WRellim
Member
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2007
- Messages
- 2,140
Just ran across a review (here) about Kevin Phillips' recently published book, "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism"
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here has purchased and actually read it through all the way and could give their feedback/take on it...
From what I have seen so far looks like some SOLID analysis for a change. (But with my New Year's resolve to NOT buy books so willy-nilly -- and the cost of travel to the bookstores to "page through it" getting ridiculous -- I'm trying to avoid buying things worthless (yes, I read the short excerpt and reviews on Amazon... but I'm still ambivalent {don't want to waste my time with another "The World Is Flat" BS tome.})
(excerpt from review linked above)
Europeans once believed that all swans were white. But in the 17th century, the impossible happened: Black swans were spotted in Australia.
Following the lead of Nassir Taleb, a scientific-minded public intellectual, policy wonks now use the term "black swan" as shorthand for any event with an extremely large impact, something outside the realm of human expectations and quantitative calculations.
Kevin Phillips sees a black swan -- no, a flock of them -- on the horizon. Once a political strategist for Richard Nixon and now a born-again economic populist, he believes that the crisis of American capitalism has begun.
In his new book, he examines the weapons of mass destruction now detonating all around us: Housing prices, credit-bubbles, untested and unstable financial instruments (including derivatives and hedge funds), increasingly inadequate supplies of oil, dynastic politicians in thrall to entrenched interests and imperial hubris that has wreaked havoc with the prestige of the United States around the world.
(...)
The domination of financialization, Phillips observes, presaged the decline of global powers in Spain, the Dutch Republic and Great Britain. Unfortunately, the United States now "luxuriates in finance at the expense of harvesting, manufacturing or transporting things."
Constituting 21 percent of gross domestic product, the financial services sector, which is loosely regulated by government, has made billions promoting, packaging and leveraging public and private debt.
(...)
Lenders find themselves holding "neutron loans" -- like the neutron bomb, they kill the people and leave the houses standing. If prices fall 15 percent to 20 percent from their peak, about $3 trillion in value will be lost.
(...)
After raising the specter of blighted cities and conflict over immigration, he strains to find a silver lining.
America's landing might be somewhat softer, he indicates in a concluding paragraph, because of its natural resources, large population and continental hegemony, especially if the next administration abandoned a (costly) militaristic foreign policy.
He points out that after a half century or more in the shadows, Spain, Holland and Great Britain re-emerged, shorn of imperial glory, but more prosperous than ever.
Europeans once believed that all swans were white. But in the 17th century, the impossible happened: Black swans were spotted in Australia.
Following the lead of Nassir Taleb, a scientific-minded public intellectual, policy wonks now use the term "black swan" as shorthand for any event with an extremely large impact, something outside the realm of human expectations and quantitative calculations.
Kevin Phillips sees a black swan -- no, a flock of them -- on the horizon. Once a political strategist for Richard Nixon and now a born-again economic populist, he believes that the crisis of American capitalism has begun.
In his new book, he examines the weapons of mass destruction now detonating all around us: Housing prices, credit-bubbles, untested and unstable financial instruments (including derivatives and hedge funds), increasingly inadequate supplies of oil, dynastic politicians in thrall to entrenched interests and imperial hubris that has wreaked havoc with the prestige of the United States around the world.
(...)
The domination of financialization, Phillips observes, presaged the decline of global powers in Spain, the Dutch Republic and Great Britain. Unfortunately, the United States now "luxuriates in finance at the expense of harvesting, manufacturing or transporting things."
Constituting 21 percent of gross domestic product, the financial services sector, which is loosely regulated by government, has made billions promoting, packaging and leveraging public and private debt.
(...)
Lenders find themselves holding "neutron loans" -- like the neutron bomb, they kill the people and leave the houses standing. If prices fall 15 percent to 20 percent from their peak, about $3 trillion in value will be lost.
(...)
After raising the specter of blighted cities and conflict over immigration, he strains to find a silver lining.
America's landing might be somewhat softer, he indicates in a concluding paragraph, because of its natural resources, large population and continental hegemony, especially if the next administration abandoned a (costly) militaristic foreign policy.
He points out that after a half century or more in the shadows, Spain, Holland and Great Britain re-emerged, shorn of imperial glory, but more prosperous than ever.
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here has purchased and actually read it through all the way and could give their feedback/take on it...
From what I have seen so far looks like some SOLID analysis for a change. (But with my New Year's resolve to NOT buy books so willy-nilly -- and the cost of travel to the bookstores to "page through it" getting ridiculous -- I'm trying to avoid buying things worthless (yes, I read the short excerpt and reviews on Amazon... but I'm still ambivalent {don't want to waste my time with another "The World Is Flat" BS tome.})
