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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari Before listening to the book, I learned from Tim Ferriss’ podcast that when the original ve Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari Before listening to the book, I learned from Tim Ferriss’ podcast that when the original version of the book was published, it sold only 2,000 copies; a major flop. A change in book cover, title, and minor tweaks to a couple chapters and it became an incredible bestseller. This has always stuck with me– the quality of the content didn’t really change, but a slight tweak in visual appeal makes all the difference. Sales “success” is as much marketing and luck in timing as it is in hard work. The book is a sweeping “history of everything” which would likely be dry without Harari’s constant references to modern parallels (politics, technology, wars, etc.) of ancient phenomena and events. I found that aspect a bit annoying, and less accurate, as he’s not an expert in the more modern events to which he refers. As the book is based on his university lectures, I can see how this style of writing makes the otherwise dry information popular to his students. This will sound snobbish, but I’ve reviewed a lot of books on ancient and modern history and not much of this book was new information and the modern historical commentaries and his ignorance of basic Christianity was pretty annoying. To prove his point in the closing chapters that homo sapiens are now moving toward “intelligent design,” working on gene editing, cybernetics, etc. some of the paragraphs below are the result of me utilizing AI to take my written notes from the book into a summary (with my light edits). AI didn’t quite do the job I wanted, however, so I still have a heavy hand. The book delves into various aspects of human history and evolution. The author argues that neural networks evolved over millions of years, and their development has a significant impact on human behavior. He highlights how the key shift towards invention of fire and cooking led to changes in the size of intestines and brain capacity due to dietary changes. The author presents a debate surrounding the fate of neanderthals, with some arguing that homo sapiens wiped them out, while others suggest they simply died out. Replacement theory is apparently the politically correct or most popular theory as scientists or the general public would be uncomfortable with interbreeding. However, recent studies show a small percentage of homo sapien DNA comes from neanderthal DNA. Harari emphasizes the unique ability of sapiens to think abstractly and establish complex social structures like limited liability companies. The author draws parallels between myths in Christianity and Catholicism with the concept of corporate entities, suggesting that these “shared myths” unite people and contribute to cooperation. Among all the animals, only Sapiens can invent constructions such as the limited liability company and fiat money. Harari discusses the agricultural revolution, highlighting the role of plants, particularly wheat, in shaping human society. He argues that the shift towards agriculture led to an increase in population and a greater dependence on a single food source, leading to risks like overpopulation and ecological vulnerabilities. The book also explores the development of writing systems, such as those invented by the Sumerians and Incas, enabling the storage of larger amounts of data necessary for crop yields and trade. Hierarchies and racist structures are presented as myths invented to serve as a means to protect social structures. Harari challenges the notion of "natural" behavior, stating that biology and evolution provide possibilities, but it is religion, particularly Christianity, that deems certain behaviors as "unnatural." He discusses various aspects of human social behavior, including sexuality and gender roles. The author sees the benefit of studying history as giving us a view of the possible alternatives that could have happened, and therefore the myriad of possibilities ahead of us. But I see history as helping us think widely about our context and to realize there is nothing new under the sun; our current situation is a consequence of decisions many years ago that echo into the present. Technological progress is wedded with scientific progress, and a 19th-20th century development is that the military is increasingly driving that technological innovation. (I question this. Were not defense structures and catapults great drivers of advances in engineering and the harnessing of physics and math?) Battle prowess used to be based on organization, not deliberate technological development. Harari writes that sapiens are now defined by "imaginary" groupings such as the nation state and consumer tribes (think: sports team fans, political parties, etc.) Even as we have seen a decline in international wars since 1945, our modern civilization irrationally guards against the scariest but most unlikely events such as terrorist attacks instead of the real threats of chronic disease, murders, and suicides. Harari explores whether we modern sapiens are happier than the first neanderthals. We now understand our happiness is a function of chemicals in our brain– dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin. But “happiness” is subjective and measured differently in different times. Ultimately, he concludes a Sapien that enjoys his freshly-caught game over a fire was equally “happy” in brain chemicals as any modern Sapien. The conclusion of the book deals with how sapiens are engaging in “intelligent design” breeding, gene editing, talking about cyborgs, etc. He engages in some thinking about the Gilgamesh Project and ethics. He would even have the reader ponder the ethics of breeding neanderthals. What happens to self and meaning, values, memories, etc. if human brains are networked? These are important questions that have yet to be worked out. In all, I give this book 3 stars out of 5. I suspect that perhaps the majority of people who own this book didn’t make it through the first few chapters; it sits on their bookshelf or coffee table as a signal of supposed intelligence or aspirations. To them I would say there are better books to read about many of the topics the author covers. I also recommend listening to his interview with Tim Ferriss. ...more |
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| 9780393301427
| 0393301427
| 4.22
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it was amazing
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The Past Has Another Pattern, Memoirs by George Ball (Book Review #19 of 2023) This memoir, available only in print, is a must-read for any aspiring di The Past Has Another Pattern, Memoirs by George Ball (Book Review #19 of 2023) This memoir, available only in print, is a must-read for any aspiring diplomat. People looking to remember what it was like when policymaking was more private, involved serious scholarship, and was often less partisan than today will enjoy this memoir-- as well as those who want to remember what it was like to read and write well. There are many important chapters of history ranging from the early days of the European common market and construction of NATO, the Cuban missile crisis, civil strife in Cyprus, the Vietnam war, and the fall of the Shah of Iran that are memorialized in this book from the perspective of the number two U.S. diplomat under both Kennedy and Johnson, and subsequent to his resignation, an elder statesman-advisor. George W. Ball served as Under Secretary of State (what is now Deputy Secretary of State), the number two U.S. diplomat in two presidential administrations and a much stronger role than today, as Ball was frequently involved in White House meetings and policymaking sessions where Secretary Dean Rusk was also present. He initially began as the Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs under Kennedy, whose favor he won with a series of briefing papers after the 1960 election, in which Ball had worked for Adlai Stevenson's primary campaign. While not an Ivy League graduate, Ball was an erudite scholar who didn't hesitate to drop in French and Latin lines, as well as citing poetry and literature. His understated preference for political leaders are those who show themselves to be literate men of culture. He was a classical liberal who believed in pursuing greater trade and cooperation (as opposed to isolationism and unilateralism) for the greatest good of all. He chose to be an optimist while also being a realist and taking the long view when helping craft U.S. policy. The memoir is detailed and revealing, writing about many of his friends and co-workers-- including Presidents-- in a candid way. He was a happily married man, and the book is as much about his friendships along the way as anything. Ball was present almost accidentally in a footnote of American history, being in Europe and conducting a scientific survey of the effect of Allied bombing for the U.S. military alongside characters such as Adlai Stevenson and John Kenneth Galbraith during the last days of World War II. Upon the surrender of Germany (Ball was in Paris on V-E Day), the survey team went immediately to Flensburg, which was surreally occupied by the still-armed Nazis led by Admiral Doenitz who claimed to be the legitimate German state. Their mission was to interrogate Nazi central planner of production Albert Speer, a member of Hitler's inner circle, at a castle surrounded by SS guards: "Here we were-- Galbraith, (Paul) Nitze, and I-- sitting in an ugly bourgeous German house in the middle of the night surrounded by several thousand armed Nazi troops, who would have killed us automatically two weeks before. We were listening to a top Nazi conjure up Hilter--dead just twenty two days-- as a living, ominous presence, talking in a conversational tone of weird events in that house of madmen, the underground bunker...And the tale he was telling was not (Conrad's) Lord Jim but The Heart of Darkness-- the Gothic saga of a madman obsessed by power" (p. 57). The bombing study mission was to determine how effective the bombing had been and how the Nazis had adjusted their production as a result. The conclusions reached from Speer, such as learning that the firebombing of civilian cities such as Dresden were largely ineffective militarily, would later shape Ball's principled opposition to Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara's strategies in the Vietnam War. It also chillingly leads him to the realization that young and educated democratic men like Speer, who was convicted and sentenced to prison at Nuremberg, had been in a position to help stop Hitler during the early days, but chose to go along or, at best, chose to turn a blind eye. Ball accepts that, had locations and circumstances been similar, many in American politics would have done the same. Some would have fiercely resisted and paid with their lives, some would have fled, some would have kept their heads down and gone to work justifying it as making miniscule differences at the margins, and others would have become full-fledged party members, "advancing up the hierarchical ladder" (p. 66). Writing from his vantage point of 1980, Ball sees narrowly-avoided outcomes of a rise of an autarcic figure. "Had Watergate followed a different course-- and it could have, but for luck and an indefatigable press...our basic institutions could have been dangerously undermined." Had a Eugene McCarthy arisen in a period "had we then been in the midst of a searing depression or been as angry and divided as during the Vietnam War," his friends may have joined the "new reality" (p.66-67). Ball's post-war career took him to Europe where his law practice established an office in Paris. It was there he became a friend and advisor to Jean Monnet, the architect and champion of what would ultimately become the European Union. Ball's instincts were closer to that of a classical liberal, with underlying belief in the gains from trade, cooperation, and multilateral institutions. In both public and private sector, he had a front-row seat for policy decisions regarding Lend Lease, the Marshall Plan, the earliest days of the formation of the eventual European Common Market, the foundations of NATO, and the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. He also traveled to Africa and the Middle East as part of his legal consulting work and saw first-hand the angst of Belgium and France in giving up its colonies. France's experience and defeat in Vietnam also shaped his thinking about the war. Ball had met Charles de Gaulle-- an opponent of Monnet -- in both private and public life and took from him (and Europe) the wisdom that the United States could never achieve victory in Vietnam, something the rest of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson's inner circle scoffed at since they saw the United States role as somehow more moral or noble than that of simple colonialism. Ball was an almost inexplicably a stalwart admirer and friend of Adlai Stevenson and he encouraged him to run for President three times, even though he was deeply frustrated with the flaws in Stevenson's personality, including his indecisiveness. Ball served as one of Stevenson's campaign advisors and speech writers and supported him for his principles and as a Democratic Party standard-bearer even though he knew the causes were lost. For Ball, Stevenson had been an effective governor of an important midwestern state, was resolute on the important issues that Ball admired, and a trustworthy friend and educated professional like Ball himself. In 1952, there were many Democrats who supported the Republican Eisenhower over Stevenson and saw ending the decades-long Democratic hold on the White House as important to preserving democracy. As a student of ancient history, Ball was concerned about the consequences of electing a General and military hero, and even more concerned about a Vice President Richard Nixon. As time went on, Ball grew even more contemptuous of Nixon and his public statements, suspicious of Nixon's scruples and true motivations, plunging headlong into the 1968 campaign of Hubert Humphrey largely in order to warn America of what a danger he felt Nixon would be. Even just before the Watergate scandal was fully realized, Stevenson's public comments about Nixon's management (and Kissinger's as well) proved prophetic. Ball played only a minor role in JFK's 1960 campaign as he'd backed Stevenson in the primary (which were managed differently back then). Polls had suggested that a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket would run strong against Nixon. But Ball records an incident in which JFK profanely threatens Stevenson if he does not nominate him at the convention. Stevenson, like Ball, had a certain distaste for people who spoke in crass and uncultured manner. Stevenson, deeply offended by Kennedy's threat and even moreso by his curse words, remarkably refused to support him. Ball later encouraged Stevenson to accept JFK's somewhat gracious nomination as UN Ambassador in 1961, and Kennedy eventually came around to nominating ball as an Under Secretary (the economist John Kenneth Galbraith as one of his advocates as JFK's advisors grew concerned that Kennedy was nominating too many Republicans for such positions). One of the most personally emotional parts of the book was in attending Stevenson's funeral in 1965. The most interesting chapters are that of his frequent time in the White House as Under Secretary of State, and Acting Secretary as he and Dean Rusk alternated time outside the country. Before accepting an appointment in the Kennedy administration, Ball studied Kennedy's book and Senate speeches to determine whether he could serve him. He did so only once he determened that Kennedy's policies were truly different from his father Joseph Kennedy's infamous policy of isolationism and appeasement before WWII. While insulated from the Bay of Pigs incident, Ball was present for the entirety of the Cuban Missile Crisis (he gets a brief cameo mention in the movie Thirteen Days), hosting meetings of the "excom" group at the State Department to foster more intense and creative discussion than would happen if Kennedy were in the room. He praises Kennedy's wisdom in those days and recounts the intense but respectful exchanges of ideas, painting the braintrust as largely more together than combative. There is a photo in the book of a commemorative plaque that Kennedy gave senior staff during those days. Ball was Acting Secretary when Kennedy was assassinated, and recounts those days of receiving President Johnson and Mrs. Kennedy following their return from Dallas, the State Department's role in arranging the large international funeral, and other details of the emotionally difficult period (Ball refused to attend the memorial service in person). Johnson inherited Kennedy's brain trust and none of them apparently thought twice about serving the man. Ball warmly recounts Johnson's colloquialisms and Texas country nature. While strongly opinionated, Ball found Johnson open for debate and the pair had a solid rapport. Johnson, who felt insecure about his lack of education in comparison with the braintrust he inherited from Kennedy, frequently boasted of his advisors' educational pedigree (of which Ball arguably had the least). While Ball publicly implemented Kennedy and Johnson's policies on Vietnam, he spent late nights writing detailed memos of the policies and expressing his predictions of an inextricable quagmire. On November 7, 1961 when the Administration was just beginning to militarize its effort, Ball had a conversation with Kennedy. he predicted "Within five years we'll have three hundred thousand men in the paddies and jungles and never find them again." Kennedy rebutted with "George, you're just crazier than hell. That just isn't going to happen" (p. 367). Ball rembered those words once our troops commitments were over 500,000 on roughly the same time frame. Under Secretary Ball writes of several other diplomatic efforts in the 1960s that he pursued in order to stay away from the increasing Vietnam obsession. Among them, the U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic, of which Ball contains interesting insights. He also recounts his shuttle diplomacy between Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey during the 1960s. This chapter is what prompted me to buy the book after Christopher Hitchens quoted derisively from it in his own book on Cyprus (see my review). Ball writes very critically of Archbishop Makarios, blaming him for instigating the ethnic violence on the island. I have a greater acceptance of his opinion of the man after reading his candid observations of dozens of other international figures in the book. Ball spares no criticism for Nixon and Kissinger's bungling of the situation in the 1970s and laments the high price paid on both sides. Ball's later chapters on the Middle East are also interesting, as he was briefly an advisor to President Carter during the run up to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. Ball's words and advice were again rather prophetic. Ball spent his post-government years as in financial banking, serving on the boards of companies, and writing opinion columns for Newsweek and other outlets. Writing this memoir in the early days of the Reagan administration (and just before Gorbachev), he concludes by turning his thoughts toward the future. He greatly feared nuclear war and felt Reagan's rhetoric and defense buildup could only result in a reciprocal response from the Soviet Union that could only increase the odds of an accidental or intentional detonation. Ball's long view of history meant he accepted that empires rise and fall and he accepted that the current global system that America had built in the aftermath of WWII would one day pass away; he did not venture to guess what new coalitions would arise, only that they would. He was a great optimist on technological progress, but deeply concerned about the United States' cultural foundations being eroded. His closing paragraphs from 1982 could have been written in 2023, lamenting the decline of social mores and cohesiveness, the manipulation of educational standards to "conform to rigid sociological preconceptions" (p. 491), the free pass given to criminals and cheats as "innocent victims of social unfairness," and the loss of connection to art, literature, and poetry ("Who can quote any recent poet other than Eliot or occassionally Auden?")-- namely the debasing our literature with sex and violence while insisiting on it conforming to "a whole new set of social strictures, largely reflecting real or contrived ethnic sensitivies" (ibid). I believe that Ball would have recognized and understood how we got to 2023 and not have been terribly surprised by the events of 2016-2021. This book is five stars. An underrated and under-read memoir that deserves to be available digitally. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Aug 19, 2023
