Intriguing thinking about these current potentials and their history, especially given the dollar's pervasiveness in the...
A pioneer in the use of market intelligence for strategic purposes warns of the coming collapse of the dollar-based financial system.
In Rickards’ view, the world is currently going through a third currency war (“CWIII”) based on competitive devaluations. CWII occurred in the 1960s and ’70s and culminated in Nixon's decision to take the dollar off the gold standard. CWI followed WWI and included the 1923 German hyperinflation and Roosevelt's devaluation of the dollar against gold in 1933. Rickards demonstrates that competitive devaluations are a race to the bottom, and thus instruments of a sort of warfare. CWIII, he writes, is characterized by the Federal Reserve's policy of quantitative easing, which he ascribes to what he calls “extensive theoretical work” on depreciation, negative interest rates and stimulation achieved at the expense of other countries. He offers a view of how the continued depreciation and devaluation of the dollar will ultimately lead to a collapse, which he asserts will come about through a widespread abandonment of a worthless inflated instrument. Rickards also provides possible scenarios for the future, including collaboration among a variety of currencies, emergence of a world central bank and a forceful U.S. return to a gold standard through an emergency powers–based legal regime. The author emphasizes that these questions are matters of policy and choice, which can be different.
Intriguing thinking about these current potentials and their history, especially given the dollar's pervasiveness in the pricing and exchange of global assets.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59184-449-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
A splendid, subtle portrait of the fisherman’s life—from Hokkaido to Norway, Chile to the Java Sea—by McCloskey (Highliners, 1978, etc.). After a stint in the Coast Guard, McCloskey shipped out on his first fishing vessel 20 years ago, and he has evidently been keeping notes on every voyage since, detailing the days and nights of those who pursue one of the most dangerous jobs on Earth—fishing. He has fished for king crab in the Bering Sea in winter, when the crabs are at their plumpest and the sea its nastiest; he has chased cod on the 1,000-year-old foggy and doomed Grand Banks fishery; he experienced the industrial-scale sardine fishery of Chile and the artisan fishing of Indonesia from small wooden boats (no radar here; fish are tracked at night by their phosphorescent wakes). He has spent a good amount of time with the Japanese fleet and shares with them a lust for the delicacies of the deep. And he has served on patrol boats enforcing compliance with the welter of maritime laws. Thus, as McCloskey explains the taking of shrimp and cod and squid, he is also able to speak knowledgeably about ship machinery, fishing ports, trawling and purse seining, the grand Law of the sea and the lesser laws governing salmon catches and whale harvesting, and the continuing havoc wreaked by the Exxon Valdez (ten years later, the herring have not returned, nor have the harlequin duck and pigeon guillemot). And best of all, McCloskey feels and conveys the atavism inherent in hunting the ocean, which he balances with deflating counterpoints. Says one old hand, “It’s a livin’, b’y, but it ain’t much of a life now, is it?” Tales of fishermen at peril in high seas are hugely gripping. What makes McCloskey’s book so memorable is that it invests in the everyday lives of fishermen the same compulsive readableness. (color photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-07-045347-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
Consuming more now and enjoying it less? In this heavily researched but accessible work, Schor (Women’s Studies/Harvard; The Overworked American, 1992) tells us how and why this is so and what we might do about it. “See-want-borrow-and-buy” is Schor’s succinct summation of American spending habits. As status and identity become increasingly indistinguishable, our very sense of worth becomes invested in what we buy. We spend billions for status. Given identical pairs of jeans, identical tubes of lipstick, we will more than likely buy, at a much higher price, the item with the designer label. Yet, such spending is self-defeating and never-ending. We no longer wish simply to keep up with our neighbors, but to emulate the spending habits of the richest 20 percent of Americans (television is the main vehicle through which we know what they buy). As their consumption increases, then, so does ours. The result of this endless game of catch-up is Americans working more, going increasingly into debt, but finding themselves no more happy or contented, in fact often a great deal less so. Further, as we spend privately our support for collective consumption—on education, social services, public safety—diminishes, further eroding our sense of well-being. It’s possible, but not easy given how natural it seems, to get out of this cycle of self-defeating consumption. Millions of Americans, whom Schor terms “downshifters,” have opted to work, earn, and consume less and in the process created richer, more meaningful lives. Schor supports all of these findings with abundant, perhaps overabundant, survey data. Missing, though, is a consideration of why consumption is so deeply ingrained in us, what’s lacking in our collective lives that leads to such compensatory consumption. She discusses fears of downward mobility but never really develops this theme. Despite some shortcomings, this is an important analysis of who, or perhaps what, we are. It deserves and will surely gain a wide audience. ($100,000 ad/promo; author tour; radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-465-06056-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
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