Rating: 
Summary: Finding balance
Review: This one guy keeps posting one star multiple times with the ugly deception and disguise. He says he is from NY on one message, and Philadelphia on another. Such is the pattern of lying idiots. I am going to counter that with two 5 stars for every one star this same guy posts.
Rating: 
Summary: Krugman Not A Very Good Forecaster
Review: Do you laugh or cry when reading stuff like this, a direct quote from one of the talentless hack's columns of last year:"I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society".
Rating:
Summary: Sweet Voice of Reason
Review: The sweet voice of reason once again casts its mysterious spell!
This is an absolutely marvelous book, would that veryone had read,and understood, it.
KW
Rating:
Summary: The "Dismal Science", minus the Science.
Review: MIT Economist, former Enron consultant, and New York Times jeremiad Paul Krugman is an angry man: for one thing, he's angry at what he perceives as a right wing Republican junta led by George W. Bush, who he contends has seized the White House and Washington as a 'revolutionary power' with contempt for representative Democracy. He's angry at Al Gore's defeat, and presumably the loss of the prominent position he doubtless would have played on a Gore economic team. He's angry at the stock market crash, angry at the stock market boom, angry at failures in corporate governance, angry at the expanding federal deficit. Metallica has nothing on Paul Krugman when it comes to being angry. "The Great Unraveling" is both mind-rippingly frustrating and elegantly instructive. The book is frustrating in that it is evident that we have lost Professor Krugman, a scholar who loved his subject and made it accessible to the general public, and that what remains is a partisan and pundit, a man stripped of credibility, reduced to churning out this collection of more than 100 columns from the New York Times that comprise the book. These columns, taken together, boil down to the same four arguments: 1) Bush is evil; 2) the Republicans are evil; 3) Privatizing Social Security accounts is Evil; and 4) Tax cuts destroyed the 'Surplus', and thus are, well, Evil. Why is "The Great Unraveling" instructive? Because it serves as a real-time account of an unraveling, alright---the unraveling of the mind of a once skilled and savvy economist, forced from analyzing economic events to scribbling out political spin. The two stars I've generously provided this screed stem from its use as a voluntary psychological study of the increasing derangement of a great mind. Krugman is obviously a gifted writer and, once upon a time, a precociously talented economist with a knack for explaining complex ideas in cogent layman's language. And to Krugman's credit, the book is well written, and teems with charts and graphs and statistics, marshalled and quartered to support Krugman's central thesis: that the Bush administration is "bad economics wrapped in right-wing politics", and that the end result will be a country rife with growing inflation, a massive budget deficit, and declining growth rates. But isn't this all familiar? Doesn't this feel like deja vu? It should, because it's the same argument Krugman advanced in his 1991 book "The Age of Diminished Expectations", in which he contended that increasing budget deficits (all Reagan and Bush I's fault, naturally) would cause the American savings rate to fall, investment to plummet, and growth to fall and ultimatley stagnate. In that tome, Krugman argued that the good times were gone for good, but that Americans would condition themselves to accept diminishing expectations. None of that happened. In spite of Krugman's panicked fulminations, foreign investment, judiciously applied business tax credits, and a cut in the capital gains tax, coupled with American companies that emerged lean and mean from the merger-driven eighties, bolstered U.S. economic efficiency, boosted growth, and drove U.S. investment to the highest levels in history. But being an economist is lonely, thankless work, and the worst of it is that taking a stand and making a forecast means, inevitably, that you leave a paper trail behind when you're wrong. That said, Krugman hasn't learned his lesson, and his new arguments are oldies---but not goodies. And in the face of Krugman's dire warnings, current events have already proved him wrong. Consider: 1) Krugman argues that the series of Bush tax cuts decimated the 'Clinton Surplus', and sparked the 2000-2003 recession. But the recession started in the last quarter of 2000, well before Bush was inaugurated. Similarly, the stock market began to plunge in March of 2000. 2) Krugman is nominally a Keynesian, but only if a Democrat is in the White House. Keynesian theory argues that in a recession, loose monetary policy is called for---cut taxes and spend like crazy. Yet in the face of a recession made worse by the 9/11 attacks, Krugman would have the President's economic team *raise* taxes and *cut* spending, a recipe that would have curtailed investment and tightened the money supply. In other words, Krugman criticizes Bush for doing the very things that a good Keynsian (the Keynesian Krugman used to be) would do to stave off a recession. 3) Krugman blasts the Bush Administration for currying favor with big business---like Enron---by pushing for business-friendly loopholes. He's right to call for corporate governance reform, but it's hard to take his tirade on Bush's Enron connection seriously, given that in 1998 he was a paid Enron consultant (taking in more than USD 50,000 per year from the firm) and a member of Enron's Outside Advisory Board of Directors. Moreover, contrary to Krugman's analysis, for all Enron's political donations, the Bush White House did nothing to save the firm. 4) Finally, with year-to-year growth in 2003 projected at 5.7%, unemployment falling (at its worst we flirted with 6%, half that of most Western European countries), profit margins at their highest (13.7%) level since 1997, and stock markets roaring again (as of this writing, the NYSE is up 33% since April and the Nasdaq up 70% since October 2002), it's obvious that Krugman is just whistling in the wind. Krugman's book is that most dangerous of works, a disingenuous political broadside masquerading as economics. To those who want to read the book as an inside account of a once fine economist's fall from grace, fine; but to those who want to learn about how the country's economy works, and how government can be used to stave off both inflation and recession, "The Great Unraveling" is worse than useless.