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Nov 13, 2023
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Aug 19, 2023
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Paperback
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| 059319022X
| 9780593190227
| B082ZR6827
| 3.88
| 2,368
| 2020
| Sep 15, 2020
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liked it
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One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matt Yglesias Yglesias' hypothesis is that the best way to compete with China is to grow the U. One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matt Yglesias Yglesias' hypothesis is that the best way to compete with China is to grow the U.S. population and reap the benefits of all that would come with that -- increased commerce, patents, scholars, and power. He cites facts to show that America has plenty of available land and areas like the Rust Belt that have ready-made infrastructure but are losing population to other states that are rapidly expanding. He demonstrates how progressive policy (paid maternity leave, child tax credits, etc.) have outcomes that lead to pro-family conservative outcomes. He advocates for zoning reform to increase the amount of multifamily structures and decrease suburban sprawl. He argues that allowing more visas for immigrants is necessary in a time when the U.S. population is not growing and needs to grow to keep up with the amount of the labor force that is retiring. He suggests copying other countries' successful strategies for mass transportation to improve the quality of life and accomodate a larger population. In all aspects he argues how this should largely be a bipartisan effort as a stronger America seems to be everyone's campaign slogan. Yglesias offers economic studies as evidence, where available. His facts are most powerful on the side of housing reform, particularly zoning laws that limit multifamily housing and force suburban sprawl-- a fashionable waste of land. He surmises that while freedom-loving Republicans should be advocates for reform to allow a multitude of housing types, most conservatives have a NIMBY opinion when it comes to duplexes and apartment complexes as being detrimental to adjacent neighborhood single-family home values. Likewise, efforts of gentrification simply drive up the cost of housing in an area if there is not an increased supply of multifamily housing on the market. The simplest solution to the supply/demand problem is to greatly increase the amount of zoning for multifamily housing units. Remarkably, even NYC still requires a certain percentage of land be only for single-family homes; other cities are far worse. "Letting builders make whatever kind of housing their customers want to buy is easy." The data on the cost of raising children is also pretty clear, and it's evident that other countries provide much more support to families with children. Surveys have consistently found that Americans would like to have more children, but say they cannot afford it. The expanded child tax credit of the early Biden Administration was wildly popular, but Republicans (with the help of Democratic Senator Joe Manchin) made sure it sunset so as not to let the Democratic party get the political benefit. But conservatives like Mitt Romney have proposed something similar for the purpose of encouraging families. It would also reduce incentives for someone to pursue an abortion, something both conservatives and progressives have widely agreed is desirable. There's no reason that such a policy of expanded child tax credit, subsidized early childhood education, paid maternity and paternity leave, etc. shouldn't exist. As Yglesias puts it "Providing financial support so that Americans have as many children as they say they'd like is a big change, but there's nothing particularly difficult about it...easy things feel hard because we've become accustomed to a political culture than can barely do anything at all." It takes more time for Americans to cover the same length of ground by air, train, or vehiclee than it did 50 and sometimes even 100 years ago, signifying a reduction in one aspect of our lives. While we can all acknowledge this is a problem, there are no easy answers or solutions. The traffic problem is one that many think will be exacerbated by one billion Americans. But Yglesias argues that does not have to be the case. The author and a host of urbanites in the blogosphere have experienced and at least attempted to study mass transit systems all over the world. While the US government has itself puzzled over why construction costs are so much higher in the United States than Europe, there are no easy answers or solutions about cost inflation. But Yglesias offers a few design solutions from other countries, simple mechanics of mass transit flow learned from countries like Germany and Singapore. The supply of mass transit is low because demand is relatively low compared to private vehicles. Congestion pricing during peak hours, higher gasoline taxes, finding a way to tax electric vehicles that take advantage of not paying gasoline taxes that maintain roads, and better design of the flow of mass transit would incentivize people to use mass transit and therefore make mass transit more viable. Yglesias makes an error in the mass transit portion that I felt weakened his argument. People in places like Atlanta or Dallas don't take the bus or train because they run infrequently, which makes it extremely inconvenient. The author seems to argue that, ceteris paribus, more people in a city means a higher quantity of users of mass transit which therefore increases demand, the quantity supplied, which then incentivizes more people to take mass transit instead of driving. But he neglects that it is still a *relative* amount of people-- more people also means more demand for cars and roads and the proportion of car riders to mass-transit riders is unlikely to change (he gives no evidence as to why it would). In all, the mass transit chapter made me more pessimistic about policymakers having the will to solve the problem. Having lived in Manila as an extreme example, I can confidently say that more people alone only exacerbates transportation problems. Another weakness to Yglesias' argument may be that several forecasters have modeled a significant imminent decline in China's population relative to the United States, due to the years of their one child policy and overall preference for boys. But Yglesias' hypothesis isn't simply that a greater population will help us out-compete China, it's more that one billion Americans will make the USA even greater than it already is. I read this book while living in the Atlanta metro, home to six million people. I was specifically living in Gwinnett County, which in 1970 had a mere 72,349 people. Now it has over one million, and international immigration has been a significant factor. Less than 1/3 of the county population is white and 25 percent were born abroad. Metro Atlanta has done an excellent job maintaining its greenspace, over 50 percent of the entire metro has trees. The investment in public parks of all kinds (in all counties) has been unlike any area I've ever seen and public buildings and services are typically of high quality. All this has been funded by relatively high income and property taxes. People don't seem to mind paying the taxes because they like the parks and services. There has been an intense focus on urban planning, with several small cities in Gwinnett having encouraged the building of quality multi-family housing to the area in mix-used spaces (restaurants, shops, etc.) surrounding large public squares with splash pads, a food truck park, etc. This has attracted relatively young professionals to the areas, which then has driven up demand for single-family homes in the nearby area. People and businesses want to move to the Atlanta Metro because that's where people are located, and therefore businesses. Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport is the busiest in the world. But the traffic is insane. It can take hours to take four and six-lane interstates to the other side of the Metro, and the drive is relatively dangerous with never-ending construction. Atlanta has a mass transit system, with individual counties' own bus systems feeding into the MARTA bus system and train line for those who commute to/from downtown. But the train is inconvenient with infrequent trips, buses likewise, and COVID made it moreso. Yglesias is correct, if there were more demand for the MARTA than it would supply more rides and be more efficient. But there seems to be very little political will to encourage this. The governor of Georgia suspended the gas tax beginning in the spring (2022) when gasoline prices rose above $4.00/gallon. He was in a re-election battle and people like lower gasoline prices. But lowering the price reduces the amount in the state budget to repair and build roads, and reduces incentives for people to drive less and take mass transit. Likewise, enforcement of the HOV and paid Express lanes in the Metro seems to be lacking (express lanes are also rarely open in some parts), creating an incentive for cheaters to drive at higher speeds at the expense of those who pay, and increasing congestion (and also wrecks as people illegally change lanes from the express lane at certain points where they're not prevented). It takes solutions involving cameras, electronics, etc. that encroach on people's perceived privacy rights which is unpopular in a state that still elects very conservative state and federal representatives. I think a simple higher gas tax (and finding a way to tax electric vehicles in lieu of the gas tax) would go a long way to solve the traffic problem, but the political will is not there. In the state legislature, there is also a will to cut taxes and reduce the amount of services that Georgians actually enjoy and likely take for granted. Georgia should definitely not aspire to be Tennessee-- there are solid reasons why people migrate South from east Tennessee and not vice-versa. I agree with Yglesias and various economists who argue that higher taxes on gasoline (even at least indexing the current ones to inflation since some haven't changed in decades and lost real value) and alcohol would go a long way to help our transportation problems and even population growth. He cites one study that increasing the federal alcohol tax by 30 cents would lead to a thousand fewer homicides and two thousand fewer fatal car wrecks per year (not to mention the non-fatal). Those alone would be simple solutions that can also be implemented at the local level. The additional money could help fund better mass transit, among other things. We have the land, the fresh water, and the rule of law to make a billion Americans viable and even a good idea. But we lack to the political will and cooperation to make the taxes and infrastructure such that we would reap the benefits. I give this book 3.5 stars out of 5. I am a fan of Matt Yglesias because he's a prolific thinker. ...more |
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Kindle Edition
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| 0091925835
| 9780091925833
| 0091925835
| 3.96
| 670
| Apr 01, 2011
| Jan 01, 2011
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it was amazing
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The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War by Matthew Parker This is an excellent and well-researched work on British colonization in the Ca The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War by Matthew Parker This is an excellent and well-researched work on British colonization in the Caribbean from shortly after its discovery by Christopher Columbus to the mid-1800s. The author explores the growth of the sugar trade and draws from the recorded history and personal journals of those involved in the sugar trade or who traveled through the area. There were a few families whose power expanded over generations and who still have representatives in the British Parliament to this day. As a U.S. citizen, I found the history of gradual divergence between the Caribbean colonies and the mainland North American colonies to be fascinating. Slavery, namely the horrifying and peculiar ways that the institution of legalized chattel slavery warps a society and leaves lasting scars that last for centuries is a central theme of the book and the well-researched details make for uncomfortable reading (or listening). I began reading the book to get an overview of Caribbean colonial history and this book provided, giving a focused view on Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. The author explores the daily life and lasting legacies of complicated people like Sir James Drax in detail. The wars among the European powers, the spillover effects of the English Civil War, the economics of trade, and the tension between the autonomy of the colonies and their reliance on Britain for protection and support were all well-described. I took several pages of notes. The symbiotic relationship between the rum makers in Rhode Island, a Puritan colony which disapproved of slavery, and the slave-holding sugar planters in the Caribbean was fascinating to me. I was also previously unaware that a teenage George Washington had visited Barbados; while some of his journaling of that time is lost, nowhere does he mention the slaves, who were 3/4 of the population. The mainland colonies traded with the French enemy colonies under a truce flag, skirting British regulation of trade and infuriating the British Caribbean colonies. In the years prior to the American Revolution, the mainland colonies were seen as the "ungrateful" benefactors of British protection at the cost of taxes paid primarily by the sugar-producing Caribbean colonies. When the British moved to put more taxes on the colonies, such as the Stamp Act, the mainland colonies famously united and rebelled, whereas the Caribbean colonies did not--even though they would end up providing 80 percent of the Stamp Act's revenue. The Caribbean people were initially divided on the question of revolution and imperialism but stuck with England as they were more dependent on trade and protection by the British military both from the ever-present Spanish and French forces as well as their giant slave population where revolts were a constant threat to the white masters. The Caribbean colonies were badly affected when trade was cut off with the North American colonies during the Revolutionary War. American privateers began plundering Caribbean ships and even launched land raids in the colonies. While the British ended the slave trade decades before the United States, they perpetrated it for much longer than the United States existed. While the U.S. still wrestles with the aftermath of slavery, the British have simply avoided it; first, by seeing slavery largely disappear from the British mainland long before the institution was outlawed, and second by granting independence to their former colonies so that the aftermath no longer matters to the British people. Looking back, it is hard for a Western reader to look on the sheer depravity and barbaric cruelty inflicted on people in the name of profit and sometimes even Christianity not so very long ago. The efforts of William Wilberforce and other abolitionists are appreciated in the book, but one marvels at some of the great names of history (Sir Isaac Newtown, for example) who propogated the slave trade for so long and pushed so many myths about the quality of life for Caribbean slaves. Even once the slave trade was outlawed, the legacy of legalized racism and discrimination meant there existed few schools or institutions for the newly-liberated slaves to develop the human capital necessary to achieve prosperity, which had implications that will last far beyond present times. I give this book five stars. I will follow it up with The Black Jacobins by C.L.R James and other works on Toussaint L'Overture and the histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. ...more |
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Oct 30, 2021
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Nov 08, 2021
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Nov 20, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 031651232X
| 9780316512329
| 031651232X
| 4.10
| 1,643
| Sep 03, 2019
| Sep 03, 2019
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really liked it
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The Economists' Hour by Binyamin Appelbaum Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, via Netgalley, in exchange for potential The Economists' Hour by Binyamin Appelbaum Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, via Netgalley, in exchange for potentially writing a review. My opinions are my own. The "Economists' Hour" refers to the period from the late 1960s to late 2000s when the ideas of free-market economists like Milton Friedman influenced economic policy around the world to greater openness and less government regulation with mixed results. Positive examples include deregulation of the airlines leading to cheaper prices and millions more people traveling around the world than would have otherwise. Negative examples include a willful blind eye of regulators (because the market will regulate itself) on the shadow lending market that ended up creating the last housing crisis and recession (that led to the rise of right-wing populism around the world) that largely harmed the middle and lower classes. I have long respected Binyamin Appelbaum's economics writing (we interacted on Twitter back during the financial crisis when I was teaching economics and before everyone used Twitter). 