For the numerate and fiscally wonky, an accessible survey that does a fine job of reallocating past, present, and future.
A financial economist’s view of credit, investment, speculation, and other matters of the pocketbook.
The study of finance is traditionally the finest layer of dust on the stack of arid tomes devoted to the dismal science. The Cyndi Lauper echo of the title aside, Goetzmann (Finance and Management/Yale School of Management; co-editor: The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations that Created Modern Capital Markets, 2005, etc.) doesn’t exactly shift the discussion into pop territory. However, his book is more accessible than many in the field, positing that the instruments of finance have done more than their share to make civilized life possible. The author invites us to consider that a principal effect of finance is to travel in time: that is, finance “reallocates economic value through time,” linking present and future while also shifting the burden of risk to allow investors and states to do such things as build infrastructure. Finance also involves an increase in social complexity, requiring alphanumeric language for record-keeping and bureaucrats to keep track of things, so that finance is responsible for state-building. Among the earliest financial documents we have, writes Goetzmann, are clay tablets recording impossible debts denoted by absurdly gigantic numbers: “The ability to imagine and then to express such vast quantities,” he writes, “would not have been possible without the leap of mathematical abstraction in the Uruk period.” So, too, with Chinese record-keeping systems involving great quantities of grain offered in tribute by great numbers of people. Throughout, in perhaps an accidental theme, Goetzmann’s narrative offers numerous examples of the inequalities wrought by financial systems, whether the medieval practice of “tax farming” or the speculative schemes floated by a well-known Founding Father. Of considerable interest is the author’s brief closing look at future possibilities for financial regimes, such as a sovereign wealth fund to bolster some version of social security.
For the numerate and fiscally wonky, an accessible survey that does a fine job of reallocating past, present, and future.Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-691-14378-1
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
This blue-chip status report makes a substantive contribution to the growing body of literature of the pivotal role played by central banks in in the Global Village's financial affairs (see Marjorie Deane and Robert Pringle's The Central Banks, 1995). Former Forbes reporter Solomon's principal accomplishment is providing accessible briefings on how America's Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, Germany's Bundesbank, and lesser lights have dealt (by default) with a weary world's financial traumas over the past two decades. Cases in point include management of recurrent less-developed-countries (LDC) debt crises; coordinating exchange- rate policy to keep the value of key currencies in line with economic realities; and responding to 1987's cataclysmic stock market crash (which the author employs as a leitmotif throughout his text). While monetary authorities (who attempt to control the stability and supplies of money in their own countries) have proved adept in working together in emergencies, Solomon observes that their success at staving off disaster raises a wealth of vital issues, not the least of which is the accountability of independent technocrats whose preoccupation is containment of inflationary pressures, not job-creating economic growth. Also of concern is dominion over a volatile new order in which stateless pools of capital could at almost any time swamp a global monetary system that has lacked anchors to windward since the 1970s collapse of the Bretton Woods accord. Covered as well are the manifold failures of fiscal policy in a variety of industrial powers (notably the US), the importance of sound money to democracy, the odds on the EU's creating a supranational central bank, and the resourceful (albeit potentially ruinous) means by which political leaders seek to buy time for their reelection campaigns or other purposes. An on-the-money introduction to the financial fraternity's ruling class.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80182-5
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Slick, sunny-side-up profiles of 50 flourishing industrial enterprises. Some brief connective commentary apart, Jasinowski (president of the National Association of Manufacturers) and Hamrin (a freelance economic consultant) rely on anecdotal evidence to make their principal point: that American manufacturing has staged a remarkable, competitive comeback from its near-death experience during the 1980s. In addition, the achievements of every organization in their 50-company sample are attributed to one of ten paths to success: employee empowerment; training and retraining of workers; rewarding performance; exceeding customer expectations; envisioning new products and markets; going global; total quality management; achieving environmental excellence; speed and agility; and shaking up the organization. While the authors round up many of the usual world-class suspects as exemplars of latter-day excellence (Chrysler, Emerson Electric, Ford Motor, Intel, Motorola, Searle, and Xerox, to name but a few), they have showcased some less familiar outfits as well. Cases in point range from Great Plains Software through Johnsonville Foods, Kingston Technology, Remmele Engineering, Thermo Electron, and Wadia Digital. On the minus side of the ledger, the relatively rigid format Jasinowski and Hamrin use to present their summary case studies soon grows tiresome. Nor could all selections pass a cognitive-dissonance test. By way of example, the authors include happy-talk rundowns on USX-US Steel as well as three of the nimbler rivals (Chaparral, Nucor, Oregon Steel) that have poached on its traditional preserves in recent years. Although Jasinowski and Hamrin cover a handful of corporations that have made a virtue of environmental necessity, moreover, they stand mute on the score of those that may have overcome less edifying problems with product recalls, racial discrimination, or sexual harassment. The bottom line: These relentlessly upbeat vignettes of US business are to management guides what fast food is to haute cuisine.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-50756-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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