A solid effort at portraying the muted spell that opened the Roaring ’20s and at arguing for more trust in the self-healing...
Financial journalist Grant (Mr. Speaker! The Life and Times of Thomas B. Reed, the Man Who Broke the Filibuster, 2011) examines an economic trough that ended without government intervention.
In November 1919, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 119.62. In August 1921, it was 63.9, a decline of nearly half. Eighteen months after it began, writes the author, the depression of 1920-1921 was “over and done with.” It is a matter of libertarian faith that the Great Depression was prolonged rather than alleviated by Keynesian economic policy, and Grant’s intent is clear: The invisible hand reigns supreme, the market knows what’s good, and government meddling usually ends badly. All those points are arguable, but ideology aside, Grant’s look at this forgotten episode, which gave us the grimly jaunty tune “Ain’t We Got Fun,” has much to commend it even as it raises questions. As he observes, the governments of Woodrow Wilson and then Warren G. Harding did not “socialize the risk of financial failure or attempt to steer and guide the national economy by manipulating either the rate of federal spending or the value of the dollar.” But could this model have been followed in the more complex financial meltdown of 2008? Grant earns points for finding something at all good to say about the notoriously corrupt Harding administration, and while his narrative sometimes labors under the weight of facts, figures and financial terminology, his account of how industry reckoned with the downturn—in part by lowering wages, in part just by waiting it out—makes for interesting reading indeed, at least for numbers wonks.
A solid effort at portraying the muted spell that opened the Roaring ’20s and at arguing for more trust in the self-healing properties of the business cycle.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1451686456
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Felicitous economics? Hard to believe, but McMillan's prose resembles single malt, going down easy as it stimulates....
A wide-ranging, illuminating history of that old, colorful, and sometimes disgraceful institution known as the marketplace: exotic, innovative, and everyday; on terra firma and in cyberspace; bazaar to eBay.
“Reinventing” is a vital notion here, for the best markets, says McMillan (Economics/ Stanford Univ. Graduate School of Business), are those that develop from the bottom up over time through trial and error, always restless and reshaping themselves with creativity and flexibility. Shortcutting the process rarely works. Then again, markets would never attain their fullest potential without a soupçon of government intervention when age-old procedures need to be formalized and authority given to enforce the results, or as a means of “providing goods and services that markets would undersupply and acting in the background as market rule-setters and referees.” McMillan lays out the prerequisites for a successful market: “information flows smoothly; property rights are protected; people can be trusted to live up to their promises; side effects on third parties are curtailed; and competition is fostered.” He is well aware of the absurdities and cruelties such a system may spawn (patent law is a good example), though he endeavors to understand poverty and inequality as structural rather than inherent in the marketplace. McMillan has his heart in the right place and isn’t about to sniff at suffering. Unlike free-market zealots, he appreciates that markets are imperfect and can even be disastrous. They are also, he reminds us, a natural economy, “too important to be left to ideologues,” and they are “not just about money. A well-designed competitive market puts resources into the hands of those who can best use them.” Design is the issue here, a delicate balance between the organic evolution of the market and state oversight.
Felicitous economics? Hard to believe, but McMillan's prose resembles single malt, going down easy as it stimulates. Clarifying and humanistic.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-05021-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
Preaching to the choir.
A deconstruction of globalization that veers toward manifesto.
The increasing tendency of modern corporations to invest and conduct business without regard to national boundaries (and preferably with minimal interference from national governments) is controversial, but seldom viewed as an unequivocal evil. Most people balance moral qualms about sweatshop labor or environmental decay against arguments that globalization offers needed jobs to the third world and is a necessary first step to development. Tabb (Economics/Queens Coll.; Political Science/CUNY Graduate Center) seeks to dispel such ambivalence. Globalization, he argues, is little more than covert imperialism. Transnational corporations have taken advantage of legal loopholes, corrupt rulers, and an ignorant public to rob the developing world of its wealth. This process has been facilitated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, both of which act as agents of the developed world and, more specifically, the US. Neither the IMF nor the World Bank, Tabb claims, can “point to any part of the world to show an example of policy success.” Worse, they have actively promoted policies that have exacerbated the AIDS epidemic, increased debt, and damaged the environment. These statements contain much truth, but Tabb is so vehemently partisan that he’s difficult to take at face value. He considers no arguments that do not support his point. For example, he simply dismisses out of hand the possibility that pollution and income inequality are painful first steps toward socialized democracy. On the other hand, his view of World Trade Conference protestors is decidedly optimistic, despite their noteworthy lack of a clear agenda and their inclusion of racist and violent groups. It all becomes a bit hard to swallow. As a critic once said of British historian Lord Macaulay, Tabb fails to give his readers credit enough to reach their own conclusions.
Preaching to the choir.Pub Date: May 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-56584-722-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
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