Rating: 
Summary: The Great Unraveling
Review: The only thing that is unraveling is the Liberal, Socialist death-grip which has held our country hostage for the past 40 years. Along with all of its concommitant social ills: divorce, illegitimacy, permissiveness, and a burgeoning welfare class of people with little hope for a brighter future. This is what happens when the government, i.e., liberalism, tries to solve problems. Most educated, clear-thinking people know that the Government is NOT the Economy in American, unlike in the collapsed Soviet Union and struggling China. The Economy is people getting up everyday and being the best they can be: starting businesses, solving problems and getting promoted at work, doing side businesses. In short, making money. The best thing the government can do is stay off of our backs. This is anathema to socialists like Krugman, Ivins, Thomas Friedman, and their ilk. The new century is indeed about an unraveling, but fortunately the unraveling is the damage caused by misguided socialist policies in the last half of the last century. Most people don't know that the Pilgrims tried it and almost starved to death. When they gave the members of the colony incentives to make money, the community flourished. They paid off their investors in less than five years after tossing socialism. This is the real story of Thanksgiving. So long lefties. Hello G.W. Bush and a return to market capitalism!
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Summary: More Clinton spin
Review: Yet another attempt to spin the blame of our current economic and international problems away from the Clinton administration. Someone should tell this idiot that Bush didn't come into office until 2001, well after the problems detailed in this book began. Clinton rode the benefits of the Reagen/Bush economic reforms and was lucky enough to leave office as his policies began to cause disaster. Slick Willy strikes again.
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Summary: Why is Krugman an economist?
Review: I do not know how this journalist became a "well-respected" economist. The book is a compilation of his New York Times articles, which, in turn, are re-processed ideas of liberal economists. This is the same person who thinks that a war could be good for the counry because it "stimulates" the economy. Economics is a very logical discipline; Krugman does not possess logic, but plenty of emotions. If you want a real economic book, buy something by Murray Rothbard or Ludwig von Mises.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Read for Progressives
Review: Loads of information available in the form of short articles. It's a great read for short, detailed, and informed analyses of a range of particular issues. There are particularly insightful views on a range of economic policies, the energy crisis in California, and corporate cronyism. Krugman shines a leader for progressives.
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Summary: Wouldn't waste my money....
Review: This is book is a load of crap. Just a bunch of Liberal views, and Bush bashing from another Clinton social-intern. The people who love this book are Liberal sheep who believe the Government is there to provide for them. This guy writes for the New York Times, and HE says the media is biased. You gotta be kidding me! Don't waste your money folks. There's better reading on Highway billboards..
Rating: 
Summary: Krugman goes under the economic covers
Review: All-in-all, I'm not a big fan of compilations. Flow seems to be at issue in most of these works however, Paul Krugman's new book, THE GREAT UNRAVELING, is a compilation of his NY Times columns on the economic state of the U.S. that definitely has flow. A little background...Krugman was an Ivy League economics professor thought to a brilliant new mind whose efforts in the academia literary field were anxiously awaited. However, Krugman turned out to be a bit too good as a writer and become the author of several erudite books and treatises. After his name became better known in economic and business circles, he was approached by the NY Times to write a daily column RE: economics and business. The ostensible thought was the Times was looking for a well-rounded paper, one covering the mundane (read: economics) as well as the contemptible (read: politics). However, as has been the case for decades, economics and politics make strange but constant bedfellows and the rest, as they say, is history. Professor Krugman's writing style is anything but boring; rather, his style flows like a sledgehammer, beating the drum of whatever subject matter stokes his inner fire. During the last presidential election, his star moved out of the economics arena and solidly into the political arena as he acquired a large contingent of daily readers savoring every last word in his less-than-admiring treatment of candidate Bush. This, as anyone who has read Krugman, is an profound understatement. As a compilation of columns, THE GREAT UNRAVELING points the finger directly at GW Bush, for most every ail the U.S. has endured. (Reviewer note: while I don't agree with all of Mr. Krugman's blame-laying, he does paint a fairly logical and rational case. However, he should take walk down the street and see our man at the Fed for the