Review: Bad Samaritans–The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback

Bad SamaritansSpeaking truth to power, helpful revisionism, February 22, 2008

Ha-Joon Chang

While other books (linked below) have focused on the evils done in our name, this is the first book I have seen that dissects economic history in order to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the current regime that bullies lesser developed countries with the IMF-WTO-World Bank interlocking conditionalities.

The author comes down solidly in favor of protectionism, foreign investment controls, state-owned enterprises, avoidance of privatization, not allowing patents to clash with the public interest, the need to defy the marketplace and respect the role of manufacturing, and the influence of culture (and changing the culture through government direction).

This is a nuanced book that trashes the neo-liberals while speaking truth to power. On any given prescrption, the author will say “it depends” and avoid leaning to one extreme over another.

He touches on democracy as not necessarily good for developement, and corruption not necessarily bad.

Other books that I respect as much as this one:
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System
Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism
The Pathology of Power – A Challenge to Human Freedom and Safety
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People

See also my varied lists.

Review: Bloomberg by Bloomberg

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

BloombergSuperb, self-effacing, common sense, deeper insights into the company, January 11, 2008

Michael Bloomberg

I bought this book on 1 January when news first came out of the University of Oklahoma “bipartisan” gathering, but I did not have a chance to read it until this week. I went to Oklahoma, only to see this good man embarrassed by a truly rotten press conference that invited mockery. My three page trip report is at Earth Intelligence Network.

I'm going to summarize what I learned from this book,and then conclude with an observation on how Bloomberg could go to the next level while simultaneously cleaning up our government and educating the 5 billion poor free, one cell call at a time.

There is absolutely nothing in this book that is conceited or self-serving. This is straight talk from a hard worker, an Eagle Scout at a very young age, an ethical businessman, an inspired information entrepreneur. This is an honest worthy book I wish I had noticed sooner.

The author lived in a one-room studio apartment for his first 10 years, working 12 hours a day as a matter of routine, not counting his early morning jogging, where he says he gets his most creative thoughts.

It certainly helped that he had a $10M termination payment from his first job, but this book positively lights up around the combination of open workspace, open mind, how to create a company on the fly, fully integrating customer views, ignorning banks and other pyramidal consultants. The author discovered the “power of us” a quarter century before Business Week did its cover story on this topuc, 21 June 2005.

What I was not expecting, and what made the book riveting for me, is the complete well-paced coverage of how the author realized he could monetize financial data, then information about the people behind the data, and then information on the politics behind the people.

A few of my fly-leaf notes:

+ Build from scratch, don't buy over-priced companies or capabilities.

+ Trust me, or go out the door.

+ Do'ers with fires in their belly make for a great team

+ Pioneered compact low-cost workstations with English buttons

+ Excelled at rapid prototyping where good intention was better than any business plan

+ Really superb overview of how numbers can lie, how dangerous an automated numbers game can become

+ Outsiders do what's asked; insiders do what's needed.

+ Superb vision for the future of the hand-held cell phone as the single device, he knew this long before Eric Schmidt came along to help Google.

+ Corrects my long-standing mis=hearing of Marhsall McCluhan's book title, The Medium is the Massage (not Message, that was a separate quote)

+ Really excellent stories aabout how hard Bloomberg had to fight to be accredited both in Washington DC and in Tokyo as a legitimate news organization

+ “Ignorance and arrogance are a deadly combination.” I wish he had realized Oklahoma would be a dead end–bi-partisan is code for keeping the two-party spoils system. Transpartisan is where its at, visit Reuniting America, 110 million strong and growing. See the definitive book on the death of the two parties, Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.

+ I agree with his view that computers should not be allowed in the classroom throughout elementary school.

+ Throughout the book, it is clear the author knows what I learned from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both personally and through his book, Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy, Change is Hard. Specificially, big change takes 25 years (I am in year 18 of reforming secret intelligence and creating public intelligence, he is now in year 1 of reforming democracy and saving the Republic as well as moral capitalism).

+ The chapter on Management 101 is decent, sensible, and worthy of study.

+ I've spent hard time trying to do digital innovation, and the details in this book just blew me away as I followed the innovations the author led back in the 1980's when CIA tasked me with creating a “smart desktop” for clandestine operations. Had I known then about this man, I would have gone to his doorv and offered to help him put CIA out of business. There is still time.

