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Content by Ross
Reviewer Rank: 14,128
Helpful Votes:
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Reviews Written by
Ross "fountain.blogspot.com" (Northampton, England)
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Timely account of the housing crisis, 11 Sep 2009
The boom and bust in the US housing market has had enormous implications for the world economy as a whole so it is useful to have a grasp of what caused it, how we can avoid doing it again and how not to respond.
The bust is easy to explain- house prices rises vastly exceeded gains in income, population or productivity so could not be sustained. A bust was inevitable, explaining the boom is the tricky part.
Contrary to popular dogma the boom wasn't fueled by 'deregulation' or the free market but was brought into being by the government interventions- whether in restricting land use or coercing banks to drop lending standards.
I won't attempt to rehash the entire book but Sowell looks at the impact of all the main players- the banks, the federal government, Fannie & Freddie and the regulators and explains how they each interacted to cause this failure. Unsurprisingly politicians come outparticularly badly.
The book probably was rushed out by the publishers soon after the crisis came to a head in late 2008 and early 2009, hence the awkward lack of numbered end notes (there is a chapter by chapter list of sources but it is much harder to cross reference). However the analysis doesn't really suffer because Sowell has been writing about aspects of the crisis for years before the actual crash.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A fairminded critique of the "politics of personal destruction", 3 Sep 2009
Lanny Davis is the former Special Counsel to Bill Clinton during the impeachment process, an experience that has undoubtedly influenced his perspective in `Scandal' where he denounces the culture by which reputations are destroyed simply by the appearance of wrong doing.
The history of what he terms "Gotcha" politics is traced from the vicious infighting of partisans of Hamilton and Jefferson during the early years of the republic, through the "gentleman's agreement" that followed- whereby personal lives were mostly off limits- to the re-emergence of mutually destructive politics in the tumult of the 1960s and 70s.
Davis is a Democratic party member and whilst he probably criticises Republicans more than his own side he clearly at least strives to be fair minded and doesn't claim that the sins of hyper partisan ship is limited to one side (he is probably the only Democrat I've read who acknowledges that the indictment of Casper Weinberger was flimsy and probably politically motivated and that the smear campaigns against Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas were disgraceful). In fact in one of the most effective passages he charts the rise & fall of the Special Prosecutor/ Independent Counsel- as he points out the use of legal fishing expeditions to try to create some kind of scandal didn't begin with Kenneth Starr investigation into the Clintons (which did catch Clinton perjuring himself which was serious in itself, but was an offence that occured purely because of the investigations into Whitewater and Vince Foster's suicide which were nonsense) but was inherent in the office from the moment of it's creation in the late 1970s to its abolition two decades later.
Usually the investigations generated a lot of innuendo but found nothing that could be used to prosecute anyone. Interestingly two victims who were prosecuted- the Reagan Labor Secretary Ray Donovan & the Clinton Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy- by Independent Counsels found the evidence against them so feeble that they didn't even bother to present their respective juries with defences and yet were still acquitted; such was the flimsiness of the case against them.
Towards the end of the book Davis offers some solutions to the Scandal culture, this is the least interesting part of the book as he seems to equate mushy centrism with civility. There is no reason why centrists should be more restrained than more ideologically driven politicians. Although his point about mainstream politicians having an obligation to call out the extremists on their own side.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting but flawed, 13 July 2009
I'll assume that most people reading this are familiar with Any Chua's basic idea of `Market Dominant minorities' and the hostility that they receive. When I first read this a few years ago I thought it was fantastic and explained so much. However rereading it recently I have doubts.
The phenomenon certainly does exist in much of the world, the overseas Chinese (of which her family is part) has achieved enormous economic dominance in much of East Asia and been the victim of mob violence repeatedly as a result over the course of many centuries. The Lebanese in West Africa, Indians in East Africa and Jews in Eastern Europe are also examples of ethnic minorities vastly out performing the indigenous population.
However there are some things that leave me unconvinced, Chua claims that these resentments are likely to be inflamed by democracy and free markets. It is certainly true that free markets exacerbate the differences but World On Fire gives examples of this kind of mob violence going back centuries, to well before the era of democracy. Some of the outbreaks of violence, such as the anti Chinese riots in Indonesia in 1998 were concurrent with democracy, but surely this is because the same forces that weakened the grip of the dictator, Suharto, weakened the states control of law and order.
Secondly she tries to fit the Market Dominant Minorities idea to too many conflicts, for example she emphasises that the Croats were much wealthier than the Serbs as a possible cause of the bloody Yugoslav wars. Yet Serbian nationalist propaganda and violence was initially directed to a much greater extent at the impoverished ethnic Albanians.
