After the global financial panic and recession of 2007-2009, you don't have to be president or a hedge fund manager to know that “It's the economy, stupid.” Yet while the economy dominates the headlines, how it works and who influences it remain a mystery to most people. In The Little Book of Economics, Greg Ip, an award-winning journalist renowned for making complex economics easy to understand, walks you through how the economy really works. You'll learn:

• How psychology and the Federal Reserve drive business cycles

• How a financial crisis can transform a recession into a depression

• The surprising effects of fertility rates, lawyers, and ideas on economic growth

• Whether the United States faces a lost decade like Japan did in the 1990s

• The causes of inflation, how it destabilizes society, and why deflation is even worse

• How government debt can sometimes help end a recession but, other times, bring on disaster-and how to tell the difference

• The symptoms of financial crises