A volatile combination of housing bubbles, subprime mortgages, bank bailouts, financial deregulations, Wall Street manipulations, and overseas debt crises crashed the global economy in 2008. Since then, slow growth and rising inequality have kept the global economy unstable. In The Bubble Economy, Robert U. Ayres connects economic instability and the economics of energy by describing the role of energy, the history of bubbles and busts, the failure of financial regulation, and the environment of climate change. Ayres also provides a plan for replacing instability with sustainability. His plan suggests that governments redirect investments toward renewable energy to trigger economic growth, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase employment, and improve long-term investment opportunities.
