A supremely useful book for portfolio planning, though not the thing to give someone who’s inclined to worry about the state...
It’s a fraught time, writes hedge-fund guru Smick in this timely book. If the “Chinese juggernaut” doesn’t sink us, then class warfare and our spendthrift ways will.
Borrowing his title, obviously, from Thomas Friedman’s optimistic The World Is Flat (2005), Smick dourly notes that in finance, the horizon is near while the dangers lurk out of sight—“nothing happens in a straight line. Instead, there is a continual series of unforeseen discontinuities—twists and turns of uncertainty that often require millions of market participants to stand conventional wisdom on its head.” Seeing over the horizon is the job of sound analysts and good political leaders, who seem to be in short supply. Weathering the fiscal storms is ever harder for numerous reasons, one of them the declining vigor of central banks, another, in the United States, an accumulation of personal debt that threatens to put the economy into a Japan-like state of decades-long stagnation. Globalism, some would object, is a vehicle for weakening national economies, but Smick counters that “liberated global financial markets and free trade” are largely responsible for the creation of vast wealth in the last quarter-century (during which the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose from 800 to more than 12,000) and should not be unduly regulated, since economies seem to be slipping beyond the control of national governments. Instability will thus be the norm in the future, especially inasmuch as private concerns dwarf whole economies: The exposure of the Swiss bank UBS to the subprime mortgage meltdown was four times as large as the entire Swiss economy, Smick observes. Couple profligate habits with an ever-growing Chinese economy beholden to no one, and suddenly the future looks like a roller-coaster ride for even the most aggressive investor.
A supremely useful book for portfolio planning, though not the thing to give someone who’s inclined to worry about the state of the world.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59184-218-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
It seemed like a good idea: splice cable systems and phone lines and, presto, interactive television! Doesn’t everyone who talks to a TV want the TV to respond personally? The answer, it appears, is no, not even with Picturephone. Davis, a comic novelist (A Meaningful Life, 1971) and a seasoned reporter with a bent for dubiety (Bad Money, 1982) applies his well-honed sense of irony to a story of the lords of electronic media, who hunt for the killer app hidden in the fat pipeline of coaxial cable. In the rush to eat the other guys’ lunches, the crafty top dogs may not have all the technical problems within their grasp, or even understanding, but no matter. Among the CEOs seeking sinecures more avidly than synergies, the greatest schemer is clearly handsome, enigmatic John Malone. The fabled billionaire boss of TCI hustled stockholders, phone companies, equipment purveyors and entertainment providers using basic leverage, byzantine spin-offs and generally clever financial sleight of hand to promote a service consumers didn’t want. That didn’t stop him. Malone’s latest thimblerig involves a sale of his business to AT&T for well over $30 billion. The transaction somehow makes him a major phone company shareholder and still keeps him in control of his own firm. A neat trick, indeed. Supporting players in Davis’s story include such media stalwarts as Steve Ross, Barry Diller, Sumner Redstone, Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner and a squad of tycoons, each trying to improve the thinking of the others. The character delineation is sharp, many adventures are likened to WWII escapades and (though the clichÈ “riches beyond the dreams of avarice” is seriously overworked) the writing has verve and a decided attitude. The media shell games haven’t ended. Now, maybe, if the Internet combines with cable, somebody’s new dreams of avarice may be exceeded. A cautionary tale, indeed, of pirates of the high frequencies dealing with optical fiber, coaxial cable, microwaves, huge debt, and smoke and mirrors.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-47927-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
A look at the future through a rose-tinted crystal computer monitor. It’s amazing how one person’s nightmare can make someone else giddy. Kelly, executive editor of Wired magazine, gleefully looks forward to a “new global economic culture” that is characterized, “most important[ly], by a widespread reliance on economic values as the basis for making decisions in all walks of life.” Confronted with extensive alienation from noneconomic human life, Kelly advises us to accept the inevitable and join the electronically induced information age; only those failing to heed the siren call of cyberspace will encounter difficulties. Fortunately, Kelly provides ten rules to guide us on our way in the new economic order, essentially asserting that the entire world will soon look like the current World Wide Web—where power multiplies through connections, maintaining the network is crucial, change is constant, and even successful innovations are quickly left behind—and insisting that we must accept risk and act boldly. The possibilities are tremendous, for we are “about to witness an explosion of entities built on relationships and technology that will rival the early days of life on Earth in their variety.” It’s also possible that Kelly is a bit overenthusiastic. He offers no guarantees, of course, but in the new alchemy of the future, it is abundance, not scarcity, that creates value, and concerns with, for instance, distribution of resources, equal opportunity, or the fate of individuals and nations not “hardwired” into this new reality are barely worth mentioning. For the doubters unable to block out thoughts about the victims of Kelly’s future, however, there is some comfort. As he recognizes, predictions based on a selective reading of current trends are notoriously inaccurate, and all that differentiates his prognostications from failures of the past is that time has not yet proven him wrong. Let’s hope it does so in a manner that discourages further soothsaying. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88111-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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