40% of this book is the author's footnotes and references, the breadth of reading and research is incredible. He claims in the Acknowledgments that his home library is the Library of Congress, hence he had materials available. I made dozens of highlights. An eerily similar book is Yergin and Stanislaw's The Commanding Heights (2002), which was also made into a multi-part PBS documentary. That book includes different international perspectives but features many of the characters Appelbaum researches (like Milton Friedman and George Schultz) in their own words (curiously, Appelbaum quotes it only once but it appears some of his other sources are also quoting it as some of the direct quotes come straight from interviews on the documentary). The story is roughly the same, how market-oriented economists influenced the United States and other countries to deregulate, privatize, and think differently about monetary policy than they had in the years following the Great Depression and WWII. Appelbaum visits Chile and Taiwan whereas Yergin and Stanislaw focused on Bolivia, India, Poland, and Russia-- economies that Appelbaum ignores. It is as if he is trying to write a contrary perspective to their work without saying so. Appelbaum's perspective is similar to Joseph Stiglitz's in Globalization and its Discontents-- namely that the "Washington Consensus" prescribed policies to developing countries that ultimately harmed those countries, and countries who adopted contrary policies (regulating capital flows, industrial policy, etc.) fared better in the global financial crisis of the late 1990s. The early chapter on the history of monetarism is quite good and Appelbaum finds some pretty obscure sources for quotes from Friedman and others. The birth and popularization of "supply-side economics" and tax policy is also good. I do not agree with all of the author's opinions or conclusions, particularly when it comes to industrial policy. For example, Appelbaum decries the loss of jobs when Chile privatized its industries, but should Chilean taxpayers have propped up jobs that are inefficient? Who is to say whether Chile should have produced televisions or that South Korea should have produced steel? How is any dictator or politician or economist in a position to have that knowledge? (This is basically Hayek's critique of socialism and price controls.) This is the problem with protectionism and industrial policy--Taiwan was evidently careful to support "seedlings" without creating "greenhouses" but where does one draw the line? Taiwan's economic planner made a strategic and controversial choice to invest state funds into microprocessor research and manufacturing. Hindsight bias can say that was the correct call. I am reminded of the sum of what I learned in one of my grad school economic development courses comparing economic policy among Asian economies, taught by a disciple of Amartya Sen: "There are many recipes" and "it depends." One could argue that Chile suffered from the resource curse (ie: minerals) making it difficult to export anything else whereas Taiwan (and Hong Kong) benefited by having no such resources and being forced to innovate. One area I have come to disagree with libertarians (and the author) on is in regards to antitrust and breaking up monopolies. Appelbaum documents how the University of Chicago ultimately influenced a host of people who radically transformed/weakened antitrust law in the belief that antitrust was not helping the consumer, but rather harming the consumer by punishing companies from being successful. That lower prices are never anticompetitive behavior, but rather signs of efficiency. Acemoğlu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail is the conclusive work showing that nations fail when exclusive economic structures (ie: monopolies) work to create exclusive political structures (rent-seeking behavior) and this drives away freedom, innovation, and economic growth. In the 1950s, Appelbaum writes, the the U.S. government forced IBM to divulge trade secrets about microchips so that other Western companies could also innovate and develop new technologies around it in competition with the Soviets. Now, America's largest firms spend a great deal of time and money patenting ideas and stifling competition and the government rarely gets involved in regulating predatory behavior. "The Federal Trade Commission...won 88 percent of its (antitrust) lawsuits during the first half of the 1970s. Between 1976 and 1981, the agency won 43 percent of the time." One wonders if Appelbaum may have found a reason for the great and mysterious U.S. productivity slowdown seen from the mid-1970s onward. Appelbaum writes that the Economists' Hour ended sometime about the time the Bush Administration pushed through TARP and bought equity in the largest financial firms in order to stave off the downturn. Keynesian stimulus was back in vogue and behavioral economists, who argue that markets are irrational and prices are not always right, were finally ascendant. (The election of Donald Trump, who openly rejects free trade, tweets threateningly at the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and affects stock prices with every public comment, put the nail in the coffin.) He writes that his point is that "markets are constructed by people, for purposes chosen by people--and they can be changed and rebuilt by people." He's essentially arguing that economic policies may have led to overall economic growth and been beneficial to some, but the costs to others were too-often ignored, leading to our current peril. While markets are awesome, "(t)he willful indifference to the distribution of prosperity over the last half century is an important reason the very survival of liberal democracy is now being tested...our shared bonds will last longer if we can find ways to reduce the strain." But this book, like the others Appelbaum dusted off at the Library of Congress, will soon be forgotten. The financial banks and political entities that worked so hard over the years to fund education and politicians that promote lax antitrust regulation, tax-friendly policies, and special investment vehicles are still alive and well-- as Appelbaum documents (ex: Art Laffer is still invited to speak to policymakers about tax policy). Zombies never die, history repeats itself, and "this time" is always "different." I give this book four stars out of five. Definitely read the footnotes for insight and the author's nuances. ...more |
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Sep 12, 2019
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Oct 09, 2019
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Sep 12, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0544935330
| 9780544935334
| B01IAS9FZY
| 4.20
| 6,512
| May 30, 2017
| May 30, 2017
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really liked it
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Destined for War by Graham Allison The author states explicitly that "war is not inevitable," but that if America and China continue their policies cir Destined for War by Graham Allison The author states explicitly that "war is not inevitable," but that if America and China continue their policies circa 2017-2018 that history suggests war is highly likely. Thucydides' Trap refers to the war between Athens and Sparta being described by Athenian chronicler Thucydides' assertion that "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta." Allison restates the thesis: "When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, alarm bells should sound: danger ahead." Allison's research project looks at 16 known instances in history where an upstart power displaced a ruling power and notes that 12 of those instances resulted in wars of varying severity. He walks through those instances and compares/contrasts them with the U.S.-China situation. Perhaps the greatest value of the book is the opening chapter highlighting the growth of China's economy and the staggering amount of wealth that has been created since 1980. I'm someone who reads things about China all the time like, say, The Economist, but I have never read such a clear presentation of China data to raise my eyebrows. "For every two-year period since 2008, the increment of growth in China’s GDP has been larger than the entire economy of India." "'as recently as 2005, China’s economy was less than half the size of the U.S. By 2019, the IMF expects it to be 20% bigger.'” "Between 2011 and 2013, China both produced and used more cement than the US did in the entire twentieth century." "China now has more high-speed rail tracks than the rest of the world combined." "China is now the world leader in producing computers, semiconductors, and communications equipment, as well as pharmaceuticals." "in the rankings of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers—a list from which China was absent in 2001—today it has 167, two more than the United States...China’s top supercomputer is five times faster than the closest American competitor." The author apparently learned classical Greek and read Thucydides in the original. Thucydides explained how Athens and Sparta went to war; a war that neither side really won-- the human and physical capital of both were diminished after the war, irreparably harming both. That is the risk for a war between two nuclear powers-- no one wins. "Thucydides identifies three primary drivers fueling this dynamic that lead to war: interests, fear, and honor." Graham unpacks this. He gives examples of various conflicts, including some American history regarding the Monroe Doctrine that many policymakers have long forgotten, if they ever knew. Certainly if China and the United States did go to a major war, the damage to internet infrastructure and the world economy would be enormous. Having been a national security advisor and worked in intelligence, he offers this stark assessment of U.S. policy execution at a high level: "Official national security strategy documents are ignored. Over the past decade, I have yet to meet a senior member of the US national security team who had so much as read the official national security strategies." That's a sobering and bipartisan critique. The author relies heavily on his interviews with Lee Kuan Yew, who had a lot of respect for Xi Jingping. The weakest part of the book is where he games out some scenarios that could lead to war. There are countless actual scenarios, he just describes a few and then defends them assuming the reader is a skeptic. It also lacked solid theoretical underpinnings about the Chinese economy. Economic and political power is becoming even more centralized under Xi Jingping, and the author seems to assume this will not slow the economy of China because of Xi's ostensibly austere and uncorrupt technocrats. That autocratic model has failed repeatedly in history. China's expansion of the "social credit" system is alarming, and the author rightly notes that it's reminiscent of Orwell's 1984. This system should likely lead to stifling innovation as speech and activity must conform to some government-set social score, and stifling innovation reduces long-run economic growth. The author doesn't speculate on whether China's real estate market could further deteriorate and have larger implications, as some have reported entirely empty cities being built to continue economic expansion. The book is definitely thought-provoking. If you're looking at the Kindle edition, over half of the book is references, quotation, and the research appendix. 4 stars. ...more |
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Feb 07, 2019
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Mar 10, 2019
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Apr 21, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 0241300657
| 9780241300657
| 0241300657
| 3.90
| 28,771
| Jun 2018
| Jun 01, 2018
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it was ok
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Having worked through the rest of Talebs' books, and following him on Twitter for years, I guess everything has become pretty repetitive. In Fooled by
Having worked through the rest of Talebs' books, and following him on Twitter for years, I guess everything has become pretty repetitive. In Fooled by Randomness, he notes Karl Popper and other philosophers who were personally inconsistent with what they preached. Taleb is similar, blocking people on Twitter and getting into notorious fits whenever people criticize him or his work. Meanwhile, he discourages groupthink and encourages criticism of the intellectual inteligentsia -- which Taleb thinks he is not. This book contains his customary rant against Stephen Pinker, psychologists, and economists. He also claims in the book that cursing on Twitter is a signal of competence... Anyway, here are the main points I gleaned from Skin in the Game: Taleb believes that ethics, morals, and skill cannot be separated. Skin in the game is essentially "put your money where your mouth is," which is an age-old idea. Taleb writes that "skin in the game keeps human hubris in check." He hates academics and policymakers who are unaffected by the advice they give and laws they write, as well as bailouts that create moral hazard. "Thou shalt not become antifragile at the expense of others." He repeats some ideas from antifragile. Fragility is sensitivity to disorder. The only effective judge of things is time, and time operates through skin in the game. He holds up the so-called Lindy Effect--that which is Lindy is what ages in reverse-- life expectancy increases over time as a person lives longer. He compares skin in the game to the concept of "soul in the game," where people have a vested interest in advancing their career and their ego. If they're proven wrong, then their ego and career will suffer, so they have incentive to be correct. But this is a step short of his vaunted "skin in the game," where people (literally) fall on their swords when they're wrong. Taleb prefers the American federalist system to others and holds that good fences make good neighbors. He wants to punish family members of suicide bombers to create skin in the game for the would-be bombers. He has some logical thoughts on contractors versus employees which is applicable in many settings-- employees may be relatively "lazy" but they are loyal because they risk being fired-- they have skin in the game, whereas a contractor has no loyalty. Taleb would rather go to a surgeon who looks like a butcher than one who looks made-for-television and graduated from the best schools. Here he has a decent point-- people who "don't look the part" may have survived by skin in the game-- they have overcome some handicap, graduated from the "wrong" schools, etc. and likely did so by their skills. He cautions against virtue-signalling as well as religious rigidity. His biggest enemy is Arabism, as anyone who follows him on Twitter knows. In short, the reader can get good nuggets in the book while also getting Taleb's classic rants against well-worn foes. 2.5 stars out of 5. ...more |
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Nov 06, 2018
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Nov 09, 2018
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Dec 28, 2018
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Paperback
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| 1439157138
| 9781439157138
| B004G8QSD0
| 4.10
| 772
| Aug 09, 2011
| Aug 09, 2011
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really liked it
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If you've ever read one of Henry Kissinger's books and thinks he's a genius, then this book will be a real eye-opener. The author has painstakingly go
If you've ever read one of Henry Kissinger's books and thinks he's a genius, then this book will be a real eye-opener. The author has painstakingly gone through recently declassified or released material, as well as the memoirs of several players, to piece together the deceit and failures of Kissinger and the Nixon Administration that led to the collapse of the Shah of Iran and the "special relationship" the US maintains with Saudi Arabia today. Cooper shows conclusively that an overconfident and economically incompetent Kissinger made promises to and deals with the Shah during the Nixon Administration, then tried to keep both the promises and the consequences secret from Gerald Ford when he was kept on as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, then destroys the evidence when Carter comes to power, setting the next President up for the next crisis. Cooper also shows what details Kissinger omits from his memoirs, or identifies the odd, out-of-the way efforts Kissinger defends decisions or outcomes in the anticipation that one day these details would be public. You can sum up the broad plot line like this: The dilemma for the US-Iran relationship was basic economics: The Shah needed higher oil prices to fund his government programs, primarily his vast military. The military equipment and infrastructure projects required US equipment and expertise, so everything from fighter jets to engineers were contracted to Iran. The Nixon administration was constantly promising more-- Nixon promised "everything but the (nuclear) bomb." The Nixon Administration could go along with the higher prices in exchange for these large deals for the Defense sector and an anti-Soviet and pro-Israeli ally in a Middle East where Egypt, Syria, and Iraq got Soviet arms and expertise against Israel. Iran also was able to funnel money to Nixon's secret campaign bank account in Mexico, aiding Nixon directly. But higher oil prices led to stagflation in the West, and political pressure for Western politicians to be hard on Iran. Iran, meanwhile, suffered from "Dutch disease" as an oil producer. The increase in government spending and influx of foreign investment led largely to spiraling inflation and social unrest. When Ford took the helm, Kissinger worked hard behind-the-scenes to keep the promise to the Shah, while never fully disclosing them to Ford. When Ford's team finally began to purge and reorganize in view of the coming election, they pivoted toward friendship with Saudi Arabia, which by this time was a much larger-volume producer and was proving itself to be a more publically stable ally. Breaking OPEC and inflation to preserve Western democracy, particular in places like Europe which were seeing Communist-leaning parties gaining votes during high unemployment, was more important. The pivot was fatal to Iran. All of Nixon and Kissinger's secret deals, misguided economic understanding, and political tightrope during the Ford administration went whitewashed from their personal histories. I picked up this book expecting something similar to Daniel Yergin's The Quest, on the development of the global oil trade, or Stephen Kinzer's The Brothers, which focuses on White House and CIA-led efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to secure the Middle East as a source of oil and a bulwark against the USSR. Instead, I was pleasantly suprised by an almost day-by-day account of the period from 1967-1977 where foreign policy was directed mainly by Kissinger and Nixon where promises were made and then covered up. Whether it's uncovering that U.S. officials offered to sell nuclear power and fuel to the Shah, or made a deal where the Shah would transfer money to Nixon's secret and illegal campaign bank account in Mexico, this book is a sobering reminder that the Nixon administration was criminal in many ways. The implication of the book, of course, is that the genesis of the special relationship with Saudi Arabia led to the indirect funding of Saudi projects like madrasas in Pakistan that train the Taliban to Bin Laden's mission to attack America for supporting the Saudi regime and the endless war we have on terrorism today. Cooper, now a news correspondent in Tehran, became motivated to write this book during the late aughts (2000's) when Saudi Arabia was intentionally overproducing oil to maintain a low price. Much was written in the US about the effect on the coal and natural gas markets, the Saudis seemed bent on putting fracking out of business. Less, however, was written about how this was an intentional economic attack on Iran by Saudi Arabia. A lower price of oil hurt the government's ability to provide services as well as stem the tide of dollars to terrorist groups like Hezbollah. It also helped further the post-election unrest under Ahmadinejad. Cooper began studying history and found a similar US-encouraged Saudi action in 1977, which crippled the Iranian economy and eventually contributed to the shah's ouster and the establishment of the Ayatollahs' Islamic Kingdom we know today. But this seemed an oddity-- the Shah was a very publicly-supported US ally and his government's weakening had obvious downsides for the US. The 1977 Saudi-US relationship was actually about breaking the OPEC cartel, but instead broke the Shah and led indirectly to the US hostage crisis, the "seige of Mecca" in 1979 (see Trofimov's excellent book), the spread of Wahabbism, and the Saudi-Iranian proxy war in Yemen we see the US participating in daily (daily bombing campaigns) under the Trump Administration. What was odd, however, was that the American players involved seem to go out of their way to mention what led to these decisions or any reflection on their consequences when they wrote their memoirs. Cooper sets out to solve the mystery. The problem started in roughly 1966 when Richard Nixon was pondering a run for President and laid out his foreign policy doctrine. The Shah's brother-in-law, foreign minister, future Ambassador to the US, Ardeshir Zahedi began to get closer to Nixon when he realizes he is running for President. Nixon visited Tehran in 1967. Nixon recognized that US-style democracy was not for everybody, and expressed his open admiration for Shah Pahlavi. The Shah, meanwhile, wanted to be a revived King Cyrus, ruling over an influential Persian Empire. Cooper chronicles that his dreams of grandeur seem to get worse as he aged and became more delusional. Other prominent characters in the book include US Ambassador to Iran Douglas MacArthur II, defense contractor and likely CIA operative David Rockefeller, CIA Director and Iranian Ambassador Richard Helms, and Treasury Secretary Bill Simon. MacArthur was the Ambassador in Tehran from 1969-1972 and filed either false or naive reports about the Shah's situation at home. This was over a decade in which the US largely looked the other way as the unrest grew and attacks on Americans and American interests became more coordinated and frequent. Rockefeller worked defense deals with Iran for equipment and manpower that helped break Iran's budget and put the Administration on the line to deliver. The State Department's own official account of the 1969-1972 period can be found here. Nixon and Kissinger negotiated heavily with Iran, culminating with a visit by Nixon to Iran that was staged heavily by the Shah. Nixon's group narrowly missed disaster during a coordinated bombing campaign and protests during their visit, something that was chalked up to student dissidents or foreign