Rating: 
Summary: the debate begins
Review: Mr. Krugman contrasts the "heady optimism" of the '90s with the putative failures of the Bush administration -- as if the whole downturn began precisely at 12:00:01 a.m. January 01, 2000. (I suppose this shouldn't come as a surprise given his political bent.) But is this really the case? History shows that great downturns occur after periods of huge increases in the money supply -- and money supply rose at an unprecedented rate during the Clinton years. Was the "great prosperity" real during what is now referred to as the "bubble years"? Likewise, was there really a "miracle economy" or was it in fact something else? Nobody will accuse the Bush administration of overachieving when it comes to the economy. But perhaps reader Miranda comes closer to the truth by laying responsibility on both parties. When were the Enron and Worldcom frauds actually being perpetrated, anyway? The fact is, the seeds for this decline were planted in the '90s. That is no political statement, merely fact. Snickering at natural economic cycles and forces -- as was done in the previous decade, as well as the 1920s -- is a recipe for future failure. My own book, Only in America, dealt with "unraveling" years before it occurred. (I wrote it during the start of the Great Bull Market). I won't spend any more time plugging it, except to say that its last chapter gives a "reasons why" economic preview of the unraveling to come -- a preview that is now coming to pass. John Soltez,
author
Only in America
Rating:
Summary: Sobering! Truthful!
Review: I consider myself a moderate and I know for a fact that Bush Administration is far from being moderate. Bush might appear 'moderate' with his not-so-great communication skills, and he may speak of 'compassion', but the list of his agenda takes me by surprise everytime he announces his plan for something. I can't even count how many times my heart just stopped when he would announce something I wasn't prepared for. For the sake of my well-being, it's time for him to go back to his range in Texas.
Rating:
Summary: Book analysis
Review: Great observations about where we were, are at, and most frightening, where we are headed. The media isn't telling you the numbers, read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Oustanding
Review: It is a shame that Krugman, a first rate economist, MIT grad, and award winning professor at Princeton will be excorciated by the right as shrill and hackneyed. He is none of those things, nor is his book. The book is an investigation of the economic collapse of America since 2000. It is a 'liberal' book only so far as Krugman can point to the policies of the adminstration which have gotten the US to the point of economic collapse. And he wield numbers mightily. It is his own homework, his own number crunching, his own math based on the economy that leads him to his conclusions. The book does not rely on his opinions of the people that he likes and does not like, so it's difficult to compare it to a Coulter or Franken book. The book is important and outstanding. It should be required reading for every one of the 3,000,000 Americans who has lost a job in the past three years. It is an argument against supply side economics and deficit spending of the best calibre.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling! there is so much truth to the book.
Review: Any thinking person knows that *fair balance* in the political system is a necessary requirement for Democracy. The mark of a responsible leader is to consider all sides before making careful decisions on where the country needs to go. And that requires being open-minded which comes from a great deal of humility. Mr Bush, a self-cliamed *gut-player*, relies heavily on his instincts. He is a leader who sees everything as either good or evil, thus unable to see any shades of grey. He sees himself divinely inspired so he believes he can't go wrong. In a fair sense, he is not someone who would betray his conscience. But neither is Bin Laden? Is he right because he believes what he did was good? What about all those religious leaders( Christians and non-Christians) of the past, who have made such horrible crimes, all in the name of God? Can we forgive them because they believed what they were doing is right? I am much more willing to forgive a leader for not being intellectually competent, as long as he has the humility to listen to all sides, and the wisdom to realize men are fallible. Paul Wolfwitz, Donnald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney make up the *core* whom Mr Bush DOES listen to. The problem is that all these men are right-wing extremists. Wolfwitz, Rumsfeld have been calling for Iraq invasion for a decade(well before 9-11). Justification, they said, was for the national security. I am surprised non of these men thought of going to Afghanistan, the haven for terrorists, to get Bin Laden. And as far as I can see, and contrary to the poll, Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. The most critical danger, we face in modern world, is not some nations with visible boundaries. The cold war is over. But the danger has not receded. The new danger is from extreme groups operating without national boundaries. We need international co-operations to fight these. Instead, our leader ailenated our traditional allies, and roused more hatred among many extreme groups around the world. If there is a new attack on us, it won't be missiles flying from some rogue nation. It will be terrorists smuggling WMD(yes including nukes), into us. And our leader is calling for missle defense system which would cost hundreds of billions if not trillions. Mr Bush lives in cold war era. He hasn't waken up to the true danger. He keeps spending tax dollors on some imaginary dangers( Iraq&missle defense), while the national debt keeps rising at an alarming rate.( As it stands now, we would need to spend $400-500 billion annually just on interest payment to keep the overal debt from rising)
Rating:
Summary: The book the neocons don't want you to read.
Review: ... The Introduction in particular is a must-read. Krugman makes the case that America is under attack from within. Right-wing extremists have hijacked America, and these people will go to any length to expand their power and remake America to their liking. Unfortunately, "their liking" is a pretty dismal place -- think Brazil without the samba. Most of the book is a collection of Krugman's best NY Times colummns over the past three years. He has a rare talent for making economics easy to understand and even interesting. More important, Krugman shows us where America is likely to head if we stay on the present course. Trust me; you don't want to go there.
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