I put the book down with both a feeling of pain–the Oklahoma debaacle should never have happened–and hope. This author embodies three big ideas: moral informed capitalism, honest informed self-governance, and educational reform.

I have three ideas I offer to anyone who can reach the author, I do not believe the book I created for him (Democracy 2008, see it at Earth Intelligence Network) was delivered to him by his staff, one reason he got humiliated in Oklahoma.

Idea #1: Fund a global “True Cost” project within the Natural Capital Institute's rapidly growing World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER). Get Paul Hawkins in to energize everyone, and become the Moody's for true cost information (e.g. designer T-shirts with 4000 gallons of water, water bottles whose plastic required more water to make than is contained in the bottle, etc). This will change markets within 2-3 years, especially since ScanBack would allow Bloomberg to deliver this information to end-users via their cell phone at the point of sale.

Idea #2: Forget about running for President. It's a lousy job. BE the virtual president, forming a Transpartisan Sunshine Cabinet (Senators Nunn and Graham should be respectively Defense and Intelligence), and leveraging True Majority and Reuniting America to lead a national conversation firmly grounded in a balanced budget, on how to orchestrate $1 trillion a year in planning giving to eradicate the ten high level threats by harmonizing the twelve policies, while also creating the EarthGame to help the eight demographic challengers avoid our mistakes.

Idea #3: Examine Telelanguage.com and figure out how to register and put online 100 million volunteers who can use Skype, Telelanaguage, and their Internet connection to teach the 5 billion poor in any one of 183 languages, one cell phone call at a time.

The above will sound self-promoting, it is not. I have labored with 23 other co-founders to do Mike Bloomberg's staff work for the next decade, and if someone can get him to carefully consider these ideas, I give them to him freely. I don't need a job, but I do need a planet my three boys can grow up in, and I believe that if Mike Bloomberg stops trying to leverage political has-beens (with a few exceptions), and instead creates an architecture that can deliver public intelligence in the public interest, he will achieve his grand vision, faster, better, cheaper.

Thank you, those whom Dick Cheney has inspired into reading my non-fiction reviews. I never, ever, expected to be of service to the Nation in quite this way. If my reviews help us restore the Republic, of, by, and for the people, working with moral capitalists and leaders like this author and John Bogle (The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism then the author's unbridaled optemism could be warranted.

See also:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest

Review: The Complete TurtleTrader–The Legend, the Lessons, the Results

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Economics, Intelligence (Commercial)
Amazon Page

Michael Covel

5.0 out of 5 stars Was Going to Ignore, Then Could Not Put It Down

December 17, 2007

This book arrived in the mail with no letter. I normally do not read or review unsolicited books, but as I was deep into The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism instead of ignoring it I picked it up and it grabbed me.

This is a fine book, a tale well told with deep detail where there needs to be detail. My only thought as I put it down was, Wow! followed by another thought: what would it take to make Wall Street traders a force for good as John Bogle calls for in his own book?

If you want to be a trader in today's market where you buy on dips and sell on spikes, this book is as good as any.

Here are some others that in my view portend a bright future for moral capitalism and communal ownership:
The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives
Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All

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Review: The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

6 Star Top 10%, Capitalism (Good & Bad)
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 starsNobel Prize Material–Final Review
December 13, 2007
John Bogle

This book is a work of genius and integrity, with the potential to catalyze Wall Street into fulfilling the promise of moral capitalism and community ownership.

Here are some highlights from my flyleaf notes:

+ America is no longer an ownership society–financial intermediaries “own” everyting and the individual owners are passive

+ We can find the wisdom and will to restore moral capitalism

+ Earnings have been manipulated and misrepresented.

+ Executive compensation plus lax accounting and the fiction of quarterly earnings versus actual cash flow have hollowed industry out.

+ Profound conflict of interest exist across all fronts

+ Fund managers have siphoned off one fifth of the gross value of the funds.

+ Our business world chose the wrong bottom line, and ignored the importance of sustaining human, social, and community capital

+ Stock options aqre out of control.

