A Short History of Financial Euphoria (Whittle) (Paperback)

by John Kenneth Galbraith (Author)

Textbook Details
* Paperback: 128 pages
* Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (July 1, 1994)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0140238565
* ISBN-13: 978-0140238563
* Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.5 inches
* Shipping Weight: 1.4 ounces
* Rating:

Textbook Description
World-renowned economist Galbraith, the bestselling author of The Affluent Society, reviews great speculative booms of the last three centuries, including the junk-bond follies of the 1980s. With wisdom and wit, he shows how the lessons of history can help us avoid financial calamity. “Entertaining in its instructiveness.”

A Short History of Financial Euphoria Review
This book explains how bubbles develop and crash; it was written in 1990 and it foretells our current mess. It is well written, prescient and ironic. It is worth reading now as is his book on the crash of 1929. The small book is written in simple terms without complex theory –his point is that bubbles are driven by greed –they are predicitable and tied to human nature. Regrettably, they can not be regulated away. Too bad we all did not read this before this current disaster.

How appropriate this book is, given the recent real estate bubble burst. It is a short study of the historical bursting of bubbles. John Galbraith is a renowned economist, and admits he can’t predict when bubbles will burst, just that they will. The language you hear during the upward trend of bubbles is exactly the same – that “it” will never go down. People get into a frenzy or euphoric state and ignore that fact that the bubble will ultimately burst, as it always does. This book was written prior to the Stock Market crash of 1987, the dot com era, the more recent real estate bubble, which ultimately is the root of our current economic woes. This was a very quick read and I enjoyed it tremendously. A friend of mine lent me his copy to read a few years ago, and the recent crash of the real estate market led me to remember how much I enjoyed the book that I bought it for myself to reread.

A brief interesting, dare I say entertaining trip through the idiotic financial euphoria of the past…boy am I glad we aren’t that stupid anymore, he said sarcastically. Tulip Mania and the South Sea bubble provide two of the cautionary tales. Of course, these idiotic things only look idiotic after sobering reality smacks investors in the face. Indeed one of the sure signs of euphoria is the absence of public doubters. Galbraith’s short little book poses a significant challenge for purveyors of the Rational Market theory. If markets are rational, how can the bottom fall out of the market in a panic?

The last page of Galbraith’s book denotes that the mania of financial speculation always recurs and is inescapable in human history (P.110). Economists and policy-makers usually attribute the cause of a financial debacle to external influences such as ineffective regulatory mechanism to contain bubble-led investment activities and weakening in economic growth (P.85). By reviewing the major financial debacles of the last three centuries, Galbraith researches on common features of financial debacles of the last three centuries, Galbraith concludes that there are at least two key factors that trigger the debacle: the extreme brevity of the financial memory and the specious association of money and intelligence (P.13). This book is not lengthy but presents all classic cases since the 17th century including tulipomaina in Holland, Banque Royale in France, South Sea Company in England, and spectacular financial debacles in the US. To Galbraith, people have a very brief financial memory of no more than 20 years (P.87) This 20-year cycle from illusion to disillusion makes them forget lessons of the past and continue to invent highly-leveraged financial instruments without self-scrutiny and sanity. Moreover, people blindly believe that money is the measure of the intelligence that supports it (P.14). They applause acolytes of speculation and exclude any adverse opinion in order to justify the circumstances that can make them rich when a mood of optimism and excitement pervades in the financial market. The Schiller’s dictum of crowd insanity has been inherent in human history for centuries (P.5). The renowned scientist Issac Newton has remarked that he can measure human motion but he cannot measure human folly. This book was published in the 90s but Galbraith’s insights of financial insanity are still relevant to institutional and individual investors nowadays who tend not to be a scapegoat of the next financial crisis.

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The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Hardcover)

by Annette Gordon-Reed (Author)

Textbook Details
* Paperback: 800 pages
* Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; 1 edition (September 17, 2008)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0393064778
* ISBN-13: 978-0393064773
* Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
* Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
* Rating:

Textbook Description
This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently.

Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family’s dispersal after Jefferson’s death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings’s siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson’s wife, Martha. The Hemingses of Monticello sets the family’s compelling saga against the backdrop of Revolutionary America, Paris on the eve of its own revolution, 1790s Philadelphia, and plantation life at Monticello. Much anticipated, this book promises to be the most important history of an American slave family ever written.

Historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed presents this epic work that tells the story of the Hemingses, an American slave family, and their close blood ties to Thomas Jefferson.

