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Summary: Economics fro Dummies
Review: I know very little about economics, but this book makes everything quite straitforward. A fantastic tour de force of the economic mistakes and complete lies put forth by the Bush administration. Krugman also does a great job of discussing Enron and the California energy crisis (and the involvement of the Bush administration in both). Highly readable and intelligent.
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Summary: Good read
Review: This book is a good read for anyone with an open mind. America need to realize what is going on with the relationship between big business and politicians. It's a big game with the rich getting richer and the poor and middle class suffering like never before.
Krugman does a great job on the topics of Enron, the California energy crisis, world economics, and the Bush administration. It will open your eyes if you think our current leadership actually cares about every day Americans.
I actually liked the format of the three page editorial. It made for a quick read when I only had five to ten minutes for pleasure reading.
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Summary: The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century
Review: This book is brilliant, a thematically-arranged compilation of Paul Krugman's Op-Ed pieces written for the New York Times over the past 5 years, in addition to some newer writing. Presented as such, the op-eds give a clear, concise, and informative economic and political history of what has been going on in America and what is being done to Americans, behind closed doors, in the name of tax cuts for all, Medicare and Social Security reform, and liberty and justice. It is a fascinating read. David Harper's charge that Krugman has nothing good to say about Bush is nitpicking. What can we say? Well, let's see. Oh, yeah, Bush loves baseball, the great American past-time. I'm racking my brain but that's all I can come up with. Many Americans have been and continue to be duped by Bush and his administration and find it easier to accept his duplicity than to think for themselves. As Krugman states, thinking is hard work. Here, he has done most of it for us and has presented the truth, which is as plain as the nose on my face.
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Summary: Ab Uno Disceomnes--From One Thing Learn All
Review: I first read this book several months ago, and have had time to think about it and to refer to it periodically. At first I was disappointed. I expected a book of analysis on what has happened to the country under the Bush presidency. Instead, I found a collection of Mr. Krugman's columns. Because I already read his op-ed pieces every Tuesday and Friday for free on line in the New York Times, I felt a little cheated. But Mr Krugman is an economist, and getting paid twice for the same work is very economical, I guess. But as I read "The Great Unraveling" the technique grew on me, and I accepted the book for what it was. The introduction (pp 6-20) is truly compelling. Here Krugman introduces his readers to the concept of the "revolutionary power." He borrows the idea from Henry Kissinger's PHD dissertation "A World Reborn." He argues that the neocon movement the Bush Administration represents is such a power. These people do not play by established rules of conduct. Their values and goals differ from those of the established order. Krugman delineates the characteristics of such a movement from again borrowing from Kissinger's work. It was reminiscent of a conversation between Sean Connery as a streetwise Chicago cop and the idealistic Eliot Ness played by Kevin Costner. In the exchange the elder man tells Ness how he has to approach getting Capone Also, Krugman writes as an economist and not as a journalist; he makes this point early in the book. Because of his training as an economist he did not buy into the Bush campaigns statements about how they would meet government obligations and offer huge tax cuts at the same time. His professional training would not allow him to buy the oft cited equation in the book that 2-1=4. His training as an economist allows him to spring board into a broader discussion about areas beyond pure economics. An old friend of mine told me that though I was a complete failure that "I could always serve as a bad example." This is how Krugman studies economics, looking at bad examples, mistakes that have occurred in foreign economies so that he can predict what will happen in our country and in our economy. The book begins with an examination of bubbles in the economy--how the exuberance they create works to undermine economies. He talks about the bubble in the Asain Rim and ultimately in American high tech stocks. He explains the Ponzi scheme and how it applies to contemporary economics and why the feeding frenzy that ensues is often so irrepressible. He rues the role of Alan Greenspan in perpetuating the irrational exuberance that the tech rallies fomented. In the following section he takes on the crony capitalists--that group of beneficiaries of greed at Enron, Global Crossing, Adelphia, etcetera, explaining the reasoning for why CEO's plunged their companies into the abyss as they did. It involves stock options and cooking the books. The sections of the book are designed to follow different threads of this unraveling. In retrospect I realized that this was indeed the best way to watch something come apart--reports over time on a variety of topics. It is interesting to watch Krugman's thinking emerge. Also, it is interesting to watch that thinking evolve away from just economics and into the things that economics impacts--which is everything. He discusses the impact on health care, the Iraq War, terrorism, the treatment of veterans and of little people. There is a compelling quote in the book where Krugman questions whether Dick Armey and Tom Delay really believe the draconian free market solutions they espouse or whether they just "hate poor people." He talks about injustice to veterans--how the Bush administration tries to conceal benefits from them. Krugman, at bottom, is not an ideologue. He is interested in economic results. He attacks some of the arguments against globalization. He contrasts economists like Larry Summers and Larry Lindsay, showing how ideology can effect solutions. He states that sound economists, regardless of how they are labeled right or left, differ little in their assessments of conditions given sound information. He writes that the collapse of the Argentine economy had not so much to do with free market solutions as it did faulty monetary policy. Conversely, he shows that Sweden, while a highly taxed mixed economy, is doing very well--low unemployment and 4% growth. Mr Krugman is an "honest broker" who believes that he should report according to the best evidence, measure results and not ideological purity. As he does report, he watches those who do believe in ideological solutions press on in their great unraveling.