remainder of his vociferous lambasting.) The upside of this outcry is that it isn't Michael Moore. At the very least, Prof. Krugman's passion is solidly entrenched in intelligence. This simple fact has caused great consternation at the White House (having Michael Moore after you is laughable; having Paul Krugman after you is daunting). The typical foe of the current administration is woefully uninformed about economics; not so with Krugman. Consequently, the threads became more based in truth than opinion (as it related to the economic effect of various policies). THE GREAT UNRAVELING includes a generous variety of his columns reflecting his view of the Bush era developed between 2000 and the present. In the beginning, he appears nothing more than "miffed" by the Bush administrations "voodoo" math to validate and justify his tax-cut, and SS/MC proposals. Although not nearly close to enough, he meekly makes a stab at Greenspan for adjusting his economic analysis to "fit the political needs of the new president." To this end, he offers several very public examples of this "good 'ol boy" system. As time evolves, Krugman admits that he begins to see the bigger picture of ostensible corrpution and manipulation. One of his soapbox diatribes? "...the efforts of an economic elite to expand its privileges." To this end, Krugman hones his trade and does it quite well. The supreme question one may ponder when reading this book is how was Krugman able to read between the lines? Plain and simple: his intellect and education as an economist enabled him to see what most journalists couldn't. He was able to understand the oft times inane and super-complex economic theories, which are the cogs in the machine called the U.S. economy. He was able to perform his own math and consult with colleagues (economists, not journalists). This, in and of itself, made Krugman's take "more" valid and thoughtful. And, to Krugman's credit, some of his earlier warning have proven to be quite true. For instance, the tax cuts have not been paid for by an expanding economy. To the contrary, they, along with the money-printing Fed, have plunged the U.S. into deficits that could spiral the U.S. economy into oblivion. Journalism is reluctant, however, to make much of an effort to find out who will benefit if a given candidate wins, and who will lose out. Instead of providing this valuable information, the media tend to explain politics in terms of high-sounding ideological piffle about a "conservatism" and a "liberalism" which have very little pertinence to anything of consequence to the voter. The result is to deaden public interest in politics by diverting the mind from the fact that there is real money at stake. While THE GREAT UNRAVELING will be seen by many as nothing more than another left-wing slap at the current administration, we have to remember the basic tenets the author operates under. This is not a Michael Moore or Ann Coulter expose; this is written my a ballyhooed economist, one with an erudite knowledge of the U.S. economy and the effects of various policies on its lifeline. Politics are intangible like personalities. Economics is concrete like intellect. Read this book with an open mind and I can almost guarantee you'll come out with a new appreciate AND understanding of the hurdles and gauntlets we, the American people, face today...and will face for many years in the future.
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Summary: Great Companion to his Columns
Review: I've been reading Krugman's column in The New York Times the past couple years, and naturally I eagerly awaited the release of this book. I devoured it in 48 hours, and I am happy to announce--in disagreement with some of the less enthusiatic reviewers below--that yes, it is excellent. Krugman's The Great Unraveling joins Bill Bonner's Financial Reckoning and Maggie Mahar's Bull!: A History of the Boom as one of my three favorite investing/economic history books out in 2003.
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Summary: The truth, there for any who would look
Review: Krugman's collected collumns offer a reader a breath of fresh air and simplicity. His thesis is a simple one, that the press either cannot understand or is to lazy to realize the effects of the policies of the Bush White House. Whatever you think about Krugman's decidedly and unapologetic left leaning slant, his arguments cannot and should not be ignored. For example President Bush came into office arguing for a big tax cut tilted towards the wealthy as a remedy for a large surplus. As the economy slowed and the surplus faded, it morphed into a remedy for a recession, even though many of its largest items, like ending the inherittence tax, have no stimulus value. Moreover, Krugman charts a disturbing habbit of bait and switch retoric from the White House. For example, the continual use of 9/11 as a basis for the Iraq War leading to a majority of Americans believing Sadam was behind the attack even though the President when cornered admitted that Iraq had nothing to do with it. Or the continual insistence that the tax cut targets the middle class despite all the evidence to the contrary. Krugman's work, more than anything else, is a cry for honesty from the white house and for the press to get up and actually do their job.