elements--a theme that would keep running until the Ayatollah Khomeini would return and seize power. The dealings with Iran get ever-complicated in the midst of the volatile oil market, the Vietnam War, Middle East conflict, and unfolding Watergate scandal. Basically, Nixon arranged to sell massive amounts of F-14s and other equipment to Iran, along with US military and defense contractors to maintain them, in exchange for oil. The Shah donated to Nixon's re-election campaign via a bank in Mexico City, which the CIA was fully aware of. Kissinger negotiated complicated finance arrangements including Iran's sending part of its aircraft purchases to Vietnam, Iranian tankers docking in Guantanomo Bay, and more. Nixon also pledges to arm the Shah's ally of the Iraqi Kurds as a further bulwark against the Sunni-Baathist Iraqi threat against Iran. Now-released transcripts reveal some of Kissinger's dealings and the quotes aren't flattering. The Joint Chiefs of Staff actually spied on Kissinger, raiding his filing cabinets and such, to see what deals he was making that would commit US armed forces without their knowledge. True to persona, Nixon was privately supportive of Iranian oil price hikes while publicly critical. Nixon had a tense relationship with Helms and the CIA, and often threatened to gut the agency because he knew it had dirt on him. These were the days just prior to the 1975 Church Committee hearings on CIA activities that revealed the "family jewels" of various assassination plots, and domestic spying by the CIA and the US Army. Nixon lost his nerve in 1972 to gut the agency, but would roughly appease and get rid of Helms by making him Ambassador to Iran. (Helms would later be indicted for perjury for his 1973 confirmation hearings testimony regarding clandestine activities, pleading guilty to a lesser charge.) One weakness of the book is that the author ignores other international economic pressures that came into play. The Bretton Woods system of coordinated exchange rates ultimately tied to gold limited the ability of countries to deficit-spend. When the US began to run deficits under Johnson to pay for Vietnam and the War on Poverty, programs continued by Nixon, the system was put under a basic pressure that the Nixon finally "closed the gold window" and unilaterally ended the post-war era that resulted in floating exchange rates and market turmoil. (I recommend Yergin and Stanislaus' Commanding Heights alongside Yergin's other books on energy markets.) He also doesn't really look much at Nixon's controversial domestic economic policies during the gas price crisis of 1972-1973, namely wage and price controls. Economic advisor George Schultz was dismissed as a naive fool for advocating against Nixon policies, but the author doesn't exactly spell out the debate. He also doesn't explain well how the high oil prices were to the USSR, helping prop up an internally-crumbling Soviet economy for another decade. All that played a role in Soviet support for various Middle Eastern regimes. Instead, the author focuses on the import of oil and the effect of prices on domestic production. High oil prices were crippling to American businesses and products (like plastics) which are made from petroleum. But they are also a boon to domestic production and exploration. In order to support high prices for the Shah, Kissinger preferred arguments about the benefit of high prices to encourage domestic production and keep out foreign oil. Cooper notes that Kissinger neglected to ask for any study about what amount of reserves the US government had available to tap to relieve the problem and what the effect on price would be, much less any long-term consequences. Kissinger consistently ignores contingencies and unintended consequences. But stagflation in Europe led to negotiations involving European countries, oil companies, and OPEC countries. There was a fear that the economic malaise was increasingly tilting politics toward Communist parties and nationalism. There was fear, specifically, about losing Italy to the Communists. European countries were suddenly at risk of defaulting on their bonds, unable to make the interest payments. (This brings to mind the EU sovereign debt crisis during and after the 2008-2009 recession.) If the debt crisis had worsened, the contagion would have had consequences for the US as well. Meanwhile, domestic pressure within Iran began to mount. The Iranian public always resented the US-led coup by Kermit Roosevelt that installed the Shahs and kept Iran in Western orbit. The Shah's infidelity was public, the press was under his thumb, and his security forces sometimes wantonly killed people for minor offenses, much less jailing and torturing many. The Shah's decision to exile Ayotollah Ruhollah Khomeini, thinking that would be better than executing him, of course ended up having consequences as a committed opposition could be formed outside of Iran as well as inside. Iran was eager for US defense contract deals because the more Americans working in Iran, the more likely the US would have to defend Iran from any attack by Iraq or others; the Shah's paranoia about invasion drove his ridiculously large military purchases. Iran saw Saddam Hussein as a threat, and at one point wanted to invade Kuwait pre-preemptively fearing Hussein would take it (1990, anyone?). Meanwhile, King Faisal was guiding the Saudis as a rival power in the region and vying for attention. Qaddafi took power in Libya and nationalized the oil production, putting more power in OPEC's hands. In 1973, the US and Israel ignored both the Shah and King Faisal's warnings that an Egyptian-led war with Israel was coming. The US found itself suddenly in a weak position to help its ally Israel in the middle of the Watergate crisis. The oil embargo was crippling the US and leading to anti-Arab, anti-Iranian sentiment. Iran and the Nixon Administration considered various military responses to the embargo, and how to get oil to the US. The Shah had placed his vast order of military equipment before 1973, and now that US pledge was in jeopardy. The scariest episode, worth pondering in light of fears during Trump's first 100 days (as I write this), is probably when a distraught-over-Watergate Nixon got drunk and passed out as the Soviets began to mobilize their military. Kissinger and Alexander Haig pondered whether the USSR would invade the Middle East while the US was obviously distracted. There is a scene where Haig shuttles to the West Wing and the residence, pretending he is getting instructions from Nixon. I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, so the information we have on the incompetent and clearly corrupt Nixon Administration that was unavailable while he was alive is quite sobering-- this book makes me realize America has been in decline for a while and the 1970s were much worse than 2017 (for now, at least). The US had already entered into some defense contracts with Saudi Arabia, troops and contractors were helping build defenses there when the Saudis suddenly grew concerned that the US might actually invade their land. Scoop Jackson and the original Neocons were printing serious proposals in conservative magazines by 1975 calling for outright seizure of Middle Eastern oil fields. (How many Americans remembered this history in 1991 or 2003?) The US had already reached arms agreements with the Saudis, and US troops and contractors were helping to build defenses when Saudi Arabia got concerned they might face imminent invasion. Ultimately, this at least made them scared enough to finally bend to US demands for greater oil supply. The embargo led to some decision-making and frustration with the Shah. New Treasury Secretary Simon was initially made fun of by Nixon and Kissinger, but grew into his role and tended to disagree with Kissinger on various issues and was no fan of the Shah. While the Shah paraded himself as an educator of women, a proponent of Western values, and others he was truly an autocrat who increasingly ruled by the sword as opposition within his country was growing. As Nixon resigned and Ford took the helm, he was left out of the complete loop of what Kissinger and Nixon had had pledged to the Shah-- not just defenses but nuclear energy technology. Kissinger had "learned economics from the Shah," according to Cooper, seeing the world of oil markets his way. Worse, Kissinger would "disparage" Ford as incompetent in private meetings with the Shah, undermining any trust. The Shah began to publicly criticize the US government and public opinion was not favorable of the Shah. After the Ford Administration got settled, its top advisors, including Donald Rumsfeld, began to clean house. Cooper writes that Rumsfeld "stalked" Kissinger, being rightfully distrustful. This was the time of the "Halloween Massacre," when Kissinger was removed from his post as National Security Advisor in favor of Brent Scowcroft. Rumsfeld replaced Schlesinger as SecDef; Cooper writes of the rampant corruption in defense deals involving actual uniformed officers in Iran (Kermit Roosevelt was also implicated in corruption). William Colby was fired from the CIA. Some of these moves were likely to help Ford beat Ronald Reagan's challenge for the GOP nomination, something Ford was was quite bitter about, personally. At the height of the 70's relationship, 40,000 Americans were living in the country. Iran was important to the CIA, which was running a program called Ibex that collected signals intelligence and Soviet radar/intercept defense capabilities from bases in Iran. American expats, which the Shah had worked so hard to intentionally attract via contracts, were living privileged lives with classic "Ugly American" stories. In a conservative country, Westerners were showing up with halter tops and shorts to visit mosques as tourists. As expats flowed in, the cost of housing rose to meet demand, infrastructure had to be expanded, and inflation ran rampant. The world had a petrodollar recycling problem. Kissinger, now of diminished political influence, had secret meetings and cryptic messages with one of the Shah's top advisors. Meanwhile, the Shah's top advisors are keeping knowledge of the Shah's medical condition--cancer-- a secret from the Shah himself. It's unthinkable for the Shah of Iran to have a terminal illness. Iran's condition worsened; it now needed a bailout, a better economic deal to supply oil to the US than what it had. Rumsfeld and others move to nix it while Gerald Ford pivots toward Saudi Arabia. While Iran needed higher prices to prop up the Shah's government, the Saudis were eager to undercut. Ford had inherited a stagflation mess, and in the run-up to the election, the American economy began to stall again. Alan Greenspan was Ford's CEA Chair, and the author basically blames him for having rose-colored glasses when bad economic data came in. The author writes that in 1975, Congress had passed and Ford approved over $15 billion in tax cuts and stimulus spending. While this was contrary to Ford's ideology of smaller government, it was seen as a goo idea at the time. Cooper writes that much of the stimulus went unspent, blamed on the economic bent of Ford's team (Greenspan, Simon, etc.) which was more free-market and small-government oriented. Apparently Arthur Burns is also to blame in regards to interest rate policy. But while Arthur Burns did lead the FOMC to raise interest rates in April and May of 1976, he followed by lowering rates from July to November. So, I am skeptical of the 1976 economic history as Cooper tells it. There are other versions. Like the collapse of Bretton Woods during this period, monetary policy generally is beyond the scope of this book (and the authors' expertise) but important to the economy and the politics. ... see my blog for more details ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 03, 2017
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Apr 12, 2017
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Apr 29, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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| 0393343448
| 9780393343441
| 0393343448
| 3.90
| 46,200
| Oct 03, 2011
| Sep 04, 2012
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really liked it
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I finished Liars Poker (1989) and Boomerang (2011) consecutively; I'd read some of Lewis' other works years ago (The Big Short, Moneyball, The Blind S
I finished Liars Poker (1989) and Boomerang (2011) consecutively; I'd read some of Lewis' other works years ago (The Big Short, Moneyball, The Blind Side) and some of his Vanity Fair articles that contributed to this book. It is interesting to observe Lewis' progression as a commentator on Wall Street and the financial system over the years. Liars Poker has a rather humorous feel written from a more innocent time, but by Boomerang the choices of Wall Street traders were no longer funny as they contributed to a massive economic crisis and backlash against government institutions and the Western capitalist-democratic system itself. If Lewis is forgiving in Liars Poker, he is quite caustic and ominous in Boomerang. Much of this book is made up of long-form articles Lewis wrote as he traveled Europe. Lewis' Vanity Fair article on Greece ("Beware Greeks Bearing Bonds") is a must-read on how the Eurozone is doomed. The government itself cooked the books and lied to the EU, World Bank, the EU, and everyone else about its budgets. What's to keep other countries from doing similarly? Lewis' stories on Greek priests owning assets is humorous, but avoiding and evading taxes is a national sport. It may have been able to kick the can for a decade now, but the next economic slowdown or financial crisis will doom it. Lewis starts in Iceland, whose debt crisis attracted far more attention than a country of 300,000 deserves. But the small population and limited economic potential makes the capital inflow and lending boom even more difficult to understand. Lewis was already a celebrity writer and his visit attracted attention. He was invited to speak to the Prime Minister, but everyone can see the PM there whenever he wants. As the bubble inflated, people moved from fishing to banking-- as though Iceland's banks had discovered a magic elixir that made everyone rich. Economists who had visited and given some warning of bubble bursting were roundly ignored. By the time Lewis gets there in the midst of the meltdown, he is awakened by the noise of people blowing up their Range Rovers because they can no longer make the loan payments and instead rip off their insurance company. Debts are nationalized, people are outraged, but change or prevention of the next crisis did not appear forthcoming. One cultural insight is sexism-- the ruling political party is made up entirely of men. I suppose this book was controversial because of Lewis' commentary on cultural traits. The European crisis is the result of not only violating the Mundell-Fleming criteria for optimal currency areas but also an attempt to join diverse cultures in harmony. Greek is pretty much a developing country, one need only look back to its independence and rebuilding in the mid-1800s (after war with the Ottomans) to see institutions haven't been modern there for a while; and the monks that Lewis highlights are steepend in a culture that is ancient. From Greece, Lewis goes to Ireland, where the problem was purely a real estate boom and bust that everyone wanted to ignore. A whopping 25% of Ireland's GDP was in the housing sector as people bought and sold houses that there were not enough to live in. Unlike the US, the big shots and CEOs went down with the banks and were bankrupt. In Ireland, people declaring bankruptcy are publicly shamed and face restrictions on activities like traveling abroad. However, Ireland nationalizes the losses of the banks themselves and justifies this in various ways. Lewis points out that Irish politicians cited law that didn't say explicitly that bondholders and creditors needed to be made whole-- they made up reasons for the bailout that just weren't factual. Lewis then travels to the mainland, Germany. He begins citing from obscure sources about a weird German fascination with... feces. This fascination is evident in German vernacular, there are many words, idioms, and rumored sexual practices that Lewis armchair psychoanalyzes. He then relates this to how Germans got involved in the financial crisis and are currently dealing with filthy countries like Greece, that need German consent to bailouts. In The Big Short, it's the Germans who were still buying subprime mortgage-backed securities after the rest of the market was finally getting the whiff that they might be...well, feces. German bank runs also led to German bank bailouts. It is powerhouse Germany that basically sets monetary policy for the rest of the Eurozone, which is unfortunate. Greece and Ireland would benefit from higher inflation than would be tolerable to Germany, and the ECB maintained a less-expansionary policy than the US or UK central banks. In Germany, patriotism is "taboo," contra Ireland, where Lewis writes many people are patriotic even though few Irish patriots actually live in Ireland. Lewis explains the insanity of the German-driven Greece debt restructuring, how increased austerity guaranteed that Greece would not be able to hit its next payoff target leading to the Germans to call for even more austerity, and the vicious cycle continues. Greece is the feces that Germans are fascinated with but don't want to own themselves. Lest the American reader think the financial crisis is behind him, Lewis travels back to the US to look at the looming unfunded pension crisis that was exacerbated by the recession. From New Jersey to California, there are an estimated $3.5 trillion in unfunded state and local pension liabilities. (I live in Kentucky which, not mentioned by Lewis, is among the worst-funded state pensions in the nation, roughly 11% by some estimates.) This is on top of another estimated $3.5 trillion unfunded for federal pensions. Federal funding is one thing, Lewis focuses on California, whose budget crises seem intractable. He begins by bike riding with Arnold Schwarzenegger (there's an amusing anecdote of him hearing a woman on her cellphone mistake Arnold for Bill Clinton, "another guy with a sex scandal," the ex-Governor quips). Lewis recounts Schwarzenegger's political rise and his battle with Republicans and impossibility of balancing the budget in the face of the housing price crash. Lewis pays attention to the city of Vallejo's unfulfilled promises to police and fire fighters and the angst in the community as the bankrupt city had to cut its public protection and find revenue. There were angry meetings where the police and fire fighters held out against making concessions in their benefits while the citizens got angry-- threatening the very fabric of civic culture. This disaster faces Detroit, New Jersey, Kentucky, Illinois, and a host of others -- not to mention Puerto Rico. These unkeepable promises of politicians that drive Lewis to real moralizing, for which he draws on various other writers. Lewis makes the point that a culture of instant gratification is killing society. We want our cake now, not when we're 67. As Raguram Rajan pointed out in his book on the financial crisis, housing was one vehicle for people to get rich quick. Politicians loved Fannie and Freddie and low-interest loans for low-income people because housing creates jobs for low-skilled, middle-class people, helps people feel wealthy and spend more, raises tax revenue for localities as houses increase in value, and happier communities vote for the incumbent. Americans have a time-consistency problem-- we know for our long-term health we should eat right and exercise, but today it feels so good not to do those things. Same thing with credit, we know we'll have to pay it in the future but we want it now; and then when our interest rates reset we cry "foul." Lewis fears that society, as a whole, has lost its ability to self-regulate. As developing countries embrace Western lifestyles and marketing, they too want to "super-size" their fast food and drive up credit card debt (I would personally point to Turkey, currently, as an example). Like all the other financial crises before it, the problem is so obvious that no one wants to see it. Lewis finds this maddening. He's been writing about this behavior since Liar's Poker, and Boomerang makes it sound like he's finally pulling his hair out, saying "Stop the madness!" I give this book 4 stars out of 5. ...more |
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Apr 04, 2017
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Apr 05, 2017