Thirdly think her concept needs refinement. Early in the book she refers to the violence against the Indians in Burma and in East Africa, interestingly though there wasn't a similar level of persecution of the whites, who were even higher on the economic ladder than the Indians. In Nigeria the Ibo suffered badly however the Yoruba, who are also quite wealthy weren't persecuted.
Thomas Sowell's concept of middleman minorities explains this better than Chua's idea. Sowell argues that the two factors which inflame particularly inflame resentment are when minorities act as economic middlemen and when they were once very poor but overtake the majority population economically. This refinement explains the outbursts of violence much better than Chua's idea in my opinion.
Lastly while the end notes demonstrate that she has been very broadminded and undogmatic about who she has used for the source material I do wonder whether there are quality control issues, particularly in the journalistic sources.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
How societies collapse, 6 July 2009
I must admit I preferred Diamond's previous two books, The Rise of the 3rd Chimpanzee & Guns, Germs and Steel, even so this is a worthwhile book. More importantly it is an important book.
If Diamond's thesis, that the collapse of civilisations is often brought about by environmental degradation and that modern society is damaging the environment in such a way as to risk a global civilisational collapse, the the lessons of previously fallen societies is one which should be heeded.
Each section on older civilisations- both those that collapsed and those that survived is told in such a way as to be fascinating histories in themselves. Diamond has a knack of taking a small morsel of information about a society and using to illustrate larger and more profound points about a civilisation.
Whilst I am persuaded by about 90% of what Diamond says, I do have doubts about some aspects- for example he seems to use environmental alarmists like Paul Erhlich as sources of information, the chapter on Australia seems over wrought. Having said that he does directly address the likely criticisms and points his readers in the direction of dissenting voices too so this isn't really a complaint.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A thorough narrative and demographic history, 6 July 2009
This was published in 1998 prior to the descent into conflict that separated Kosov from the remnants of Yugoslavia. If this book had been read and understood the conflict might well have been avoided.
Unlike the history of the west where history appears to have a direction, with countries becoming freer and more prosperous over the centuries- as in the Whig interpretation of English history- Kosovo seems to have spent most of its history buffeted bewteen far more powerful entities.
Both Serbs and Albanians have perceived identies in which they are the permanent victims of a more powerful enemy. In reality both sides have been both oppressors and oppressees at different junctures.
The demographic myths of the Serbs have been particularly destructive in the last hundred years, the idea that Kosovo was the core of Serbia until the Albanians in conjuction with the Ottomans ethnically cleansed them has been pernicious and used to justify the mistreatment of the Albanians. As Malcolm shows both communities have lived in the province for centuries and their relative proportions have changed to and fro over the years.
In short this is a very informative study that illuminates much of the difficult situation.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Scott Adams, the greatest business guru since Drucker, 4 April 2009
A pithy explanation of how modern corporations work. I read this years ago and was about to give my copy away, but decided to have a last look at it and I'm glad I did.
The idiocies of modern management are dissected in prose, cartoons and woth the aid of true stories sent in by Adams' readers.
The style makes the Dilbert Principle a wonderful book for dipping in and out of for five minutes at a time and is thoroughly recommended.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Alright, nothing more, 2 April 2009
This is a history of the failed operations conducted by Western Intelligence agencies, Britain's SIS in particular, to infiltrate agents into the USSR in the immediate post war era.
The books starts off with the background of SIS's involvement in anti-Bolshevik activities from 1919 onwards, this was particularly interesting, arguably moreso than the main subject.
If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result then it has to be said that the SIS (aka MI-6) were insane. Over a period spanning more than a decade from the mid 1940s to the mid 1950s dozens of emigre agents from the Baltic states were dropped into the Baltic states with a brief to aid the anti Soviet resistance. In reality the whole operation was comprimised from the beginning so pretty much all the agents were arrested immediately and imprisoned. whilst false information was fed to Britain.
Although the book only covers the Baltic operation, this same process also happened elsewhere in communist occupied Europe as well as in North Korea and China during the same era, all with equally disastrous results.
The key lesson to be learnt is that the secrecy of the intelligence services can also shield them from outside expertise that can point out obvious errors and mistakes.
Red Web can be kind of repetitive, because of the grim inevitablity of the fate that awaits each Estonia, Latvian or Lithuanian agent persuaded to spy for their country.
This was written in the late 1980s, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the release of declassified KGB documents so some of the information about the Soviet side of the operation might be thin compared to more recent accounts of communist Europe.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A tale of two men and two societies in conflict, 2 Mar 2009
Parallel biographies of mutual adverseries are quite common, with surprising commonalities emerging. In truth Crazy Horse and Custer don't appear to have had much in common other than being roughly the same age and becoming warriors.
