A rallying cry for readers who feel ripped off at the gas pumps.
In this fiery collection of blog posts, veteran commodities trader Learsy (Oil and Finance, 2012, etc.) rails against the global oil-industry.
According to the oil industry, oil is a commodity that’s subject to the forces of supply and demand. But this is far from the complete truth, writes Learsy, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post who made his fortune as founder of a worldwide commodities trading firm. Oil prices, he asserts, are captive to the machinations of commodity speculators, investment banks, OPEC and petroleum heavyweights such as Russia. These entrenched interests can influence U.S. policy at the highest levels, he says, and distort prices for their own benefits. “We are robbed of billions of dollars every day by oil interests, in their manipulation of the market pricing mechanisms, at massive cost and risk to the world’s economy,” he writes. Penned with a hefty dose of what the author calls “rightful anger,” the book looks at a turbulent 18-month period from January 2012 to May 2013 that witnessed the 2012 U.S. presidential election, oil prices spiking more than 9 percent in a single day and revelations of JP Morgan Chase’s “London Whale” trading debacle. Learsy’s blog entries address a range of oil-related topics, and his central theme soon emerges: The oil market has been hijacked by profiteers who game the system. Learsy alleges cronyism and inept oversight by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy, Congress, the courts and multiple presidential administrations. His posts combine insider knowledge and trenchant wit, and he isn’t afraid to rebuke people when he feels they deserve it—including former Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and JP Morgan Chase head Jamie Dimon. The book suffers, however, from a limitation that’s common to blog-based collections: Its brief chapters whiz past like a series of editorials instead of probing deeper like an investigative exposé. That said, the author’s stated goal is to educate everyday consumers, and as such, the book effectively elbows its way into the growing Main-Street-fights-back genre.
A rallying cry for readers who feel ripped off at the gas pumps.Pub Date: July 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-1475994520
Page Count: 276
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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