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Apr 15, 2017
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Paperback
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| 039324721X
| 9780393247213
| 039324721X
| 4.12
| 2,004
| Oct 05, 2015
| Oct 05, 2015
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it was amazing
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2017 has really sapped my heart for reading memoirs related to economics and politics because the discourse and attitude of the current Administration
2017 has really sapped my heart for reading memoirs related to economics and politics because the discourse and attitude of the current Administration is so hostile toward PhD economists like Bernanke. The current President has a woefully understaffed Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) and National Economic Council (NEC) and one wonders what the consequences may be. Bernanke's memoir made me thankful for men and women like him who were able to make a difference at critical junctures in America's history. I found Bernanke's memoir to be among the most satisfying I have ever read. I followed the economic crisis closely and I remember all the articles, blogs, and books wondering what Bernanke was thinking and making various policy suggestions. Bernanke appears to have read every single one. The Chairman uses this book to painstakingly address criticisms, explain his thinking and the Federal Reserve's actions, and give context about the politics at the time. He's smart but also down-to-earth. The deeper I got into the book the more sad I became that experts like him may not be at the helm during the next economic crisis. Criticisms of Bernanke and the Fed during the crisis come in three general categories: 1. The Fed did too little. It should have seen the crisis coming and should have also bailed out Lehman Brothers, etc. 2. The Fed did too much, inventing too many new ways of intervening in the economy and keeping interest rates too low for too long. 3. The Fed needs to pursue other policies, generally. An explicit inflation target or nominal GDP level target or some other explicit rule would be more optimal. I fall into #3, having been persuaded by the arguments of Scott Sumner, David Beckworth, and others for a Nominal GDP level target. I was pleasantly surprised at how much time Bernanke spent in the book responding to these arguments. He clearly took the time to read their blogs and current reseearch, and think deeply about the issue, and found it worthy of response. (Hopefully David Beckworth will have Bernanke on his excellent Macro Musings podcast soon, I think Bernanke would be open to it.) Bernanke prefers a long-term inflation target but much of the book is his frustration of taking an academic idea and implementing change in a government entity under the scrutiny of Congress that is allergic to change. I think Bernanke hopes his legacy is having moved the Fed on its first steps to move toward such a policy by laying the groundwork of being more transparent with the public in explaining its policies. Bernanke was raised in South Carolina, 60 Minutes went there for their profile of him in 2009. His father owned a drugstore, he grew up middle class, was friends with blacks and aware of his own Jewish heritage, although his family was not devoutly religious. Bernanke was gifted and wanted to be a writer, he was good enough at math and a mentor encouraged him to go to Harvard. While there, he realized he was woefully unprepared for Harvard mathematics and studied hard to get to a higher level. He discovered economics there as an outlet for making sense of mathematics and having mathematical concepts explained in narrative. Throughout the book, Bernanke comes across as well-rounded in his drawing from various strains of economics along with a knowledge of psychology as well as historical context. He explains the "neoclassical synthesis" to the reader quite well. He returns to Bagehot, Friedman and Schwartz, and other classical works for context and to help him learn from history. The Chairman harkens back to his criticism of Japan's central bank in their low-inflation period. He advised them to use the same unconventional methods he would be criticized by the #3 crowd above for not trying in the US. He now has the wisdom of knowing that optimal monetary policy is not always politically feasible. Every country has a different system and their central banks are governed by different rules and oversight bodies. So, he regrets the "harshness" of his criticism of Japan. He recounts his interview with George W. Bush in becoming his selection for the Board of Governors. Bernanke's brief tenure on a school board "counts a lot" in Bush's administration, and he is a pretty easy choice. Bernanke learned a lot from Greenspan and other long-time Fed hands. Bernanke isn't critical of Greenspan, but it's clear he wanted to take the Fed in a more transparent direction and not be seen as the "Maestro" that Bob Woodward had made Greenspan out to be. Bernanke also did not like Greenspan's bottom-up forecasting approach. Bernanke would then chair Bush's CEA and be a familiar name for the President to nominate as Fed Chairman in 2006. His wife cried when he got the nomination because she understood what it meant. I was in graduate school at the time and I can remember concern that Bernanke was an inflation dove. Bernanke was ever-aware of his public perception as "Helicopter Ben" and learned over time to craft his statements more clearly so as not to be misunderstood. This is in contrast to Greenspan who didn't want any of his words understood. Bernanke prefers an explicit long-term inflation target that can be hit over a number of years. Inflation in any given year can be flexible, if you undershoot one year, you make it up with "catch-up inflation" in others. He finds an explicit inflation target the easiest to explain to the public and argues it would do better to hit the Fed's dual mandate of full employment and low inflation than other methods. It is more politically feasible, he argues, than the NGDP level target. Perhaps the most difficult part of the book for me is accepting Bernanke's resignation that these ideas were not actually feasible. I think those of us in Group #3 would argue he did not do enough to make his case while in office. Some op-eds might have gone a long way, but they might have been risky in roiling the markets. The book's title is "The Courage to Act," but risk aversion is apparently an essential characteristic of a Fed Chairman. I have read several chronicles of the 2007-onward financial crisis, but I think this book is the best of the bunch as Bernanke painstakingly retells the entire story almost day-by-day. This is way better than Geithner's memoir. (Bernanke didn't initially want Geithner as Treasury Secretary but was "proven wrong.") Bernanke admits his error in not understanding how mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps were a ticking time bomb, seeing no reasons why a slow-down in the housing market would bring down the larger economy. He justifies the Fed's decision not to raise interest rates to prick the asset bubble-- one never knows how big the bubble is and why put the rest of the economy at risk for one sector? The Fed instead proposed regular reports on the financial stability of the economy. A lot of smart people in the Fed missed what was going on. Bernanke remembers the Jackson Hole conference where Raghuram Rajan warned of impending doom while the rest of the room was toasting Greenspan's tenure. Who remembers the BNP Paribas failure that triggered it all? Central banks were eager to assert their role as lenders of last resort in order to stabilize financial markets. One challenge was to convince banks to come to the Fed's discount window. Despite the housing market collapse, a lot of underlying economic indicators like consumer spending still looked strong. Inflation was a nagging concern, as Fed transcripts later showed the FOMC was still worried about inflation while NGDP was falling off a cliff. Bernanke never saw the 2007 Jim Cramer rant but he knew about it-- his wife or others would send him such articles to make sure he knew the craziness outside. Bernanke now regrets his hesitation on fed funds rate cuts, optins instead to implement unorthodox policies like the term asset facility and term auction facility. An inflation targeting policy would have given him more optimal flexilibility in that moment, he argues. Bernanke's encouragement of "blue sky thinking," thinking about problems as an academic exercise rather than a heated moment in a crisis is something I have since seen and heard repeated in other business books. "In an ideal world, what tools would we have to deal with this?" is a decent exercise to keep notes on for after the crisis. (It is close, however, to Ronald Reagan's joke about economists assuming they have a can opener.) We've long forgotten the Bush tax credits as stimulus. Bernanke recounts those days when firms were looking for Section 13-3 loans, emergency meetings, Maiden Lane, and the Bear Stearns bailout negotiations. Then came the biggest fed funds rate cut since 1982. Bernanke recalls the details of the Bear Stearns negotiations and is confident Treasury and the Fed did the right thing. They were able to find a buyer with some help-- Bank of America. The run on Lehman Brothers would be worse, would require more capital, and they had difficulties in finding a buyer and were left with few legal options. There were details about the Lehman saga that I did not know, including the difference between British financial laws and US laws causing a problem in finding a potential suitor from the UK. Even AIG would later have collateral to legally secure a loan whereas Bear Stearns did not. Bernanke argues persuasively that given we are a nation of laws, there was nothing in the Fed's power it could do to save Lehman. Interestingly, Bernanke includes a brief bio on Dick Fuld, the CEO of Lehman, with some commentary on his life and choices. I am curious how Fuld feels about a former Fed chairman giving commentary on his life. In the end, as Geithner put it, "all we can do is put foam on the runway," as Lehman imploded. AIG wasn't even on the Fed's radar until after the Lehman weekend. Late in 2007, I attended a seminar at the St. Louis Fed where President Bullard recalled seeing Bernanke's face on a video conference after learning of AIG's problems. He was "furious." The Fed was already dealing with the potential failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the problem of international creditors who thought the GSE's had implicit government backing, a problem that Greg Mankiw and others had long warned about under GW Bush but Congress had ignored. Now, they had to examine the books of an extremely complex international entity whose failure would definitely be felt worldwide. President Bush had given Paulson and Bernanke a free hand to negotiate, but policy specifics like the Trouble Asset Relief Program were a tough sell. Bernanke recalls a few times when FOMC Chairwoman Sheila Baier needed convincing on issues as well. Paulson and Bernanke preferred straight capital injections over purchasing troubled assets, but there was no taste for that in Congress and when the program basically went toward capital injections anyway, Republicans howled about socialism. Another under-appreciated aspect of the Fed's monetary policy was the coordinated central bank rate cuts. Bernanke was persuasive in getting nations to work together, even though doing so in the face of a global panic seems like common sense, it is difficult in practice. Geithner called Bernanke the "Buddha of central banking," for his calm and rational approach. The non-bullying nature of Bernanke was needed in international rate policy diplomacy. Bernanke's memoir returns to international issues in examining Europe's problem with Greece and the effect that worry over massive sovereign defaults had on markets. Nonetheless, Bernanke criticizes the European Central Bank's policies similar to how he criticized Japan 15 years ago. This seems odd given he spends much of the book explaining the difficulty of doing policy in a political environment; he never acknowledges that the ECB faces the impossible task of balancing the interests of a diverse group of countries. Once the Fed hit the "zero lower bound," Bernanke had Japan's problem. The Fed had set a floor for the federal funds rate by paying interest on reserves, a move which also garnered criticism from Scott Sumner and others. Bernanke explains why they did not want to reduce the IRR to zero-- it would not affect interest rates much but risk destabilizing the money market. I think Sumner and Beckworth would respond that thinking about monetary policy through the lens of interest rates is the problem in the first place. Bernanke writes that once the Fed hit the zero bound, the Fed needed other "creative ways" to conduct policy and an inflation target would have been the best option but it was "too early" to have Congress go along. He did, however, discuss the feasibility of NGDP targeting with Kohn, Janet Yellen, and others before launching their second round of Quantitative Easing policy (QE2). NGDP targeting was discussed at the November 2011 FOMC meeting but the Committee decided it was too much of a paradigm shift and too hard to explain. Bernanke wanted to call it "credit easing" rather than "quantitative easing" because he wanted to state he was targeting long-term interest rates rather than just increasing the money supply. But QE2's results in improving asset markets proved a "false dawn," precisely because the FOMC was more concerned in overdoing stimulus and unconventional policies. Fed Presidents were eager to raise rates or at least have a concrete plan for a "return to normalcy." It is an economic tragedy that Bernanke spent as much mental energy convincing others the Fed would one day return to normal policy in a smooth, orderly fashion than doing what was necessary to stem the crisis at the time. The Republicans in Congress made Bernanke's efforts a political issue. Conservative economists were in the media criticizing low interest rate policies, asset purchases, and warning of impending hyperinflation. Bernanke had to defend his actions in Congressional testimony and speaks of the annoyance of always having to defend a fiat currency from Ron Paul. Bernanke doesn't disparage Paul, but shows the weakness of Paul's arguments and points out other areas where Paul seems to lack evidence for his wild claims. It's clear Bernanke doesn't like Rand Paul picking up where his father left off. John Boehner and others in Congress took to bashing Bernanke without bothering to consult him. Senator Shelby filibusters a Fed nominee over base closings in Alabama, etc. Following QE2, the Fed's "Operation Twist" was followed by more GOP Fed-bashing and Texas Governor Rick Perry's "we'd treat him real rough down here in Texas" comment, all of which Bernanke found disturbing. If he could deal with the politics, Bernanke had at least an equal frustration with traders misunderstanding his policies. He'd made it a point to be more transparent than Greenspan, and yet the market seemed to be confusing his messages that the Fed would one day be ready for a return to normal policy with thinking that the Fed was ready to raise interest rates. The ECB's actions and the Greek crisis led to more flights to US Treasuries for safety, pushing down interest rates further. Some of the regulatory reforms like Dodd-Frank were initially difficult for the Fed to embrace. They did not want to give up their own oversight and education role to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but Bernanke eventually came around to endorse the CFPB. He writes that Dodd-Frank "does much good," and would not support its repeal. He pushes back on former Fed Chair Paul Volcker's "Volcker rule" and notes that even had Glass-Steagall not been repealed it would not have affected anyone's trades except Citigroup. Bernanke never mentions that Obama was slow in nominating others to vacant Board of Governors positions at a time when Bernanke needed all the help he could get on the FOMC. That was one criticism of Obama I remember from Brad DeLong and other left-leaning economists and maybe one weakness of this book. Bernanke does give some insight into his home life during the stress. He enjoys both the support and remarkable disinterest of his wife. He enjoys baseball and tells anecdotes from his trips to Nationals games. He closes the book with explicit leadership lessons on doing policy and working with others, much of which is pretty bland. In all, I give this book 4.5 stars of 5. It's a must-read on the financial crisis. It's an interesting read about Fed life. I'm more thankful for Bernanke now. ...more |
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Jan 21, 2017
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Jan 31, 2017
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Mar 27, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1440834423
| 9781440834424
| 1440834423
| 4.14
| 7
| unknown
| Jan 18, 2016
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it was amazing
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So, given I work for a Medicaid managed care company (the best one, by the way), was really close to Medicaid budget and policy in an Expansion state
So, given I work for a Medicaid managed care company (the best one, by the way), was really close to Medicaid budget and policy in an Expansion state under both a Democratic and Republican administration, and spend much of my free time reading KFF, Health Affairs, etc. it only made sense that I read the definitive book on the Affordable Care Act. Because a part of me thinks it's still useful to have well-informed policy debates even in 2017 when facts don't seem to matter. This book is a great compilation of every policy argument, budget analysis, and the history of the years-long negotiations and political wrangling of passing the Affordable Care Act. At the time I read it, there was not a single review on Amazon under five stars. The author is partial to the ACA, having worked as an analyst in its passage. This causes her to leave out tidbits like the "Cornhusker kickback," but to attack various Republican myths and scaremongering related to the ACA. Previous to this, I'd read Steven Brill's America's Bitter Pill on the history and passage of the ACA (with focus on Kentucky's exchange rollout), Jonathan Alter's The Center Holds along with Axelrod's memoir that recounts a lot of the politics (Mitch McConnell's memoir as well, though briefly). I've also read books on Medicaid by both Brookings Institute and Avik Roy. This book recounts all of the negotiations with multiple parties and the budget math behind the ACA and answers every claim about the ACA in a chapter-by-chapter Q & A format. I made a lot of highlights in this book (61 pages of Google Doc highlights), it's a bible of ACA information and stats. Here are just a few points: People forget the context under which the ACA was passed, the wake of the Great Recession. Health care reform was a centerpiece of the 2008 election, both sides were going to do something radical-- even John McCain's plan would apparently be anathema in 2017's political world after the rise of the Tea Party. "A record nearly 50 million individuals were uninsured in the wake of the Great Recession, and health care costs accounted for nearly 17 percent of Gross Domestic Product" (p. 16). In 2008, the debate was about healthcare inflation including rising premiums, people--including children-- being denied coverage for reasons that came down to prexisting conditions, and hospitals and other providers complaining about complaining about indigent care because not enough had insurance. Republicans, in particular, were concerned about the national debt driven largely by projected increases in Medicare. How do you get insurance companies to cover more people and conditions, get more people to pay for coverage, and get the least-likely to sign up into coverage, all the while not increasing the long-term debt situation? Well, in a rational world you gather proposals from health care economists, negotiate with managed care entities and insurers, and wrangle with the various budget committees in Congress to find a way to get it to pass. The work began in bipartisan fashion. "Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Grassley (R-IA) plotted out a bipartisan process to craft a health reform bill. The pair held three roundtables on the main pillars of the legislation—coverage expansion, payment