by Ron Chernow ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 16, 1997
Three ad rem essays from National Book Award winner Chernow on the convulsive shift in the balance of monetary power (from commercial, investment, and merchant bankers to financial conglomerates) that has marked 20th-century capitalism. Drawing on research he did for The Warburgs (1993) and The House of Morgan (1990), Chernow offers an anecdotal primer on the factors that put paid to the pivotal, frequently dictatorial role once played by bankers in allocating capital throughout Europe and North America. In addressing, even mourning, the eclipse of the banking trade, he recalls the accomplishments of larger-than-life financiers (in particular, John Pierpont Morgan and Siegmund Warburg) who granted the credit required to open the American West, underwrote transcontinental railroads, masterminded acquisition campaigns decades before merger mania became a byword on Wall Street, guided fearful nations through market panics, and otherwise left their mark on the New World and Old. The author recounts how passage of the Glass-Steagall Act by Congress during the Great Depression brought the disruptive rigors of competition to the clubby, relationship-oriented world of banking. Chernow also documents the advances in communications technology and regulatory policy that put investment intelligence within reach of all comers; these latter developments led directly to the profusion of mutual funds, which manage the billions of dollars anted up by individual investors. While today's institutional avatars may be a more cautious, risk-averse breed than their colorful predecessors, that may be in part, the author suggests, because they are subject to the pitiless collective judgments of a global marketplace that puts precious little premium on living by one's wits. If Chernow provides no breakthrough perspectives to arrest the attention of professionals, he delivers a sound, accessible account of the forces shaping capital, credit, currency, and securities markets on the eve of a new millennium.
Pub Date: July 16, 1997
ISBN: 0-375-70037-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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
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SEEN & HEARD
by Rebecca Henderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2020
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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