The Hemingses of Monticello Review
Thoughtful best describes Gordon-Reed’s treatment of the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings relationship. The most important aspect of this work is her research of the attitudes and behaviors prevalent after the Revolutionary War. It is very easy for one not familiar with that timeframe (and how could we be, as it was two hundred years ago) to assign “Victorian” bias to an inter-racial relationship. The author’s thoroughness in explaining and identifying morals and ideas of the post-revolutionary era, as well as European/French laws and philosophies, allows the reader to understand the basis of how this relationship was created and endured for 38 years. She is not critical of either party, even Jefferson, who ensured his career was not jeopardized by never formally acknowledging his mistress or his children. All of this takes place during “heavy” political times for Jefferson. The Hemings family history is exciting and very unusual for it’s day. This is a great book.

Annette Gordon-Reed has written a captivating piece of history about the Hemings family, about the way they were inexorably intertwined with the Jeffersons well before the Sally story, about the feel of what it meant for slaves like the Hemingses to live in Virginia and in other places like Paris and Philadelphia. For me, the most interesting aspect of the book is the story of Sally’s brother, James. What abilities he had, what a rich life he led by the standards of his time, what a right arm he was for Jefferson, what a conflict of identity he shouldered, and what tragedy and mystery defined the end of his life! The author has shed light on so much about the story of the two families, but another interesting aspect made crystal clear by her book as well, is to have to learn and accept what we do not know, what we will never know, such as James’s death, in other words, what is lost to history about that and so much else concerning slavery and the Founding Fathers.

This is a fascinating but too long and over detailed discussion of the Hemings family, owned by Thomas Jefferson, the man who told us “all men are created equal.” It is probably not fair to judge the lives of slaves from the Hemings family because they were, in the context of that society, always over privileged, having been the children of a black mother, Elizabeth Hemings and a white father, John Wayles. They were always house servants, some of them men were free to work for wages with Jefferson’s permission, one of them, James, became an accomplished French chef while Jefferson was our envoy to France, but they clearly remained slaves until late in Jefferson’s life, when he freed some of them. Sally Hemings was able to negotiate freedom for the children she had with Jefferson. And, of course, this tale cuts Thomas Jefferson down to size, a brilliant man who was nevertheless not true to his own rhetoric and who truly believed in white and male supremacy.

I bought “The Hemmings of Monticello” because of my interest in including both slaves and women in the history of the south. Revisionist history is necessary because of the current bias toward white patriarchy and the master class. While I do not accept that DNA proved a connection between Thomas Jefferson and the children of Sally Hemmings, I felt the book was worth a read. In the early chapters I found Annette Gordon-Reed to be a prosecuting attorney making a case using circumstantial evidence. Her insistence on presenting characters as family relatives filtered by modern day conceptions of family bothered and confused me. But her research was amazing. Toward the last third of the book I was comfortable with the author and her presentation of Thomas Jefferson. She allowed him to be the eccentric many-faceted father living on his mountain and trying to care for his extended family under difficult circumstances. My suggestion is to take this book at face value and not try to push it into areas where it does not belong. Trying to understand living as a piece of personal property is not an easy transition for the modern person. Understanding better the laws of colonial times for slaves, men and women was a gift Annette Gordon-Reed could provide especially well due to her background as an attorney. She deserves a prize for her incredible dedication to the subject and for breaking new ground.

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The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Kindle Edition)

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The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (Paperback)

by Thomas L. Friedman (Author)

Textbook Details
* Paperback: 672 pages
* Publisher: Picador (July 24, 2007)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0312425074
* ISBN-13: 978-0312425074
* Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
* Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
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Textbook Description
“One mark of a great book is that it makes you see things in a new way, and Mr. Friedman certainly succeeds in that goal,” the Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote in The New York Times reviewing The World Is Flat in 2005. In this new edition, Thomas L. Friedman includes fresh stories and insights to help us understand the flattening of the world. Weaving new information into his overall thesis, and answering the questions he has been most frequently asked by parents across the country, this third edition also includes two new chapters–on how to be a political activist and social entrepreneur in a flat world; and on the more troubling question of how to manage our reputations and privacy in a world where we are all becoming publishers and public figures.

The World Is Flat 3.0 is an essential update on globalization, its opportunities for individual empowerment, its achievements at lifting millions out of poverty, and its drawbacks–environmental, social, and political, powerfully illuminated by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree.

