A young economist with a unique worldview who has the potential to be a good writer.
Simple, quirky attempt to deconstruct air pollution and the Mafia in order to prove a new theory on economics.
Most people do not hire contract killers just because they are available. There has to be a need for contract killing. “The act of the general public demanding the services of contract killers” must come before “the act of contract killers supplying the general public with their services.” This has been true throughout human history, and it won’t change any time soon, Fisher notes in this fun, thought-provoking book. The general rule in economics has always been that supply and demand are equal entities–Fisher flips this notion on its head with this agile treatise on consumerism. Using examples that range from evolutionary biology to organized crime to Ponce de León’s search for the Fountain of Youth, Fisher explains why simply providing a product to the consumer will never dictate a need for that product. The plain, straightforward language that he uses to clarify his theory will probably infuriate pug-nosed academics, but the average reader will appreciate Fisher’s attempts to describe a complicated subject without polysyllabic, theoretical prose. The book’s only downfall is that it is structured like a research paper instead of an essay collection, which is really what it should be. Fisher supplies the reader with theorems and formulas, albeit extremely simple ones, that cater to the academic market, but his book is too much fun for the Ivy Leaguers. He needs to stop worrying about whether Supply equals Demand or Demand does not equal Supply, and develop his natural skills as a storyteller.
A young economist with a unique worldview who has the potential to be a good writer.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4196-6427-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A revealing take on the secretive family firm that manages over $400 billion of the world's money and throws its weight around in capital markets. In reviewing the rise of Boston-based Fidelity, which now bestrides the domestic mutual-fund industry like a colossus, New York Times correspondent Henriques provides informative perspectives on the fortunes of Wall Street and its principal outposts over the past 75 years or so. Although investment companies and trusts played a significant role in the 1929 crash, they weathered the ensuing storm and largely escaped the New Deal's harshest reforms. Toward the end of WW II, a Brahmin named Edward (Ed) Crosby Johnson II gained control of a Lilliputian Fidelity (created in 1930). An aggressive approach to marketing and investing and a flair for innovation enabled him to make it into a leviathan. Fidelity's growth was not without friction. When it became apparent during the go-go 1960s that there was no room at the top for outsiders, hotshot portfolio manager Jerry Tsai left for greener pastures. In due course, the torch was passed to Edward (Ned) Crosby Johnson III, who has taken the closely held organization to new heights. By the author's critical account, however, he has done so in ways that raise substantive issues involving the obligations of fiduciaries. Despite the benign image projected by successful portfolio manager Peter Lynch, Fidelity played hardball in the high-stakes takeover game of the 1980s. More recently, it has become a force in so-called vulture investing, e.g., decreeing the merger of bankrupt Macy's with Federated Department Stores and restructuring enough debt to keep Donald Trump in the casino business. In the context of this activism, Henriques wonders pointedly about Fidelity's lack of accountability, regulatory or otherwise. As complete a story on a consequential financial institution and intermediary as is likely to be had this side of the corporate archives. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80709-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An old Wall Street jape holds that if all the world's economists were laid end to end, they would never reach a conclusion. Its neo-Keynesian biases apart, Holt's survey of the arguably limited role America has played in the wider world's economic affairs is vulnerable to the same charge. Which is not to say that the London-based consultant fails to provide a coherent briefing on the history of US commerce and finance. Indeed, he makes a generally good job of tracking the development of domestic business activity from colonial times through the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, a Great Depression, and other landmark events in the modern era. While the author implies throughout that an affluent America should have taken at least shared responsibility for managing the world's economy, he never follows through with an explanation of how Washington could have taken a path different from the one that has afforded foreign vendors of goods and services almost unrestricted access to the vast US market and encouraged indigenous investment bankers to supply multinationals with much of the capital they required for expansion. Instead, Holt offers vaguely critical commentary on America's recurrent isolationism, periodic concern for balanced budgets, and propensity for throwing its weight around in aid of laissez-faire rather than seizing opportunities to exert hegemonic leadership in a statist order marked by managed trade, central planning, interventionist governance, and other precepts from the collectivist canon. But at the end of the day Holt lacks the courage of his implicit conviction that Lord Keynes was eminently correct in maintaining the economic fate of nations is too important to be entrusted entirely to market forces. This low-key appreciation of America's emergence as an economic superpower lacks the interpretive fortitude that makes for telling judgments.
Pub Date: Sept. 18, 1995
ISBN: 1-56836-038-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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