Search results for ""Author Ian Fraser""

This is the definitive account of the Royal Bank of Scotland scandal. For a few brief months in 2007 and 2009, the Royal Bank of Scotland was the largest bank in the world. Then the Edinburgh-based giant - having rapidly grown its footprint to 55 countries and stretched its assets to £2.4 trillion under its hubristic and delinquent former boss Fred Goodwin - crashed to earth. In Shredded, Ian Fraser explores the series of cataclysmic misjudgments, the toxic internal culture and the 'light touch' regulatory regime that gave rise to RBS/NatWest's near-collapse. He also considers why it became the most expensive bank in the world to bail out and why a culture of impunity was allowed to develop in the banking sector. This new edition brings the story up to date, chronicling the string of scandals that have come to light since taxpayers rescued RBS and concluding with an evaluation of the attempts of the bank's post-crisis chief executives, Stephen Hester and Ross McEwan, to dismantle Goodwin's disastrous legacy and restore the damaged institutions to health. 'A gripping account - RBS was a rogue business, operating in what had become a rogue industry, with the connivance of government. Read it and weep' – Martin Woolf, Financial Times

Read more less

Ian Fraser is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Loughborough University, UK. He is the author of Dialectics of the Self: Transcending Charles Taylor (Imprint Academic, 2007), Hegel and Marx: The Concept of Need (Edinburgh UP, 1998) and co-editor, with Tony Burns, of The Hegel-Marx Connection (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).Lawrence Wilde is Professor of Political Theory at Nottingham Trent University, UK. He is the author of Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), Ethical Marxism and its Radical Critics (Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), Modern European Socialism (Dartmouth, 1994) and Marx and Contradiction (Avebury, 1989), editor of Marxism's Ethical Thinkers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), and co-editor, with Mark Cowling, of Approaches to Marx (Open UP, 1989).

Read more less

Fraser's diverse and wide-ranging book offers an examination of the work of four critically acclaimed novelists, Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Identity), Ian McEwan (Atonement and Saturday), Michel Houellebecq (Atomised and Platform) and J.M. Coetzee (Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year), to aesthetically explore our understanding of identity. The analysis utilises frameworks from classical and contemporary political, philosophical and social theory to explore the notion of the aesthetic self within these texts. Fraser explores these ideas from within the Marxist aesthetic tradition, using theorists such as Friedrich Nietzsche, G. W. F. Hegel, E.P. Thompson, Julia Kristeva, Henri Lefebvre, Albert Camus, Thomas Aquinas and Theodor Adorno. Fraser therefore offers an innovative and unique approach that breaks new ground by developing a Marxist aesthetic account of identity through the medium of contemporary fiction.

Read more less

This text introduces the concept of need as viewed by Hegel and Marx, and places it within the context of modern need theories and theorists. The book works through key texts, including Hegel's Philosophy of Right and Marx's Capital, and discusses the theory in relation to Soviet Communism and social democracy. * Covers key texts by Hegel and Marx studied by undergraduates on political theory courses * Looks at political implications for modern need theory * Accessible: author makes good use of textual evidence * Need theory is a major element of modern social theory

Read more less