The old economic obsession with tangible things such as land or machines has been replaced by a new economy of 'non things' such as intellect and ideas.

The world is on the brink of another leap forward in productive capacity and wealth which is the equivalent of the transformation which took place in our lives with the industrial revolution and the discovery of North America rolled into one - and collapsed into a couple of decades. The results may be a change in our circumstances which will make our lives today every bit as incongruous to the next generation as those of two hundred years ago are to us.