Seven specific Conference Board suggestions:

1) Corporate citizenship

2) Separate ownership from management

3) Fix the stock option mess

4) Pay on performance not peers

5) Return to long-term focus

6) Let sunlight shine on accounting

7) New mindset for Board (aggresive stewardship)

Page 103: “Investment America went wrong, then, because in the contagious enthusiasm of the day, financial engineering and manufactured earnings became the coin of the valuation realm, accepted by corporate managers and investment managers alike. What is more, the emphasis on short-term price came to overwhelm the reality of long-term value, as investors failed to honor the distinction between investment and speculation drawn by John Maynard Keynes six decades earlier.”

In my view, this book, and three others, should comprise the Christmas reading list for all adults:
Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

I am personally committed to the non-violent legal ethical overthrow of the existing pathologically inept federal government and its politcal leaders in both Congress and the Executive who lack morality, intelligence, integrity, or conscience. Dick Cheney, not George Bush (a village idiot) is their poster child. I find it truly gratifying that a man of such financial stature as John Bogle now articulates and inspires the remorse that Wall Street must feel for running the Earth into the ground.

Below are other books I recommend as a reading list toward November, five about the bad, five about the promise:

The Bad (see my reviews):
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin

The Good (see my reviews):
The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

God Bless America. We can unite and fix this. Check out Reuniting America (Unity 08 is a fraud, the last gasp of the spoils system).

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Review: The Shock Doctrine–The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Corruption, Disaster Relief, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback
Shock Doctrine
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Easily one of the top ten on the death of the American dream

September 30, 2007

Naomi Klein

I read this book while crossing the Atlantic. The author has done something extraordinary, the equivalent of Silent Spring for industrial-era capitalism as an immoral form of human organization. This book is unique but also tightly linked to the books that I list below.

The conclusion of the book focuses on how Wall Street has discovered how to profit from mega-disasters and financial melt-downs, and contrary to popular belief, Wall Street makes money from these economic down-turns. It is the individual, and the indigenous owners who are forced to sell below market, that lose, every time.

The author's opening focus is on privatization, deregulation, and deep cuts in social spending, each as mandated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, with other nasty triggers demanded by the World Trade Organization, that have been systematically used to loot entire nations and their commonwealths–this is apart from the immoral predatory capitalism that uses bribes to clear areas of indigenous peoples so they can steal all the gold or other natural resources, and their only cost is the bribe, while the host peoples lose billions in natural resources.

The author teaches us that “disaster capitalism” is the next step above immoral predatory capitalism, in which wars and disasters have been privatized and the global military-industrial-prison-hospital complex has moved one step closer to displacing all governments.

She spends time discussion torture by dictators as a silent partner to the free-market crusade, and this is a good time to mention that the book is a standing condemnation of all that Milton Friedman and “the Chicago boys” inserted into the IMF and World Bank via their students.

She provides a helpful discussion of how believers in Armageddon, including the neo-conservatives, are motivated by the belief that there is such a thing as a clean slate, and that Africa without Africans, or Iraq without Iraqis, are both desirable for that reason.

She does a tremendous job of outlining the three shock waves of disaster capitalism:

1. Government Disaster/War out-sourced
2. Corporate looting
3. Police terrorism

A portion of the book focuses on the urgency of restoring unions and the middle class, unions because they protect fair wages that create a middle class. She stresses that the 1970's through the 1990's saw a global (but particularly southern hemisphere) campaign to use the cover of counter-terrorism to murder and terrorize union leaders. As a graduate of the Central American and Andean wars, I can certainly testify to the fact that government death squads were as about looting and killing opposition leaders, and I for one saw no terrorists, only indigenous people's at the end of their rope.

Interestingly the author singles out visionaries as being among the top targets for being hunted down and “disappeared.” Visionaries counter the government lies that seek to rule by secrecy, impose scarcity, and concentrate wealth within a small elite.

The author damningly documents how eager corporations have been to work with dictators to create police states that eliminate unions and enslave peoples at wages that cannot support a family, much less create a middle class.

She focuses on national debt and on government corruption as the two pillars of social destruction. As a student of E. O. Wilson and Medard Gabel, and many others, I can testify that there is plenty of money for all of us to be virtual billionaires, but it is corruption and greed at the top, enabled by secrecy, that have allowed a handful to create a global class war and impoverish the 90% that do the hard work (see my list on this one).

