A cogent and urgent argument of compelling interest to economists and policymakers.
A tale of monetary union and its discontents.
Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz (Economics/Columbia Univ.; Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity, 2015, etc.), long a nuanced critic of globalization, turns his attention to the doomed project that is the single European currency, the euro. Doomed, that is, because it presupposes an economic integration into a single economic community that has not been matched by the necessary political integration. The eurozone may be a single entity in theory, but in reality, it harbors competing national interests. Furthermore, any government requires the ability to develop and enforce its own regulations, a cause for conflict within any overarching union. Stiglitz sees within the push for the single currency the same neoliberal motivations as for globalization, a related process, and those, not surprisingly, involve making the rich richer at the expense of the poor. In the case of Europe, the byword for the poor is Greece, the nation that has perhaps suffered most in the cause of economic integration, where wage and pension decreases have had catastrophic effects, including a general devaluation of the economy. “Internal devaluation increases economic fragility by bringing more households and firms to the brink of bankruptcy,” he writes. “Inevitably, they cut back on spending on everything.” Lack of spending in a consumer economy yields disaster, and in the case of Greece, “the best evidence is that a country that goes through a deep downturn never bounces back to make up for what is lost. What is lost is lost forever.” Short of dissolving an economic union that he regards as ill-advised, Stiglitz examines possible palliatives, including allowance for more economic flexibility within the EU, with different areas trading at different values. That economic union can and should be saved, he writes, but only if it truly means the creation of “the shared prosperity and solidarity that was part of the promise of the euro.”
A cogent and urgent argument of compelling interest to economists and policymakers.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-393-25402-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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