and delivery reforms, and financing options. Following each roundtable, the committee publicly released reform options...In addition to informal involvement, the President held numerous meetings with members of both sides of the aisle" (p. 29, 31). As the details took shape, so did much of the buy-in from the healthcare industry. "The pharmaceutical and hospital industries publicly announced agreements with the Senate Finance Committee and the Administration in the summer of 2009" (p. 34). The author details what each industry got and offered. "The device tax is still the most contested of the industry fees or payment cuts as the sector continues to push for repeal of the tax" (p. 38). Grassley pushed for and got Medicare payment and service delivery reform, meaning the ACA would be able to reduce Medicare spending. Although Republicans had wanted to reform Medicaid for years, they blamed Obama for "cutting Medicare to seniors" when this goal was achieved via the ACA. No piece of legislation is perfect, and anything large takes grease to get through. The more grease, the worse it gets. You bring big pharma along by requiring all insurance to provide prescription drug coverage. You bring hospital associations along by promising more people will show up at the ERs with insurance. You promise Senators something for their home town, etc. There were flaws in the final version of the bill, in part because of all the concessions made to get it passed. Premium subsidies likely needed to be larger and more available to those over 400% of FPL. There needed to not be such a cliff of premiums and deductibles for a family going from 138% of FPL to 139%. There also needed to be a mandate with consequences to ensure the young & healthy jumping into the pool. Exchanges only worked because risk corridors worked like reinsurance. When Marco Rubio and Republicans kicked those out from under the exchanges, of course they collapsed. "To protect against the uncertainty in the risk in the health insurance exchange markets, the ACA included three mechanisms—risk corridors, reinsurance, and risk adjustment—collectively known as the 3Rs. The first two are in effect from 2014 through 2016, and risk adjustment continues in perpetuity" (p. 236). This idea was nothing new, and similar method was used to stabilize the market in the Republican-passed Medicare Part D a decade prior. But it's now clear that these risk corridors were required to keep insurers in the exchanges. The more uncertainty Congress has now created about what 2018 will be like, the worse it gets. The author notes that the $15 billion public health fund that partly went to fund the Navigators was a controversial use of the funding, and Republicans quickly made it a priority to stop that, calling it a "slush fund" and working in states like Kentucky to end funding for any marketing efforts for Medicaid or the exchanges. Likewise, even though Congress worked hard to keep abortion out of the bill, Republicans alleged the ACA made abortion funding more prevalent. "To try to avoid an abortion-related debate during health reform, lawmakers applied the long-standing Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion unless the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest, or the woman’s life is in danger. In addition, the ACA does not preempt state abortion laws, such as waiting periods or parental consent or notification (Salganicoff, Beamesderfer, and Kurani, 2014). However, the claims that the ACA would fund abortions—and increase funding to abortion providers—have continued" (p. 274). Rawal's greatest criticism of President Obama is his promise that "If you like your plan, you can keep it," which would always be impossible given that the ACA adds the ten Essential Health Benefits to every plan. I personally found the politics behind delaying the mandate a year and allowing people to keep plans as grandfathered problematic-- it created more uncertainty in the insurance markets. But much of the criticism belongs to Republicans, particularly long-serving ones who flipped their positions on certain aspects of reform: "Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA). In 2009–2010 both of these men were still in the Senate, and they both sat on that body’s powerful finance committee. But their opposition to the ACA led them to denounce the very individual mandate that they had once praised. In 2009, days before the ACA passed the Senate, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) voiced his opposition to the individual mandate, 'Congress has never crossed the line between regulating what people choose to do and ordering them to do it. The difference between regulating and requiring it is liberty' (Hatch, 2009)" (p.305). Given the hyper-partisan Congress in 2017 and the failure we have seen in recent weeks of Republicans to reach an agreement on what should be done about Obamacare after 7 years of vowing to repeal it, I'm largely convinced that the Affordable Care Act will be the last bill ever to pass Congress with this level of complexity. This book deftly explains the complexity, economics, and politics that went into this legislation. Five stars. A must-own if you want to have all the information through 2015 about the ACA at your fingertips. ...more |
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Jan 12, 2017
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Jan 31, 2017
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Jan 12, 2017
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Hardcover
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| B006C1HX24
| 3.60
| 325
| Nov 21, 2011
| unknown
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it was amazing
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Launching the Innovation Renaissance: A New Path to Bring Smart Ideas to Market Fast by Alex Tabarrok. What do Dean Baker (of the Progressive left) an
Launching the Innovation Renaissance: A New Path to Bring Smart Ideas to Market Fast by Alex Tabarrok. What do Dean Baker (of the Progressive left) and Alex Tabarrok (of the Libertarian right) have in common? Both want to change the patent system in the U.S. to eliminate needless monopolies and foster more innovation. Both want to reform our visa system to allow more high-skilled workers in to end protectionism for the elites. Tabarrok's Single has received bipartisan praise and the only major criticism seems to be that the book is too short-- I agree. My other criticism would be that he didn't distribute it for free, as Baker did his. The George Mason economist and Principles textbook co-author begins his book by focusing on problems with the U.S. patent system. How instead of creating incentives for innovation, our patent maze creates incentives for rent-seeking behavior. Billions of dollars are wasted in legal battles as firms like Google try to buy up patents that they could be sued over later if they innovate in an area that some patent troll has broadly staked a claim on. These wasted resources hurt our productivity growth. Immigration reform is also a necessity, the U.S. allows in a ridiculously low number of high-skilled immigrants. Tabarrok doesn't focus as much as Baker does on how this is equivalent to trade protectionism for high-skilled workers, but shows how this is hurting U.S. productivity growth. Education is another of Tabarrok's targets, famously showing how college is oversold and how the U.S. is turning out only as many, if not fewer, math and technology graduates as it did 25 years ago, even though demand for these positions has soared. The heavily-subsidized U.S. education system is turning out too many workers in fields like English and Psychology for which there are few jobs available. These graduates end up taking lower-skilled jobs that they did not need their degrees for, hence wasting both their own and taxpayer dollars. Tabarrok would like to see better teachers at the secondary level and takes on the teacher unions that oppose any type of merit pay system and make it notoriously difficult to fire even teachers with criminal offenses. The problems he points out are clear-cut, backed up by plenty of evidence, and the solutions he gives are relatively straight-forward and often peer-reviewed. You can read it in one sitting, and I highly recommend it. ...more |
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not set
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Dec 18, 2011
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Jan 07, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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| 0470528494
| 9780470528495
| 0470528494
| 4.08
| 2,820
| Dec 14, 2009
| Jan 01, 2009
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really liked it
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I read this book after Malkiel's Random Walk Down Wall Street. That's a good and thorough explanation of the WHY in this book, without so much the pra
I read this book after Malkiel's Random Walk Down Wall Street. That's a good and thorough explanation of the WHY in this book, without so much the practical application for the individual-- hence he wrote this with Charles Ellis. The book has a foreword by the CIO of Yale University. If it's good enough for Yale... Much of the book has the same advice as you'd find in a Dave Ramsey or other financial basics course. Pay off your debts, do not take on credit card debt, save all you can and take advantage of the "magic" of compounding interest, avoid insurance products you don't understand, etc. Where it differs is on investment advice, where some groups (Crown Financial, Dave Ramsey, etc.) advise you to pick one of their own certified investment managers, Malkiel would encourage you to open your own Vanguard fund. Use index funds. Only buy index funds with <=0.2% in fees. Once you factor in fees and risk, you're guaranteed to be better than 2/3 of actively managed mutual funds. (The book also looks a bit at index bonds.) Pick a strategy and stick with it (I recommend Jim Paul's What I Learned from Losing a Million Dollars as also helpful on this point). Asset allocation makes up more than 100% of investment returns. Consider an allocation according to your age, investing more heavily as a percentage of your portfolio in low-risk/low-return assets like AAA bonds as you age. The authors examine Warren Buffett and note his wisdom of avoiding the herd. Dollar cost averaging is one way to ensure you go against the herd, putting in a constant dollar amount that buys more during downturns and less during booms. I give this book 4 stars out of 5. I would give it to someone before recommending a Dave Ramsey course, it's cheaper for one. Nobel laureate Harry Markowitz reviewed it best: "These noted authors have distilled all you need to know about investing into a very small package. The best time to read this book is when you turn eighteen (or maybe thirteen) and every year thereafter." ...more |
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| 4.14
| 37,434
| Apr 01, 1973
| Dec 2007
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really liked it
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"The entire investment industry is built on the illusion of skill." - Daniel Kahneman This book has been on too many colleagues' bookshelves to have no "The entire investment industry is built on the illusion of skill." - Daniel Kahneman This book has been on too many colleagues' bookshelves to have not read it before. Alas, I knew well what it was about from other books. I was glad to find a 2007 edition in which Malkiel can reflect on events since his first 1973 edition was published. I followed it with Malkiel's book The Elements of Investing. While he chronicles the development of other fields since 1973, such as behavioral finance, Malkiel's overall take is that they have added little to his own thinking on investing and only highlighted the cognitive biases that make fools think otherwise. No one can "beat the market" because no one can say with 100% certainty that "the price is wrong." Malkiel begins by looking at the various strategies of portfolio analysis. Firm Foundation theory by Benjamin's Graham and David Dodd is what they still basically teach in business school. This involved looking at the "fundamentals" and relies heavily on projecting future revenue streams to discount and get the present value. Others have built on this work over the years but Malkiel, Eugene Fama, and others' criticisms are the same. Analysts are wrong, and not single analyst can know with absolute certainty all the information about one company AND all available information about ALL OTHER companies, which would be necessary to determine "right" price. Even if an analyst's analysis adds value, it costs something in fees. Once one accounts for fees and risk premium, returns from actively-managed portfolios picked by "fundamental analysis" do not beat the market. 75% of actively managed funds are beaten by index funds every year. Actively managed funds often have fees 15 times that of indexed funds-- study after study finds they underform AND cost you more. Peter Lynch had returns at Magellan that outperformed the market for decades, if there is an exception to the rule it may be him. Lynch also holds to a form of fundamental analysis, advising investors to research heavily into companies and be familiar with its products-- "invest in what you know." Warren Buffet invests similarly, citing Graham as his model. But the above critique still applies--if so many others have applied the same analysis, why haven't they all beaten the market? Human psychology loves to pretend randomness doesn't exist. The "hot hand" has been proven time and again not to exist, yet people still "see it." As Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman puts it "There is general agreement among researchers that nearly all stock pickers, whether they know it or not – and few of them do – are playing a game of chance." If 1,000 portfolio managers had a 50/50 chance of beating the market annually, then odds are that after a decade there would be one who had done it every year-- by randomness (try it with a coin yourself). Lynch also put premium on young, growth stocks. But if a stock is growing, why is it growing and how long will it continue? Analysts look for "momentum" and even financial officers at companies will try gimmicks like stock splits to add "momentum" to their company's price but which hundreds of studies have found worthless. IPOs underperform the overall market by 4% annually. Malkiel investigates every rule and theory out there--CAPM and everything else--and presents plenty of evidence that convinces him they're inadequate. The modern "quants" have done no better (and as Nassim Taleb points out, they all get fired every decade or so when the next big crash happens) and modern portfolio theory has little to offer. Beta will always be impossible to measure correctly. While Markowitz showed that diversification rules, and Nobel laureates have devised equations for proper diversification, you cannot diversify away systemic risk. There is no evidence to support "dow theory" and "breaking barriers" and "support levels" that you might see some CFAs write about also has little demonstrated scientific support. Malkiel comments on recent books claiming the market is indeed predictable, a sad irony to the collapse of 2007. Malkiel examines the history of crazes, manias, and bubbles. Schiller and others have written on this and come up with their own theories, but even these are difficult to prove. Even when one shows that fundamentals are way off, no one knows when the bubble will burst. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent if you're betting the other direction (Keynes). The author examines Keynes' chapter on storck markets in his General Theory-- his "castle in the air" theory. To Keynes, fundamental analysis did not matter as much as the "beauty contest," ie: what do you suppose everyone ELSE will think about this stock? That's half of what financial shows on CNBC are-- ways for people to make others think their stock is prettier than it is. The author gives a rundown of behavioral finance, Kahneman and Tversky, experiments demonstrating irrational behavior and cognitive biases, etc. The investor does want to be aware of herding, but one can never know how long or how far the herd will run. So, the price is not always "right" but we have no way of identifying a more right price than the market-- we can never say when it will reach that "right" price and how much everything else in the world will have changed as it reaches that price. Malkiel parlays all of the above into his basic advice on saving and purchasing insurance. Avoid active funds, avoid fees. In 1973 there were no index funds, now you have the ability to track the Russell 3000 Index. He answers the "guaranteed mediocrity" criticism that I see in some of the negative comments on this book. Oddly enough, Malkiel closes by giving some advice on picking stocks. I suppose it's a "if you must pick stocks, here's how you should do it" but I found it really weakened his other premises. There are some tax-advantaged strategies, such as selling your losses at the end of the year to take a tax write off, which makes sense over a rigid "buy and hold." There are other strategies, for which I recommend Jim Paul's What I Learned from Losing a Million Dollars that Malkiel does not cover here-- such as set a hard rule for how much loss you're willing to take before you sell. That puts a floor on your losses. Pick a strategy/style/group of companies that you invest in and stay with it. Don't let someone talk you out of it as it's unlikely anyone can prove your strategy is any better, and you'll lose more money when you deviate from your rules. Malkiel explains options and futures and their usefulness in hedging, while not recommended for the average investor. But it seems Malkiel totally believed from his 2007 publishing that there would not be a worldwide financial meltdown related to the derivatives traded on real estate. Hmm, that didn't work out well did it? The 2007 collapse is the ultimate example of the myth of skill-- no one has perfect information, and plenty missed the fact that CDOs and the credit default swaps written on them were a ticking timebomb that would drive a lot of fundamentally sound companies (many on Jim Collins' Good to Great list) out of business in months. That error brings the book down to 4 stars. Still the best book out there arguing against modern portfolio theory and actively-managed funds. ...more |
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| 9780804136693
| 0804136696
| 4.08
| 20,747
| Sep 29, 2015
| Sep 29, 2015
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it was amazing
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(This review appears on my personal blog, hence the personal nature of the review.) I work in a state government office responsible for forecasting la