Crazy Horse was a taciturn individual who comes across as being exceptionally serious minded whereas Custer was a outgoing calvalry officer who was prone to recklessness.
Custer's life and background is better documented because he lived in a literate society. He comes across as being relatively unconventional from childhood until his enlistment at Westpoint up until the outbreak of the American Civil War. His background and manners are typical of the era and social class in which he found himself. The war though offered opportunities for young officers to win extraordinarily quick promotion with a few well publicised successes, so this competent cavalry officer was soon over promoted to the rank of general. Where he became something of a national hero to a degree that outstrips what his actual successes merited.
His somewhat selfish attitude and reckless indiscipline were perhaps a reflection of this over promotion- it's hard not to be infuriated as he decides to leave his men for days at a time whilst he rode ahead to be with his wife or to laugh when he again leaves his men, in the middle of a march to go hunting buffalo and ends up inadvertantly shooting his own horse in the middle of nowhere.
Crazy Horse is a more impressive figure whose reputation was forged in skirmishes with other Indians and whose leadership skills constantly impressed his colleagues. He was sufficiently adaptable to win a series of fights against the whites up until his great victory at Little Bighorn. It's hard not to be impressed by the man, but regardless of his individual qualities the outcome was always inevitable given the disparities between the two societies.
And it is perhaps in the description of the two socieites that Ambrose really excels, the pre-industrial and disorganised Sioux could never hope to beat the demographic might and industrial power of the USA, however much the Sioux lifestlye is romanticised it was always doomed when faced with the power of a modern society.
Anyhow a vividly told story that avoids the jingoism that often blights Ambrose's works.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
One of the best accounts of pre 9/11 Osama Bin Laden, 8 Feb 2009
For a history of what Bin Laden was up to in the 1990s this is hard to beat. It begins with a brief outline of Bin Laden's background and his role in the Afghan resistance to the USSR (Contary to popular myth he was not funded by the CIA who primarily funded Afghans not Arabs), where he used his family wealth to become a kind of quartermaster for the jihadis heading to Afghanistan. There is little evidence that he actually did any fighting himself but the role gave him a vast array of contacts that enabled him to become the head of a global Islamist movement.
In the 1990s he launched an ever larger series of attacks against the USA, Miniter's case is that the inadequacy of President Clinton's response enabled Bin Laden's murderous campaign to continue unabated until the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. He makes with a strong command of the facts and an impressive array of interviews with key players.
As Clinton's record on terrorism was so abysmal any fair minded appraisal of his record will be beset by accusations of partisanship by Clinton supporters, but can anyone really defend his response to the first World Trade Center bombing, treating it purely as a criminal matter so that counter intelligence agencies couldn't share information? Or his refusal to even meet James Woolsey, directer of the CIA more than twice in his two year term? Clinton treated terrorism and foreign affairs as an afterthought at best a distraction at worst.
Miniter actually specifically defends Clinton against partisan accusations without basis- like the claim he did nothing, or that he only bombed Sudan and Afghanistan because of the impeachment hearings. He is also highly sympathetic to Richard Clarke, the Clinton era counter terrorism 'Czar' whose hostility to the Bush administration is well publicised.
Even so it is hard to arge that the response of his administration to the attacks that ran from late 1992 onwards was anything short of negligent.
The book is well written and each part of the story is told in an engaging manner and could probably stand alone as particularly good magazine articles.
The one criticism I would make is that Miniter should really have continued the story up to 9/11 rather than the end of Clinton's term, as that is a somewhat articial stopping point.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
The case for the prosecution, 2 Feb 2009
Weiner's main charge against the CIA isn't that it is a sinister all powerful organisation that controls the world for good or ill, but that it has repeatedly failed in it's basic tasks. The legend of the ll powerful CIA doesn't match the reality.
In order to this he has assembled an impressive set of subjects willing to speak on the record about the CIA's activities. His case is devastating as he charts the CIA's activities over the course of over half a century, from the coups in Iran and Guatamala, to the intelligence assesments on iraq's weapons programmes the incompetence is a recurring feature.
The major problem appears to be that successive administrations have been unsure of what they want the organisation to do and thus give it tasks to which it is ill suited or even worse allow it to operate with minimal supervision. Of all 17 CIA directors only two emerge with any real credit from this account.
The accounts of the Agency's early years in the Cold War is particularly well researched, with the retelling of the succession of failed field operations behind enemy lines that resulted in a stream of US agents being killed for no discernable intelligence beneft.
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