I am utterly blown away by the author's overall assessment, in the middle of the book, to wit, that crisis is now used routinely to side-step reasoned democracy and completely halt political and social reform while furthering the ends of those who seek to concentrate wealth and power exclusive of the larger body of We the People.

The author is damning across the board of the failures of neoliberalism, which has been a “second pillage” of the looting of state-owned enterprises, following the first pillage, the looting of the natural resources of the commonwealth being targeted.

As part of this the author explicitly accuses the IMF of deliberately fostering crises in part by fabricating and manipulating statistics, or as the author puts it, “statistical malpractice.”

The author suggests that unlike the Mexican bail-out, when Rubin was seeking to protect Wall Street investments, Asia was allowed to collapse financially because the US wanted to put an end to the prospects of their being a “third” way that was more balanced than either capitalism for the few on one side, or socialism for all on the other. This is especially noteworthy because Latin America is today pursuing a similar “third way” and very likely to succeed.

The author declares that Donald Rumsfeld's over-riding objective as Secretary of Defense was the privatization of war. The author tells us that he declared war on the Pentagon bureaucracy on 10 September (this is the same day that Congresswoman McKinney's was grilling him on the missing 2.3 trillion dollars). On 11 September the missile won Rumsfeld his war with the Pentagon bureaucracy *and* it destroyed the computers with all the records on the missing money.

The author goes on to document how the Bush Administration privatized Homeland Security across the board.

As the book draws to a close she reviews the history of corporate-driven foreign policy, summing it up in three steps:

1. Corporation suffers set-back in a foreign country
2. Politicians loyal to the corporation demonize the foreign country
3. Politicians “sell” US public on the need for regime change.

The author scorns political appointees, noting that their “service” these days is little more than a pre-raid reconnaissance.

She concludes by suggesting that disaster apartheid is leaving 25-60% of the populations as an underclass, destroyed middle classes, and creating walled cities for the elite, death and suffering for everyone else. Dubai is one such walled city.

Corporations are red-lining the world, using stocks, currency, and real estate markets to crash economies, buy cheap, and then restore with a sharp re-concentration of wealth.

Ending on a positive note, she suggests that We the People are in the process of reconstructing our own world, and while I did not see mention of the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER) or Interra and the other community-oriented systems, I believe she is correct, and that the Earth Intelligence Network, the Transpartisan Policy Institute, the People's Budget Office, are all part of taking back the power and the commonwealth.

This is a great and necessary book. Others (the first two DVDs) listed below reinforce her findings.

The Corporation
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

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Review: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Best Practices in Management, Biography & Memoirs, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Country/Regional, Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Leadership

IacoccaNational Enema With Wit and Character,

April 27, 2007

Lee Iacocca

This book earns my vote for top transpartisan book of the decade, along with “All Rise” (see link below). This great man is saying things that I and others have been saying since 2000, but because of his stature, we now finally have the national enema that we all need. Lee Iacocca, in my personal view, should link up with Reuniting America, and volunteer to form a Sunshine Cabinet of transpartisan retired leaders (corporate, military, law enforcement, education, and others). We need to show America that it is possible to create a balanced sustainable budget, and to have common sense priorities.

The book opens with a discussion of the nine C's of leadership: Curiosity, Creativity, Communicator, Character, Courage, Conviction, Charisma, Competency, and Common Sense. In evaluating the current crop of candidates for President, all fail with the exception of Joe Biden for President and John Edwards for Vice President.

He stresses people and prioities, and for the first time in any book I have read, he calls for all presidential candidates to appoint their Cabinet BEFORE the election so the people can evaluate the team and not just the Man. This is something I have advocated since 2000, see the original documents at Citizens-Party.org.

His comments on Bush-Cheney cronism are devastatingly on the mark. He points out that the insider game excludes top talent.

He finds Congress to be failing at the five top issues for all Americans: Iraq, Jobs, Health Care, Education, and Energy.

He is critical of the Executive for telling lies to get a war with Iraq, for condoning torture, and for being reactive instead of proactive.