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Summary: NYT writer continues hypocracy
Review: It's one thing to personally dislike our current President. It's another to abuse journalistic freedom to distort the truth. Where oh where can people looking for a balanced view of current events find one? If that is what you want, run away quickly.
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Summary: Good book...but prob not understood by Repubs and Texans
Review: Great analysis and should be read for what it is, and NOT who it is targeted against. I find it a pity that certain reviewers right here on this page criticize the author of partisanship, when in fact this same reviewer also judges this literature on his/her partisan beliefs, and not on its own. I guess that is a style somewhat known as the GOP (or Texan) style, perhaps?
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Summary: Thank goodness for the character of criticism
Review: Paul Krugman can take heart should he ever scan these reviews. If you look at the one star reviews, you see things such as 'diatride' from a Texan reviewer. I would love to have my detractors try to spell words in public that they do not understand and manage to spell wrongly. Or consider the grammar of ' any NYT writer has 2 strikes against them'. 'Any' is singular, 'them', plural. So they do not agree in number. This is the kind of thinker I do not want to agree with me. Another careful man writes 'Why is Krugman an economist?' Perhaps because of his degrees in economics? The reviewer assumes he was a writer for the NYT and then dubbed an economist by the devil.
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Summary: Krugman exposes the lies of Bush better than anyone
Review: No other author uses such detailed economic argument. There is a reason that he gets under the skin of right-wingers more than their pet liberals on Fox News. The style and tone of this book is to state the misdeeds and outrageous policies of the Bush regime, and then calmly support the arguments with facts and figures. This book makes a great gift for any Bush voter in your life. Buy several copies!
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Summary: Its informative, but not that entertaining...
Review: This book puts many complex policy issues into simplier terms. Recognizing the Bush administration as a revolutionary force set to dismantle the New Deal reforms helps to put things in perspective. Once you realize that his goal is to privatize things like medicare and education by sabotaging them, much of the news starts to make sense. Krugman's book is a collection of columns, so there is alot of repetition, but that will help many readers understand complex issues that need a little repeating. I would recommend this book to someone who starting to realize that our current administration's motives are suspect.
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Summary: A totally dishonest diatride by a suspect NYT writer
Review: Noone should take seriously a NYT writer these days; least of all Mr. Krugman whose bias is well known. He is a party hack who repeats the false accusations (disputing some of his own remarks, actually) that we hear constantly from the militant Lefties (i.e, blaming Bush for the bursting of the stock market bubble that everyone knew would burst and which, in fact, began bursting in the year 2000 under Clinton.) He is hysterical enough to equate the Bush administration with the totalitarian regimes of the pre-WWII era. If you look back at his columns for the year, you will see that much of what he predicted has been proven false. Krugman is a party hack, putting out this book in time (he hopes) to influence the election. My advice is to stay away from partisan writers if you want true analysis. If you want both sides of the Krugman reputation, check out the Krugman Truth Squad articles on National Review Online. This column regularly points out his errors and lies.
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