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Can a book about asset-back security tranches, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps be engrossing and fun to read?
Why, yes -- yes it can. Michael Lewis gets inside the minds of a few, eccentric individuals who shorted, (bet against), the subprime mortgage market and all its absurd derivitives, and made 100s of millions of dollars. Smarter than you or me, eh? A page-turner ...
Michael Lewis: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
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'Aftershock'
Just finished ...
Robert B. Reich: Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future
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... Wherein the author argues that the economic malaise which has effected the US increasingly over the last 1/4 century, is fundamentally cause by the middle class having too little income to sustain the growth of the ecomomy. The middle class' standard of living has only been sustained 'till now by them working more, harder, and longer, and by borrowing. However since the "Great Recession" of 2008-2009, they have essentially reached the limits of what these expedients can provide.
As for the causes, Reich primarily blames reduced taxation and other privileges granted by Congress to the rich. In turn, Reich blames that on the increasing influence of lobbists and campaign contributions bythe rich.
So far I'm in perfect agreement with Robert Reich, but I'm not so sure of the feasibility of the remedies he suggests.
Reich suggests a number of programs; to name the principal ones:
- "Reverse income tax", i.e. actually payout to very low income people, and more or less lower taxes up to $160k of income
- Higher taxes those above that mark, including equal rates on capital gains as on other income
- A "carbon tax"
- Universal Medicare.
I agree that these measures might work if they could be implemented. However they can't be. "Reverse income tax"? Please. Americans believe their country is one of "boundless opportunity" where anyone can make it: the corollary is that if you don't make it you're undeserving of any consideration.
Reich is optimistic that American will see the light and get back to a more sensible course, but I'm not so sure. E.g. he believes that American CEOs will wake up and see that it is ultimately in their interest to support such measures. This is pure daydream. The very rich today see themselvers as global players, no longer reliant on or beholden to their fellow Americans. They simply what to grab as much from the middle class as they can and invest where in the world the can squeeze out a few more basis points of return.
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Half way through "Fight Club" and all I can say is damn!
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Just finished another Reich book ...
Robert B. Reich: Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life
Basically Reich argues that the current political and political malaise of the U.S.A. and increasingly other developed nations is the result of increased captialist competition since the mid-1970's. Technological advances, (many related to the U.S.' military and space efforts), plus emerging nations' advantage caused a major increase in competion amongs old and new corporations. Corporations, overall, have responded vigourously to this competion thereby serving consumers and investors very well -- but people not so well.
Of critical importance, the need to be extremely competitive has encourage the growth of business lobbying of politians at the expense of citizen lobbying. Hence advocates for labour unions, the environment, human rights, and the poor have be marginalized to the deteriment of people as human beings.
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This is the best non-fiction I've read in a long time, and that's saying something. It's a really hard-hitting book wherein Prof. Sitlitz addresses the causes of, and responses to, the still-current Great Recession, and also the lessons the ought to have been learned (but mostly have not).
Stiglitz' main focus is the US financial sector whom he severely criticizes and blames for precipitating the Recession. He severely criticizes US Government and Federal Reserve, (i.e. Greenspan, especially, and Bernanke), for permitting the private sector to assume reckless and ultimately self-injurious risk. Whence he goes on to point out emphasis the result has been in effect to "socialized" bank losses while leaving profits in the private hands.
Partisan Republicans can take some comfort in that much harsh criticism is reserved for Obama and his financial team, drawn as it was from the old guard of biased financial insiders.
Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz
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recently i have read Girl Friday, Second chance written by Jane Green
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I've been more keen on listening to audio books than on reading lately. So the last book I listened to was a Book of Horror Stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
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This is one of the best threads I have seen here. I honestly haven't read a book cover to cover for a very long time, but I have read excerpts and watched a few documentaries along the lines of the books mentioned here. Oddly, I used to read all the time, especially science fiction when I was younger. When I got older I lost interest in fiction except for television. I stayed away from politics and religion because there were too many view points to make sense of.
I'd like to give my 2 cents (from my perspective) on some of the subjects these books address.
As I got older and watched the world be what it was, I strayed away from religion and became atheist. Once this happened, all the oddities in life that were explained away with religion made sense as the natural order of things. For many years, I saw no harm in letting believers follow their own path, but eventually I realized the harm that religion has caused throughout history. I realized that most religious people meant well, but from my newly found perspective, they were spreading misinformation that stood in the way of social, scientific, and moral advancement. It wasn't till Dawkins came along and suggested that the more peaceful religious groups gave credence and support to religious fundamentalist, that I fully realized how dangerous religion was in any form. There was a time when people would not openly admit they were atheist out of fear of some type of persecution. Personally, I believe in live and let live. If someone wants to be a believer, then it's okay with me. Life is too short to think otherwise. When they force their beliefs on others either socially or politically is when I draw the line of acceptability
History is another area that I have had trouble excepting as accurate. There are many ways of seeing the same thing. When we read the history of the United States, we mostly read about Europeans coming hear to escape the religious and political oppression of their native countries and the struggles they had to endure to get to where we are today. If this history had been written by the indigenous population (Indians) that inhabited this land before this European flight began, history would tell a story about a genocidal group of white people invading their land and their homes, bent of stealing what was not rightfully theirs and murdering those who stood in their way.
