Phishing for phools

the long version

Akerlof and Shiller argue that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance through manipulation and deception. Based on the intuitive idea that markets both give and take away, they show how phishing affects everyone, in almost every walk of life. We spend our money up to the limit, and then worry about how to pay the next month's bills. The financial system soars, then crashes. In doing so they explain a paradox: why, at a time when we are better off than ever before in history, all too many of us are leading lives of quiet desperation.