Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #282968 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Disaster Foretold?
This book is disturbing in many ways. Judging from its footnotes, it was completed in early November 2007, but everything it predicted at the time has come true one year later: mayhem in global finance. I hope that since its publication in late March 2008 it has become been a bedtable book for policy makers, economics professors and other financial pundits, because it is a passionate account of all that has gone wrong of late. It has historical depth, and is well informed regarding the US political landscape that facilitated the outrageous reliance on the uncontrolled churning around of cash and derivatives as the basis of the US economy, and much else.

A major tenet of Mr. Philips' book is that bad money chases away good money, and bad capitalism chases away good capitalism. Financial services elbowing out industry, agriculture, transport, telecoms, etc. is, according to Mr. Phillips bad, and proven by history.

Another reviewer of this book blamed Mr. Phillips for not providing solutions. However, the book provides plenty of such, but they have a horizon far beyond the current, inept efforts to stop a downward spiral, such as trying to use taxpayers money to buy toxic products from irresponsible banks without giving taxpayers a stake in the stricken companies.

What is most shocking to this European reviewer, is the lack of warning to European savers and investors of the deluge predicted so well by Mr Phillips. Our press media have failed. Weeks ago a Dutch economics professor confessed on TV that he sold all his stock in September 2007. Kevin Phillips was only halfway into writing his excellent book then.

How come? Who else knew, institutions, persons? Kevin Phillips' book reads as if it was written yesterday, but it is a year old. If all this was known a year ago, why now such tremendous losses and future hardship?

An Overlong and Not Very Insightful Look at Excess Debt, Peak Oil, Bad Loans, Bubbles, and Reduced Credibility
The short message from this book is that the U.S. economy is in trouble and that trouble is about to get worse. Why? Private and government debt and spending are out of control and the chickens haven't come home to roost yet in terms of higher interest rates and higher costs of imports, the government lies about inflation, the credit crisis isn't over by a long shot, peak oil production will cause prices to shoot through the roof, our manufacturing base is gutted, economic growth is going to be lousy, foreigners aren't going to keep taking dollars, and nobody likes us outside of the country. Are you ready to become a second-rate country?

Unless you want to see some of the excellent tables and charts in the book that document these points, you don't need to read the book. Mr. Phillips doesn't add much to that brief message except to make continual references to prior histories of other nations. You would do better to spend your time working on solutions to the problems.

The book is also very dated, focusing on the conditions of August 2007 and the levels of oil prices and debt problems then. As we all know, those were the good old days compared to June 2008.

The writing style is also annoying in that Mr. Phillips doesn't assemble his points into a logical pattern to "prove" what might come next. It's an overly qualitative and anecdotal approach to issues that have quantitative implications.

There's not a bit of advice in the book about what you can do to help secure your future: This book seems to be totally aimed at setting the agenda for the next president of the United States.

Devastating critique of the U.S.
Many readers already admire Kevin Phillips's previous books, with their incisive analysis of U.S. politics. In this treatise, published just before the 2008 presidential election, his main concerns are the dangerous dominance of the financial sector in the U.S. economy and the fiscal implications of peak oil. Phillips covers many other hazards, from securitization to the real estate bubble. He provides historical background to explain modern financial circumstances, whacks both the Bush and Clinton administrations, and offers his take on everything from imperial England to the efficient market hypothesis. After he explains how and why the U.S. is teetering dangerously on the brink of disaster, getAbstract is relieved to report that Phillips also offers some ideas about how it might rescue itself by going back to strong manufacturing, solid education and better regulations. This seems to be a fairly hasty overview of bad times, but the author can see beyond the immediate storm to the possibility of a brighter day.