As for the economy, easy credit has created a society that is living the good life based on future earnings. This is a potentially dangerous situation as the downturn in our economy has proven. Because of this greed, people with money get richer and those that fall into this trap have their standard of living diminished by the amount they pay in interest.
Politics is a very sorted affair. They keep calling this nation a democracy, but our democracy ends at the voting booth. Once we vote, we have no legal say in what our leaders do as long as they don't break the few laws that govern them. Mostly what we learn as children growing up is propaganda and has no resemblance to reality. For instance.. "For the People and by the people" sounds real nice, but is so far displaced from reality that only a fool would believe it, and oddly many of us do.
Nothing I said is new news or revelatory in any way and is far from complete, more along the lines of short thoughts. The people who write these books mentioned by the other members should be praised for their insight and ability to open the minds of their readers.
There are many more subjects written on that haven't been mentioned that are almost unbelievable, but based on fact.
Nothing is as it seems. That's the one thing I have learned in my life.
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Thanks for your comments, Steven. I find myself it pretty substantial agreement with all of them.
On the subject of religion, whatever the personal satisfaction and happiness it may deliver to the individual, I'm completely convinced that it is grossly harmful on the social level. But I'd like to emphasis too that there are other, not strictly relgious but equally groundless, convictions that afflict people: I'm referring to racial, nationalist, and related political superstitions especially.
I think, like Dawkins, that religion is a bad thing on the individual level too, in as much as religion (and other superstitious faiths: see above), offend reason and block our individual (and hence society's) progress toward ideas and actions that can save the human race and the planet. I consider myself a principled atheist; a person who came to that perspective through reason and a belief that empirical observation and experiment are the route to knowledge. Indeed, I was a skeptic even before I acknowledged that I am atheist -- the only thing I really believe in is skepticism.
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The God Delusion is much better but if you don't have time his documentary is not too bad. Root of All Evil pt1 - YouTube
I am currently reading Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America and it's quite entertaining.
Before that I also enjoyed "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" and "I'm a Stranger Here Myself"
I have read a few Douglas Coupland novels recently and enjoyed them - J-Pod - though many dislike it I found it rather amusing.
My favorite novel is probably "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole. His Neon Bible is very good and he wrote it at 16.
"The comedy of A Confederacy of Dunces is writ large in and between its many lines: a grand farce of overeducated white trash, corrupt law enforcement, exotic dancing and the nouveau riche in steamy New Orleans. The Pulitzer committee thought highly enough of Toole's comic prowess to give his only novel the Prize posthumously.
Therein lies the tragedy of this huge and hugely funny book: John Kennedy Toole didn't live to see this now-classic novel published. He committed suicide in 1969 at the age of thirty-two. It was his mother who was responsible for bringing his book to public light, pestering the hell out of Walker Percy, who was teaching at Loyola in 1976, to read it until finally that distinguished author relented. In his foreword to A Confederacy of Dunces, Percy laments the body of work lost to the world of literature with the author's death, but rejoices "that this gargantuan tumultuous human tragicomedy is at least made available to a world of readers." A Confederacy of Dunces -- book review
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Two books I'm reading at the moment:
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Ahoy sci-fi fans! Gene Wolfe is the best writer in this genre ever, (IMO). His quadrology, The Book of the New Sun, is his best & most popular & acclaimed novel: I can't recommend it too strong. (The present series pretty darn good too.)
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About how various countries have dealt with debt crisis according to their cultural predispostions. Good so far, but I'm still reading.
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Krugman: End this Depression Now!
Currently I'm reading ...
Paul Krugman: End this Depression Now!
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Another book everybody should read. Actually, I'm only about 1/2 way through at the moment, but I can still reach that conclusion.
If you know beans about Krugman, you'll know he's an unabashed Keynesian. So you'll know that he believes that the stimulus should have been much larger and longer sustained; you'll know that he would have preferred supporting states to keep public service workers on the payroll. And you'll know that he would have preferred much tougher conditions on the banks when the bailouts were handed out. (With hindsight, he says that the banks should have been placed in formal receivership.)
But if you're an anarcho-capitalist Ayn Rand devotee this book won't convince you. Likewise if you're Neo-classical a.k.a. "freshwater" economist, you'll be in a state of full denial about the causes as well as the solutions to the current recession -- or depression, as Krugman identifies it based on account of what will happen if effective action isn't taken.
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I've read and heard many, many good things about Krugman's book. Your mini-review has pushed me even closer toward buying this. Thanks, Bill, well written.
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