(This review appears on my personal blog, hence the personal nature of the review.) I work in a state government office responsible for forecasting large-dollar revenues and expenditures. Given the billions of dollars at stake, you would hope the profession would follow the advice of this book; I can assure you, taxpayer, that they rarely do. I have been to many econometrics and forecasting training seminars, as well as seminars put on by analysts at the Federal Reserve. These are put on by academics and practitioners and attended by forecasters in both government and private sector (energy, finance, real estate, etc.). I can say, sadly, the studies and Nobel-prize winning research underpinning this book are never mentioned. I like this book because it's in the logical progression of books produced by several authors who are cited in the book, all of which were influential to me. Kahneman (who sits on the board of the Good Judgement Project), Taleb (and Mandelbroit), Silver, Thaler, and a couple books on chaos theory I read long ago (Ziauddin Sardar was one author), for examples. The book lays out several concepts those authors presented about cognitive biases, not being fooled by randomness, and thinking probabilistically that I already try to be aware of daily-- I try to be a Superforecaster. One of the authors (Tetlock) gives a good summary of the book in his interview with the Freakonomics podcast, and there is some depth on particular details of the book in an interview on Russ Roberts' EconTalk as well; I recommend listening. This book is the result of The Good Judgment Project, an experiment funded by IARPA (ie: US National Intelligence) to see if crowdsourced forecasts of world events by thousands of closely-scrutinized/measured forecasters could beat "experts" with greater access to unclassified intelligence. IARPA's involvement follows an over 20-year study by Tetlock and others involving hundreds of researchers making tens of thousands of forecasts. The authors are studying the difference between accurate and inaccurate forecasters and looking for differences. The researchers were aware of random success and messed around with regrouping experimenters to see how the results would be affected. The Brier Score is used to evaluate success, and the book explains the concept well. IARPA was interested in short-term forecasts as opposed to long-term ones. The book, alarmingly, opens with Tom Friedman as an example pundit/forecaster. (Friedman is of course laughable for his repeated "wait six months" comments repeatedly from 2003-2007 during the Iraq war, creating the term "Friedman unit" for an inconvenient amount of time to be proven right/wrong. The authors are nowhere near harsh enough with Friedman.) How did Friedman, who travels the Middle East and gets news translated from various languages, not forecast the Arab Spring? The difficulty of forecasting the Arab Spring is that nobody could. Conditions weren't really different than they had been in previous years, some of which saw pundits predicting upheaval to no result. The Tunisian man setting himself on fire and sparking protests that spread like wildfire is a bit like the butterfly effect in chaos theory. Gardner and Tetlock cite Lorenz's insight that events aren't easily predictable because phenomena (like weather) are non-linear and cannot be precisely modeled. Kahneman's first and second systems are discussed (as explained in Thinking Fast and Slow). One of Kahneman's insights that sticks with me is that algorithms, mathematical models, will beat subjective judgements almost every time; even in cases they don't, they're usually only tied with subjective judgement in successes. There is a good summary of various cognitive biases that plague decision-makers and forecasters. In hindsight, we look for reasons for everything. It pains me to watch PBS Newshour and hear "the Dow dropped 5 points on disappointing earnings news." Really, millions of shares changed hands over the course of the day and one indicator drops a tiny fraction of a percentage and there is only one reason for it? The best forecasters teper intituion with caution. One caution that I need to heed in my own job is to avoid adjectives. "Significant" or "serious" mean different things to different people. The most famous example of this in the book was the CIA's assessment of success at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy interpreted the CIA's "fair chance" of success to mean >50%, when the CIA meant more like 30%. (I'm not sure the veracity of this story.) Leaders need to know probabilities and possible outcomes. Brier scores are concerned with resolution and calibration. It is a bit like the mean squared error but in dealing with probabilities rather than specifically forecasted variables. A weatherman who forecasts a 60% chance of rain can be measured over time to see how often it rained. If it rains exactly 60% of the times that he predicts a 60% chance, his Brier score is a 0, the best possible, he is completely reliable. All of the "sabermetrics" found in sports these days always have me looking at probabilities of teams winning. The best team does not always win, it would win the majority of the time. College basketball and football don't have best-of-7 series, it's an n=1 deal. So, models may predict an overwhelming 75% chance of success for a team, which means it would still lose 25 out of 100-- and perhaps the next one. (This drives me nuts every March when people marvel about bracket predictions. Don't be fooled by randomness, the best team will rarely win a one-and-done tournament.) The best forecasters are also Bayesian, they update their forecasts when new information comes available. Nate Silver has probably written the most about Bayesian statistics from a popular standpoint. The book notes that Silver got famous by calling each state's presidential votes, but that a "no change" prediction would have won you 48 out of 50 states, almost as good. Adjusting and updating rather than sticking to your original forecast is crucial. Try, fail, analyse, adjust, try again. Don't let noise sway you (though it's hard to determine signal from the noise). Research shows that even when people adjust their positions to new information, they do so less so than Bayes' theorem would say is optimal-- conservation bias. This is slightly better cognitive weakness to have than confirmation bias, where you selectively screen out information that contradicts what you think is true. Blending forecasts, as Silver also does, leads to better results than just one forecast. Interestingly, the researchers culled the top 2% of forecasters after one year and grouped them together and found that their forecasts significantly improved-- they became even more "super." 30% of "superforecasters" regressed to the mean, suggesting their initial success was luck. The authors admit they have no way of knowing how many of the "superforecasters" are still successful by chance, but as time and more predictions are made it appears pretty certain that there is a significant difference among those at the top. This is not Bill Miller beating the S&P 500 for 10 years straight, this is more akin to someone beating the S&P 500 thousands of times. The authors seem to steal language from Jim Collins-- foxes versus hedgehogs-- by assigning definitions. (Collins borrowed from the Greek Archilocus.) Hedgehogs are people who have only one idea. These may be the Nouriel Roubinis or the Jim Cramers of the world, everything is "recession" or "inflation." A broken clock is right twice a day but this is not very useful for predictions. Foxes, meanwhile, have a broader range of knowledge and are significantly better at forecasts--particularly short-term ones. Foxes were also more accurate in the confidence level they put on their forecasts. Another key to forecasting is to be sure to get the "outside view," again espoused by Kahneman and Tversky. The infamous 2003 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and its WMD capabilities never had any "red teams" check it for accuracy or question the assumptions. "Red teams" of people who will push back on these points and find weaknesses in the argument are critical. The CIA did a better job of this vetting in finding Osama bin Laden and the authors give illustrations from the movie Zero Dark Thirty. Probability estimates were given by each CIA analyst and each key decision-maker read those probabilities differently. The authors contrast President Obama's decisions and Leon Panetta's. (One now-famous analyst had the guts to say "100%" when going around the table.) President Obama supposedly put the odds at 50-50 and gave the order to go in anyway, while Panetta allegedly did not want the risk. (I've read Panetta's account of this in his memoir, there are differences.) One interesting aspect of the research is that a forecaster's "faith score," ie: how strongly he felt about God's intervention in the world, or fate, correlated negatively with accuracy. Basically, people who believe events happen for a reason or are foreordained make worse forecasters than those who chalk things up to randomness. The authors wonder "is misery the price of accuracy?" (As a Calvinist/Augustinian-oriented Christian who happens to make forecasts and judgments about those forecasts, I find I can be detached enough and be mostly aware of the cognitive biases I might succomb to. As it is, I'm always warning people not to be fooled by randomness. How I square this with believing that no molecule in the universe spins outside God's control is a difficult matter that I have not pinned down yet. I have listened to R.C. Sproul lectures on the subject of chance and lectures by Christian physicists. Sproul has a better grasp on it as a philosopher than myself. I have also not yet determined which theory of time I subscribe to, and it's all related.) Interestingly, the book contains a decent critique of Taleb's thoughts on antifragility. I agree with them that it is "expensive" and "impractical" to insure that decisions are antifragile. Fragility is essentially the existence of fat tails-- events with really small probabilities but enormously bad outcomes. I fly on airplanes because it would be inconvenient not to, even though airplane travel clearly falls into the realm of the fat-tail event of the crash. It's hard to make predictions on everything. "Not everything that can be counted counts, and some things that count can't be counted." In the end, the researchers beat IARPA's objectives, their forecasters were up to 60% more accurate answering questions that IARPA proposed than analysts who had access to more sensitive information. The book closes with a less admirable look at Tom Friedman. The authors argue that our nations' critical institutions must change how they forecast in order to improve outcomes and the lives for everyone at stake. I give this book five stars out of five. It is a good illustration of how I try to problem-solve. I would give it to anyone who wants to know how I think. ...more |
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| 3.72
| 2,205
| Jan 07, 2003
| Jan 27, 2004
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really liked it
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I read this book after reading Jeff Goodell's Big Coal, which was written later. I find Freese's work to be much better, much more comprehensive, and
I read this book after reading Jeff Goodell's Big Coal, which was written later. I find Freese's work to be much better, much more comprehensive, and overall better-written. It ranges from the discovery of coal burning in England by the Romans to the development of coal in Pennsylvania and Virginia in the US Colonies to the modern Chinese state's mass consumption of coal at the price of thousands of lives lost a year. Freese is an environmental lawyer and assistant Attorney General in Minnesota who became disturbed when she saw coal industry push-back against a study produced by the Minnesota legislature examining the environmental implications of its energy consumption. It surprises me that it is not rated more highly; the negative reviews seem to dislike either the scope or the environmentalist bent. Climate change was more controversial when this book was published (2004) than today. In 1306, English coal was first burned by blacksmiths and artisans. The Romans had actually discovered that coal could make fires, but this knowledge was lost to the Dark Ages before being rediscovered. Interestingly, the Chinese were burning coal centuries before and had invented smelting by the 11th century, but the dynastic rulers' turning inward and barring foreign trade caused innovation to diminish and development was stunted. When King Henry broke from the Roman Catholic church he dissolved the monasteries on whose land coal deposits were found. When he sold them off, entrepreneurs developed the mines and competition pushed innovation. The author thoughtfully ponders the alternative history-- if coal hadn't been developed, England would have likely been deforested. It was already importing iron from abroad because it did not have enough necessary firewood to do the smelting. Foliage actually increased during the Industrial Revolution as coal replaced wood as the primary fuel. But with coal burning came the stench in London, which was increasingly distateful-- and coal was banned until the 1500s, when it then began to be justified both in rational terms and religious. The author quotes several British and American religious personalities who argued that coal was God's gift to the Anglo-Saxon to subdue the earth. The air quality in London was terrible and there was growing concern and recorded fear that half of deaths were resulting from lung issues. Meanwhile, coal miners were developing their own culture of isolation and ruggedness that seems to be common among miners around the world. The author chronicles the importance of the invention of coke to smelt iron. Manchester became the first factory town where the plight of workers and the rise of labor movements would be found. Friedrich Engles penned his influential The Plight of the Working Class in England in 1845 after observing the factories in Machester for two years. Freese surmises that it was a mix of economic justification and willful ignorance that kept coal burning at great loss of life. She quotes a Puritan pamphlet touting the wood fires, abundant trees, and fresh air as an incentive to move to the New World. The first mine in the Colonies was probably 1750 in Virginia. It was too difficult to transport coal over land to the coast, but discoveries of anthracite coal deposits in Eastern Pennsylvania in the 1760s sparked an American industry. Canals were built, followed by railroads, followed by battles among the railroad barons. By 1860, Pennsylvania coal was fueling the industry of the North against the South, another "what if?" Freese them moves quickly to modern issues both with mine safety and health, citing many studies on coal-related illnesses. She tours an American coal-fired plant and couments the processes and potential green technologies. Like Goodell's Big Coal, she chronicles the industry's campaign against global warming and education. Her statements on global warming were probably considered alarmist at the time, but in light of the 2016 Paris Accords they seem mainstream. She admirably visits both a coal-fired power plant in China, allowed in because they thought maybe she was a western investor, as well as coal mining areas where people actually live in caves (apparently tens of thousands of Chinese still live in caves with little development and uder threat of earthquake). In 1991, 10,000 Chinese allegedly died in coal mining. The Chinese have been pushing the smaller mines to consolidate, hoping to create an oligopoly that is easier to manage and keep from cheating on price controls. Freese pens a brief but fascinating history of China's industrial revolution through the frame of coal. The last chapter in the book ponders an alternate history of the world without coal-- one in which there might be vast deforestation, maybe no labor movement, maybe no Union victory against slavery in the US, etc. I found the book to be very educational and widely correct in its broad lens of development. Freese shows the benefits of coal better than Goodell, even though her pen is perhaps sharper in looking at its impact on global health. I give the book 4.5 stars out of 5, I recommend it. I would put it next to Daniel Yergin's The Quest (which looks at the global history of oil) on a bookshelf of someone interested in energy policy. ...more |
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Jan 31, 2016
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| 0618872248
| 3.98
| 437
| Jun 08, 2006
| Apr 03, 2007
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it was ok
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This is one author's attempt to frame the modern American coal industry explain where it has come from and ask where it is going. I read Barbara Frees
This is one author's attempt to frame the modern American coal industry explain where it has come from and ask where it is going. I read Barbara Freese's Coal: A Human History after this book and I highly recommend Freese's work over Goodell's. Freese is a better writer and also takes the time to look at the broader worldwide history of coal, beginning in England, and looks at the development of the entire U.S. economy touching coal. Both books have a strong bent of environmental concern. Is there such a thing as clean coal or should we relegate coal to the dustbin of history? The "dirty secret" seems to be "no," or maybe the dirty secret is that the figures on coal abundance in America are misleading in that only 20-30% of what is within our borders is economically viable to mine. The "War on Coal" and environmental regulations are not the main reason for the industry's decline, they simply speed up what is already projected. Goodell writes that companies like Georgia Power spend a lot of money on material and seminars casting doubt on climate change in small, rural, red state areas to help portray any coal-bashing as mythological. I recently read Sen. Rand Paul's book where he makes the statement "The coal industry is not destroying the natural beauty of Kentucky." Even miners who rely on the mines for a living wouldn't go that far. Big Coal's weakness is that it focuses solely on America and ignores the wider history of coal and its relationship to other energy markets. Some of the reviews on Amazon by environmentalists suggest that the author's optimism on geological CO2 storage and Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle is misplaced or that he caved somehow to special interests. It is not a really hard-hitting expose, most of what is discussed is already common knowledge. There is criticism of Bush-Cheney energy policy and a retelling of the disappointment of Christine Todd Whitman. (Also claims the war in Iraq was good for the little energy companies in the US because of a greater desire for energy independence.) While the future may be in clean technologies, the author ignores any waste or untoward activity regarding taxpayer subsidies to green energy. Goodell examines various ideas like carbon sequestration and integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants. Goodell writes that IGCC plants cost only 20% more than a normal plant, so he chafes at industry complaints and lobbying over cost concerns and points to one in Tennessee which turned a profit without federal subsidy. However, others argue that the cost estimates are higher than what Goodell thought reliable, so the debate continues. There is not a great deal of depth is given to solar or other advancements; reading a magazine article could get you about as much. For me, the most interesting chapter in the book focused on the role the monopolist railroad BNSF has in helping determine the price of coal. Transportation costs via BNSF are a major factor keeping Wyoming coal from having an even larger advantage over Appalachian coal. The railroad has a reputation for retaliating if coal companies sue or complain. The author also records the difficult life of railroad engineers and safety issues-- how many work long shifts and get little sleep; think of the horror stories you've heard of airlines and then increase it by a factor. Instead of carrying passengers, they carry toxic freight that can poison a community if it derails in the right spot. The average American burns 20 pounds of coal a day. I'm writing just after 2015, when Americans finally got more electricity from natural gas than coal in the last several months (according to the US Energy Information Agency). Appalachian coal is less marketable as the glut of oil and natural gas have put downward pressure on prices. Coal in Montana, while dirtier and harder to remove mercury from, is much cheaper (and easier in terms of productivity) to mine than the bituminous Appalachian variety. The boom-bust cycle of coal mining here in Kentucky is currently in a bust, and unemployment rates in these regions are well above the national average; many are migrating West to find jobs in automobile plants in Kentucky which are, ironically, experiencing a boom due to low gasoline prices. If there is a villain in the book, it's Massey Energy Chairman Don Blankenship. Even before the 2010 Big Branch disaster that killed 29 miners in West Virginia, Blankenship's firm had a reputation for cutting corners and being the "biggest bully in the sandbox" when it came to lobbying and litigation. Blankenship lived in the region where Massey operated and just miles from where groundwater became polluted by his company's coal slurry. Massey apparently paid to build his own water line to a neighboring town than rely on the local well water; he declined to help his neighbors do likewise. There are not actually very many secrets in this book. A decent primer on the state of the American coal industry circa 2007. "It was okay" on Amazon = 3 stars, on Goodreads it's 2 stars. ...more |
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| 3.69
| 102,122
| Jan 01, 2005
| Apr 18, 2006
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really liked it
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Enjoyed this book a lot when it came out, was eye-opening at the time.