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Summary: An economic view of the imperial presidency
Review: If you think things are bad in Iraq, you might want to check out how things are going on the home front, economically speaking, that is. What is unraveling is the nation's economic health. What we are looking at, according to Princeton economist and New York Times Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman, is not only an emperor without any clothes, but a nation being burdened with so much debt that it is ready to crash upon the rocks of a hard economic reality to come. There are about a hundred and fourteen columns, the earliest of which is dated December 29, 1997, the latest March 25, 2003, organized into sixteen chapters comprising five parts. The columns, almost all of which first appeared in the New York Times, are arranged more or less chronologically within each of the sixteen thematic chapters. For each of the five parts Krugman has written an introduction especially for this volume. What Krugman attempts to do is: Part I: account for and assign blame for the economic bubble and its collapse; Parts II and III: document the redistribution of the nation's wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich by the Bush administration; Parts IV and V: assign responsibility for the negative aspects of globalization and for the frequent collapse of markets in foreign countries, and speculate on where we might be headed. (By the way, "Is that Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?/Seems like I've been down that way before." --Bob Dylan) His targets are Bush, Bush and more Bush, of course, but also Alan Greenspan for acquiescing in Bush's Rob the Future Economics, but most pointedly he goes after the mass media, especially broadcast journalists for their failure to report candidly on what Bush and his cronies are up to. Krugman feels, as I do, that the failure of the Fourth Estate is one of the reasons that Bush's attack on the environment, our pocket books, and our civil liberties is succeeding. Bush has bullied the media into presenting the news in a way that obscures his attack on America and what America has always stood for. This is no exaggeration. Krugman's indictment likens the Bush leadership to that in so-called banana republics (see page 187), and I have to say, he makes a good case. Krugman is thorough; he is incisive and, for an economist, welds a most colorful pen. I would recommend in reading this book that you skip the first part and turn directly to the chapter "Crony Capitalism, USA" on page 101 and learn about the insider stock trading and other shady deals of one George W. Bush, now president of the United States, and how a failed businessman might became rich. Krugman makes the point that Bush got away with insider trading and other shady dealings because nobody would prosecute him since the potential prosecutors were all friends of his father who was then president of the United States. Or better yet don't read any of this: it will destroy any illusions about free market capitalism in the United States you may have. You will be offended. You will be outraged. Krugman even goes as far as to characterize Bush's faith-based economics as a deliberate Ponzi scheme in progress in which he takes money from the future and gives it to the present in the hope that things will remain rosy enough so that he will be reelected. Even more to the point is the transfer of funds from the poor and the middle class to the rich (Krugman identifies them as people making over about $300,000 per year) to be doled out for many years to come in the form of a "supply side" tax break costing hundreds of billions, perhaps even a couple trillion dollars. So who's minding the store? Not Bush and his administration. They feel that the store is a public commons that they need to exploit as much and as fast as possible before another administration gets in. The purpose of the Bush administration as revealed in these pages is really nothing more and nothing less that this redistribution of wealth. Bush apparently believes that this is God's will and he is God's instrument in bringing about this massive stealth. In a sense, the folksy George W. is actually a Robin Hood in reverse. His technique for handling a docile public is to lie to them and manipulate them, pretend to be a populist while constantly pushing an economic agenda that siphons off as much of America's wealth as he can get his hands on into the big gas tanks of his elite circle of relatives, friends and cronies. In a nice summation of the George W. technique, Krugman writes: "Mr. Bush has made an important political discovery. Really big misstatements...cannot be effectively challenged, because voters can't believe that a man who seems so likable would do that sort of thing." (p. 196) Until I read this book I was among those voters. It seemed incredible that the President would just lie to us and carrying on as if there were nothing amiss and then lie to us again, and again. Amazing, but such tactics work. However, as someone once said you can fool some of the people some of the time...but eventually you get found out. I hope Bush gets found out before November, 2004. Four more years, if Krugman's prognosis is anything close to correct, could be more than this venerable republic can afford.
Rating:
Summary: A Vital Read
Review: An incredibly important, well-reasoned and fact-based account of the end of the peace and prosperity of the 1990's. A must read for anyone concerned about the current situation in our country.
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