Fixing the Game

In 2001 and 2008, we suffered the two biggest market crashes since 1929—just seven years apart. Clearly, market volatility is intensifying to perilous levels. In Fixing the Game, Roger Martin reveals the culprit: the tight coupling of the “real” market (business) with the “expectations” market (the stock market). Martin shows how such coupling has been engineered and lays out its results: a single-minded focus on the expectations market that will continue...
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In 2001 and 2008, we suffered the two biggest market crashes since 1929—just seven years apart. Clearly, market volatility is intensifying to perilous levels. In Fixing the Game, Roger Martin reveals the culprit: the tight coupling of the “real” market (business) with the “expectations” market (the stock market). Martin shows how such coupling has been engineered and lays out its results: a single-minded focus on the expectations market that will continue driving us from crisis to crisis—unless we act now. Drawing on the analogy of the NFL’s strict separation of actual games from betting, Martin shows how to reverse our plight, including: • Restructuring executive compensation to focus entirely on the real market, not the expectations market • Reining in the power of monopoly pension funds and hedge funds • Enlarging private companies’ role in the economy Concise and hard-hitting, Fixing the Game advocates seizing American capitalism from the jaws of the expectations market—and planting it firmly in the real market. And it presents the steps we must take now to do so.