The World Is Flat 3.0 Review
Our world has come a long way, not just since the proverbial “beginning of time,” but in the last 20, 10, 5 and even 3 years since this book was first published. In “The World is Flat,” Thomas Friedman very consciensiously and enthusiastically paints a picture of the detailed landscape of the current world through the eyes of business, technology, cultural and social development. I have traditionally found the topics of globalization, outsourcing and economics dry and rather boring, but the author brings them to life and makes them relevant to each of our lives in a way that is truly captivating. There are countless examples of this in the book, from the impact of the usage of the personal computer to a creative lemonade salesman at a baseball game to Big Macs vs. pizza.
This book filled me with ideas, thoughts and concepts that I had never before imagined and I came away excited about the possibilities that exist in my own hands. I was really struck by the conversation about the urgent value for Americans to exercise their right brain: to do what you love, to invent, create, relate, express, empathize. The point Friedman emphasizes is: “Now that foreigners can do left-brain work cheaper, we in the U.S. must do right-brain work better.” This idea made me think of two other authors, Ariel & Shya Kane, who have had a huge effect on how I relate to my life and approach my personal well-being, and whose books also introduced concepts that also completely blew my mind.
The Kanes’ technology of Instantaneous Transformation, the phenomenon that occurs when you are truly present and directly engaged in your life and causes problems, stress, worry & fear to dissolve, is another contributor to the flattening of the world. They address the gap between the things that we do, learn and know and what it means to truly ‘be’: certainly a skill unique to each person in the world. If you enjoy “The World is Flat,” check out the Kanes’ books, Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment and How To Create a Magical Relationship. I HIGHLY recommend them all!

Thomas Friedman is at his enjoyable, engaging, and irritating best in this new book. This work is a continuation and expansion of the 1999 work, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree,” in which he describes and praises the forces of globalization. After the intervening years of focusing on the olive tree (terrorism and the politics of the Middle East), he once again turns his attention to the Lexus (technology and how it is interconnecting people and knowledge pools).
This book has all the stylistic quirks that make reading Friedman so irritating. The title, “The Earth is Flat,” is the new metaphor for globalization and interconnectedness. Even though “flatness” is a dumbed down metaphor for a complex process that is transforming the world, this book should not be dismissed as middle-of-the-intellectual-road equestrian excreta, as another reviewer has suggested.
The metaphor of flatness is used to explain the current phase of globalization. There has been a leveling of the playing field – sorry, another metaphor – in which countries such as China, India, and members of the former Soviet Union are entering the global economy. This means that another 3 billion plus capitalists will be competing in the global marketplace. Needless to say, this will have huge consequences for the industrialized countries of Europe, Japan, and the United States.

Well before I read this book a was a firm believer that outsource offered no benefits to the US, and it was simply taking jobs away. This book provided me with overwelming evidence that outsourcing is does have a negative effect in the short term, or long term only if you try to be resistent to the idea and that outsourcing should be seen as the a oportunity for to improve ourself as a country. But the problem lies in that fact that many US workers have simply become accustomed to the same jobs not wanting to improve or change and expect that the world would do the same. Outsourcing and globalization are coming and nothing and nobody will be able to stop it, resistance to change might delay it, but will not stop it, because it drivin by the ambition of human wanting a better life.

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The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (Paperback)

by Amity Shlaes (Author)

Textbook Details
* Paperback: 512 pages
* Publisher: Harper Perennial (May 27, 2008)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0060936428
* ISBN-13: 978-0060936426
* Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
* Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
* Rating:

Textbook Description
In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, one of the nation’s most-respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. She traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers and the moving stories of individual citizens who through their brave perseverance helped establish the steadfast character we recognize as American today.

The Forgotten Man Review
The Forgotten Man (TFM for short) is not a polemic. It is not an argument for a particular theory or economic interpretation of the Depression. Instead, the author steps back and lets the story tell itself. She has sifted through memoirs and contemporaneous accounts in order to carry the reader back into the mindset of the 1930′s. She focuses on a diverse selection of protagonists from that period, including opponents of Roosevelt like Andrew Mellon and Wendell Wilkie as well as members of Roosevelt’s “brain trust” like Paul Douglas and Rexford Tugwell. Note that in the context of that time, “trust” meant the same thing as cartel (as in anti-trust laws). Roosevelt was claiming that with his advisers he had cornered the market on brains. If so, then after reading TFM, my sense is that there was not much value in this particular monopoly.

Amity Shlaes: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression HarperCollins, 2007, 433pp. This is a remarkable book which will forever change your understanding of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s role and the lessons to be learned from government intervention. Amity Shlaes makes a compelling case that Hoover and Roosevelt actually lengthened the Depression. They did this, Shlaes argues, by following bad monetary policy, which further deflated the currency, and by raising tariff barriers, which broke up world trade and reduced economic activity everywhere. Shlaes makes the best case I have seen that business confidence is the key to economic expansion and that each step of the New Deal was a further blow to business confidence. She also explains the view of the pre-government control entrepreneurs and investors who had created an extraordinarily successful country prior to 1929. This is a superb book well worth reading, studying and then thinking about for a long time.