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Jun 05, 2015
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| 4.35
| 4,595
| Sep 25, 2014
| Sep 30, 2014
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liked it
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This work examines the development of political institutions from the French Revolution to today, and the last 1/3 of the book looks at what causes de
This work examines the development of political institutions from the French Revolution to today, and the last 1/3 of the book looks at what causes decay in those institutions. I only give this book three stars because I felt like Fukuyama didn't really add much value to the extensive sources he cited and left so many aspects of political order and decay unexamined. The first volume included overviews of thousands of years of Chinese, European, and Middle Eastern history. The scale of this book was much more narrow and not quite as interesting. He at least quotes Acemoglu and Robinson's 2012 work, which I found much better than either this book or the previous one. One real weakness of Political Order and Decay is that Fukuyama fails to address how political institutions and governments evolve, adapt, or decay in response to cooperation with other governments. If "the state makes war, and war makes the state" what about attempts at common global cooperation, like adherence to U.N. resolutions and WTO rules? Several countries reformed their legal institutions and surrendered an amount of sovereignty in order to join the EU, for example. Fukuyama never really addresses this. Ultimately, both volumes are intended to be a critique of and complement to Samuel Huntington's work, which I admittedly have never read. Fukuyama spends much space recapping what was discussed in the previous work. Political institutions decay because of institutional rigidity and patrimonialism. Patronage exists in every government, as legislatures pass laws that people advocate for. But this is distinct from clientelism where there is an outright favors-for-votes understanding. Clientelism as Fukuyama tells it is what differentiates good governance from bad. No country can get rich without effective government there is a correlation between economic growth and the quality of governance. But while Jared Diamond (Collapse) and others are looking at the decline of societies as a whole, Fukuyama is simply focused on government institutions that might decline while other institutions around them may be flourishing-- such as in the United States. Fukuyama defines the rule of law to broadly encompass check on arbitrary rule of the authority. While this is essential to economic growth, China is experiencing economic growth without really having the rule of law-- the only modern civilization never to have adopted the rule of law. But China has granted enough property rights for incentives to exist and allowed a modicum of economic freedom. Fukuyama later details Chinese attempts at developing adherence to rule of law pre-Mao and post-Mao. A political order's current state of decay is dependent on what came first-- democratic capitalism or industrial progress. The U.S. Constitution was written when the colonies were agrarian and had no need for a strong central authority; authority could be delegated to local administrations and defense handled by militias. American political institutions were unable to change with the rapid change of the industrial revolution-- new technology, greater communication, greater mobility, and urbanization. The inadequacy of the institutions culminated in the Civil War, which saw dramatic expansion and organization of federal power (including the standing army). America is more reliant on its courts to not only enforce laws but to apply them than any other developed country. Hence we have an army of lawyers that make change difficult (rigidity) and judges appointed for life can change how laws are interpreted (for example, the minimum wage was ruled unconstitutional before it was ruled constitutional). The necessity of the railroads created a problem of monopoly, which led to regulation. The American Economics Association was formed, in part, to propose ideas on regulating the railroads which included the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Fukuyama is correct to draw the comparison to today's health care system-- a critical sector of the economy with a lack of competition, lack of transparency in pricing, government mandates leading to hidden costs, and not easy to innovate around in the short-run. The Madisonian system of checks and balances apparently did not anticipate the capture of government entities, such as the ICC, by those it regulated. So, Fukuyama deems regulation as necessary but problematic. It helps maintain a democratic state but is also in contradiction with the democratic state. He writes that the ICC could have been better if it were not a commission, but an independent body of technocrats set up more like the later-created Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Technocrats can help run a system well but are anti-democratic, hence you see the "audit the Fed" movements alive among conservatives today. Democracy correctly puts checks on the executive in order to keep tyranny from happening as it has since the Greeks invented democracy, but making everything democratic and subject to the whims of the people leads to every decision becoming political, and good governance needs to happen despite the people. Fukuyama writes that the turning point toward technocracy came with passage of the 14th Amendment (1868), which has been broadly interpreted by courts to extend to corporations and used to overturn everything from abortion laws to school segregation in order to essentially protect the electorate from itself. Fukuyama writes that the 14th Amendment resulted in the merit system that governments employ today-- where workers cannot be fired for political purposes and therefore are able to be more objective. However, this merit system is also a double-edged sword. Government workers who are not at risk of being fired lack the incentives to perform well that their counterparts in the private sector respond to. (Disclosure: I'm a merit worker in government.) Government workers in some states have successfully unionized, creating an even greater rigidity. Changes in political institutions must be examined in context of economic growth and other changes in the society. Fukuyama, oddly enough, does not note much of the overt evolution of U.S. institutions toward populist democracy. He never notes that America was founded as a Republic in order to insulate it from the illiterate masses (read some Gordon Wood). We forget today that Senators were only popularly elected in every state after the 17th Amendment (1913). America was revolutionary in giving all white males the right to vote in the Constitution (this didn't happen in England until after World War I), but the Founders intended a particular elite to govern. Giving African-Americans suffrage after the Civil War made the U.S. much more democratic than England, where only 40% of the population could vote up until the 1880s. He does note the changes that came with Jacksonian democracy, attributing the rise of clientelism to the increase in patronage due to the entrenchment of the political party system. Lexington, KY (my birthplace) makes a cameo here as Fukuyama notes it as an example of a relatively small place with an outsized political machine determining everything from congressional representatives to police officers-- similar to that of the later Tammany Hall in New York. However, clientelism does create a form of democratic accountability and participation. The politician must please his patrons or else be ousted. Real progressive reform and a focus on scientific management came in the early 20th century. Besides the ICC above, Fukuyama focuses on the U.S. Forest Service, which began as a technocratic model headed by Gifford Pinchot under Teddy Roosevelt's Presidency. Pinchot was a competent expert/manager who was motivated and given wide discretion. The Forest Service was responsible for the long-run health of the forests and to maintain its overall profitability. It was "responsive, but not owned," and didn't have mandated rules. Pinchot and Roosevelt represented the "Elite American" class of people who were well-read and well-traveled abroad that Fukuyama laments no longer exists. The Forest Service serves as Fukuyama's example of political decay-- under Lyndon Johnson the service was mandated to do more fire suppression, which seems to be the primary focus of the service now. Fire is useful and necessary to the future health and profitability of the forest, but a government unresponsive to fires is at risk politically. Ironically, the emphasis on fire suppression actually led to more fuel for more frequent and hotter-burning and more dangerous fires today. Mandates took away discretion and dynamism, and the merit system entrenched certain incompetent and less-motivated managers. This has happened across government, and Fukuyama cites studies finding Americans would now rather work for non-profits than the government. Hence, technocracy depends on benevolent directors, just as countries like China can experience increases in economic growth and standard of living with leaders like Deng Xiaping instead of Chairman Mao. This is an obviously slippery slope that has been dealt with in Western political philosophy since the Greeks, and Fukuyama pays it short shrift. He even argues with Hayek's knowledge argument: A central planner can never have all the information that millions of people voluntarily working together could have (hence the "magic" of the price system). Fukuyama argues that while this may be true at any (every) given moment, we can learn over time and correct our mistakes. But this is like arguing that history doesn't repeat itself and ignores the "this time is different" fallacy repeated so many times by would-be expert analysts and "benevolent" dictators. It's fitting, then, that Bill Easterly's most recent book is titled The Tyranny of Experts as Fukuyama delves into the recent economic development literature to examine why some countries develop sound institutions and develop economically while others do not. He examines work by Easterly, Jeff Sachs, Acemoglu and Robinson, and Douglass North. Sachs, like Diamond, puts great emphasis on geography and factor endowment. Acemoglu and Robinson argue (persuasively in my opinion) that these are not the deciding factors. Fukuyama approvingly cites Easterly's work on poverty correlating with conflict. All economists agree that factor endowments (natural resources) are crucial. How British and French colonies reacted to introduction to the West depended on their pre-existing institutions. Were they high-trust societies with relatively homogenous people groups and a national identity? Or were they, like Greece and Southern Italy, more clan-like and lacking a strong state to enforce property rights? The author describes how the Britain and France tried to do colonialism "on the cheap," setting up extractive institutions and not investing much in developing the institutions needed to maintain good governance after independence. Nigeria is one country that went particularly badly, partly the consequence of being even less unified than Greece, with 200+ tribes all competing for power and patronage. Fukuyama argues that Nigeria is "weak in a moral sense," suggesting that cultural norms and mores matter and making Fukuyama the arbiter of morality and strength of weakness. This weakness and the clientelistic system is what keeps people from uniting to demand change since they indeed have a ballot box. The Arab Spring happened in the course of authorship, and this creates some issues for the author's analysis of countries where the clientelistic system is the status quo, as somewhat diverse entities united to demand change. But countries like Nigeria are more diverse and fractured than most. Fukuyama details how Britain and France's approaches to colonialism differed. Initially, British overseers were generalists and not familiar with the specifics of the country they were in. Most never learned the language and never gained trust. "Producing Denmark" was not the goal, as Denmark wasn't Denmark then. Supposedly, both Britain and France learned from their errors and made strides toward what we would now call economic development in the latter days of colonialism. As I read this portion I wondered "Does Fukuyama add anything of value to the vast literature on economic development?" I think not. While conflict correlates with poverty, this mainly relates to internal conflict. Wars with neighbors are instead suggested by Fukuyama to be healthy. War requires rapid organization by government, organized industrial economic policy, and uniting somewhat diverse groups into a cohesive national identity. He suggests that Latin American countries have not developed as strongly as European countries because of the lack of war between states in South America (seriously). (He spent more time in Vol. 1 looking at the extractive institutions set up by Spain.) The author laments that economists ignore the effect geography has on military conquest and development. As I mentioned at the outset, he spends no time on peaceful cooperation between governments, like harmonizing laws and taxes to establish a customs union, trade agreement, or membership in a larger body like the U.N., EU, etc. Fukuyama contrasts Costa Rica with its less-prosperous neighbors as well as Argentina. Argentina supposedly "proves" that endowments and geography aren't the most important, as Argentina has a variety of resources to draw from but has suffered from despotism, hyperinflation, and other maladies keeping it from becoming Costa Rica. He conveniently neglects to mention that Costa Rica is a haven for criminals and money laundering due to its lack of extradition treaties with the U.S., so much of its per-capita income is held by an elite few. He does not delve into Peronism but it's worth noting the strong national identity of Argentinians also has not seemed to correlate with good governance. South America's problems are further exacerbated by other powers' constant intervention, such as the U.S.'s Monroe Doctrine. National identity is a double-edged sword, necessary for solid state-building but harmful as it can lead to nationalism. The Democratic process in Germany was obviously hijacked by nationalism. I think the promotion of nationalism by the Young Turks movement at the end of the Ottoman Empire and the war for independence after WWI, and the defense of nationalitic ferver today as a result, is a good example that Fukuyama does not recount. He does admit that the U.S. built its democracy at the expense of Native American lives. The rule of law did not apply to its Cherokee inhabitants and the U.S. Constitution represents such patriotism to some that it is essentially revered as holy and infallible document. Greek and Italian problems in the eurozone are highlighted by the author. Greece and Southern Italy are low-trust societies where loyalty is to family. Is trust endogenous or exogenous? I'd say endogenous. Businesses tend to be family-owned for generations. There is still Shakespeare-esque rivalry among families and groups. In a stronger-state society, property rights are protected by a government such that one does not have to rely on family and clan (this is covered in Vol. 1). In Southern Italy, the mafia take the place of the state in providing protection. In modern times, brave judges have stood up to mafia rule and corruption, but at great cost. In Greece, public employment is patronage. Since the latest economic crisis and austerity measures, only one Greek public sector employee has been fired for every five private sector employees. Tax evasion is a national past time. I'm reminded of books I've read by travelers in the mid-1800s remarking that Greece had no schools of its own, relying on Westerners to build functioning schools. Contrast this with England, which was already a fairly high-trust society due to various factors including the role of the Church in establishing law (see Vol. 1). Puritanism pushed further reforms in England and Europe, Fukuyama mentions William Wilberforce's religious effort to abolish the slave trade as an example. The industrial revolution undermined aristocracy and led to a growth of the middle class. As in Vol. 1, Fukuyama points out Marx's errors. Marx predicted that eventually capitalism would collapse as the factories were churning out goods on the back of the proletariat that only the bourgeoisie could afford. Eventually, too many goods would be produced than could be consumed and the system would collapse. Marx did not forsee that real incomes would rise such that the median voter in England would eventually be a middle-class worker who voted to secure greater rights and safety. Labour parties formed in Europe to represent the working class and trade unions became powerful constituents. This headed off Marxism in Germany. After the suffering of so many young men in WWI, greater suffrage was granted. Fukuyama also examines Southeast Asia, particularly Japan and Indonesia. Sukarno, Indonesia's first President, is an example of the type of strong-armed coalition building leader Fukuyama likes. Sukarno unified an ethnically diverse population to fight for independence from the West. Like Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Turkey (who sadly goes unexamined by Fukuyama), Sukarno oversaw a "guided democracy." Sukarno published his "pillars" on which governance rested. While rejecting Western-style capitalism, he opposed Marxism. While embracing the Islam of many Indonesians, he argued that there was no need for a strict Sharia state, and separated Islam from nationalism. He maintained that Indonesia would be integral to the international community and not just internally focused. Fukuyama does not detail that Sukarno eventually gleaned inspiration from Mao and adopted a heavier hand. Both the U.S. and the Australian governments supported armed resistance against him. Fukuyama also looks at the development of the Meiji law in Japan at the turn of the 20th century. Japan had to import foreign law because it had no native institutions similar in many respects, and this was difficult since the Japanese language had no words for Western concepts such as "rights." Japan rejected the American Constitution and British institutions and decided to adopt a similar code as Germany's (Prussian legal code) at the time. China, in turn, imported much of their legal code from Japan. The point Fukuyama makes that various cultures do not have the same culture and even concepts in their language to translate a legal code from the West is an important one that deserved more thought. This has huge implications for the democratic institutions the West has tried to export. State-building is not the same thing as democracy-building, an important thing to keep in mind. Japan's 1948 constitution is contingent on U.S. military defense of the country, and should the U.S. pivot away from that Japan would have to adopt something else, and Fukuyama notes a desire among many Japanese to do just that. China does not take up as much space in the book as in Volume 1. However, the author does chronicle legal reforms in 1911 and the eventual rise of Mao and the arbitrary application of law. The law could change at the whim of Mao from one day to the next with grave consequences, and it is a good reminder that laws should not change often. Aristotle's Politics still provides a good grounding for that idea in the West, although I think that concept is not well understood by young American progressives. While rigidity in the political system and laws contributes to its decay, China is an example of where lack of any rigidity in the rule of law has disastrous consequences. Post-Mao, village collectives were still run by the local government, but were allowed to turn a profit. This led to state-owned enterprises being free to operate and share the weal ...more |
Notes are private!
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May 21, 2015
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May 25, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 0132447290
| 9780132447294
| 0132447290
| 3.87
| 423
| 2004
| Jan 01, 2007
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really liked it
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I read this book with the perspective of being in an office that does economic forecasting and pays for compilations of several of the indicators list
I read this book with the perspective of being in an office that does economic forecasting and pays for compilations of several of the indicators listed. I also have taught and used these indicators in undergraduate economics courses. Baumohl's value added is the research he's done on how each indicator is compiled and how it correlates with other indicators. For example: How many firms are surveyed, what questions are on the survey, what is the typical response rate, how does the indicator tend to correlate with future GDP growth (basic rules of thumb), what is the history of the survey, etc.? I've read books like Capital Ideas that give the history of the creation of the Dow, S&P, and other indicators we see on the nightly news, and this book is somewhat similar. If you've never been exposed to reports from the BLS, BEA, etc., this book is a tutorial on what's what. The major indices are updated daily by Bill McBride at calculatedrisk.com (which I check first thing every morning), and he makes handy charts. But he focuses more heavily on real estate and does not cover dozens of indicators included in this book (some for good reason as some have minimal impact). Here's how I recommend reading it: Make a spreadsheet with tabs for leading, coincident, and lagging economic indicators (I made an additional one for international). Add indicators to the sheet where appropriate, follow the links (or search to find the correct ones as my version of the book [2008] has several broken links) and start tracking the numbers as they update over time. This gives you a one-page snapshot of the trends of several indicators as opposed to just one at a time, as you generally get with the news. It's a bit like reading an encyclopedia, but is a reference that should be on the shelf of anyone interested in the economy. 4 stars out of 5. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 28, 2015
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Mar 28, 2024
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Apr 14, 2024
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| 4.22
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it was amazing
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Nov 13, 2023
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| 3.88
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it was amazing
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Nov 08, 2021
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Nov 20, 2021
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really liked it
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Oct 09, 2019
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Sep 12, 2019
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really liked it
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Mar 10, 2019
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Apr 21, 2019
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it was ok
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Nov 09, 2018
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Dec 28, 2018
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really liked it
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Apr 12, 2017
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Apr 29, 2017
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Apr 05, 2017
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Apr 15, 2017
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it was amazing
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Jan 31, 2017
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Mar 27, 2017
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it was amazing
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it was amazing
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Dec 18, 2011
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Jan 07, 2017
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Sep 10, 2016
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Dec 19, 2016
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Sep 16, 2016
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it was amazing
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Jan 27, 2016
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Feb 08, 2016
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really liked it
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Jan 23, 2016
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| 3.98
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it was ok
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Jan 20, 2016
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Jan 27, 2016
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| 3.69
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really liked it
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Jul 2005
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Jun 05, 2015
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| 4.35
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May 21, 2015
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May 25, 2015
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| 3.87
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really liked it
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May 21, 2015
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Apr 28, 2015
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