To make his point, he notes that for what we have spent in Iraq, we could have instead hired 8 million teachers, 8 million police, fire, and medical support specialists; funded 25M college scholarships, and given every citizen a year of free gas and health care.

In criticizing the Iraq strategy, he points out that unlike Gulf I, there are no Arab nations in the coalition this time, and that is the truth-teller. He specifically laments the loss of “America the Good” in the eyes of the world.

Among the top issues he personally focuses on in the book are Energy, Fair Trade vice Free Trade, restoration of moral capitalism and an end to the CEO looting of companies at the expense of workers; the protection of the middle class, the reduction of medical (and I would add, educational) bureaucracies, and the US brain gap–South Korea, Japan, and Singapore are getting a reverse brain drain from the US, as well as training their own better than we are.

He slams James Carville for representing the worst of the structured political process, where a candidate is told what their policies will be based on political consultants and focus groups.

The book closes with a discussion of four traits he learned from others: Optimism; Common Sense; Discipline; and–from his mother–Love.

At the end, he calls America to action, asking each of us to give something up, put something back in, and elect a LEADER.

I do NOT agree with those who are critical of either the author or the book. This is an easy to read totally straight-up book that is now, along with “All Rise” and “The Tao of Democracy” among my top-rated Transpartisan books. See my varied lists on Transpartisan, democracy, immoral capitalism, impeachment of Cheney, etc.

If he will help form a Sunshine Cabinet, and Reuniting America can raise $500M a year ($20 from 25 million Americans, or $100 from 5 million Americans) we can close down the Republican and Democratic partisan machines that have corrupted our democracy, and we can restore informed engaged democracy. We need this man's common sense now more than ever.

All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People

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Review: Global Inc.–An Atlas of the Multinational Corporation

5 Star, Atlases & State of the World, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Global Inc.First Rate Visualization, Can Be Applied to Everything,

February 21, 2007

Medard Gabel

I was trained in the 1970's, and did my undergraduate thesis on “Multinational Corporations: Home and Country Issues.” I could have used this stellar book back then. It does for multinational corporations what “Global Reach” by Richard Barnett did, in the 1970's, but with a powerful method adapted from “State of the World” atlases.

This book could easily be converted into an online interactive serious game for change useful not only to students, but to governments. The book not only charts where and how much the multinationals are doing, but it goes into direct impacts (both benefits and external diseconomies), concluding with an absolutely brilliant section on effects of both governments and multinational corporations across the economic, health, environment, technology, culture, education, and law sectors.

The graphics are in a class by themselves, the notes are effective and to the point (if you're over 50 as I am, you may need granny glasses for some of the fine print), the overall layout is very well done, and the sources as well as the index are top-notch.

One of the principal authors of this book, Medard Gabel, was associated with Buckminster Fuller when they conceptualized the World Game, which today is still an analog gtame with cards, token, and hard-copy maps. The author has moved on to found BigPictureSmallWorld, producing serious games on hunger and other topics, and he points with great respect to Real Lives, by his friend and colleague Bob Runyan, which can be downloaded such that your teen-ager can experience the real life of a Bangladeshi girl or an Iraqi teen-ager before the US invasion.

Not only is this book tremendous on substance, I believe it is, along with State of the World Atlas and other similar books that I have reviewed in the past, the first view of what a real-time live online Earth Game will look like, where individuals can “game” and learn and act at the zip code level, the state/province level, the national level, and the global levels, first setting their social values, then interacting with the ten high level threats, the twelve policies, and the eight major players other than the EU and the US. From such a game will come informed engaged citizens who will demand moral capitalism and honest democracy.

I don't want to over-sell this book, so take the following with a grain of salf: this book is to serious games as the printing press was to the democratization of knowledge. The next big leap for mankind is going to be the use of serious games for change to help individuals at every socio-economic level and in every ideo-cultural milieu, “make sense” of all information in all languages all the time. We are now ready for the Earth Game that will allow the people to complete with elites in publicly solving global problems, and it is my view, and I believe also the view of at least one of the authors of this book, that the people working within an open global game will soundly defeat the elites who have relied for too long on very expensive secret intelligence and the deception and manipulation of public opinion, while restricting public knowledge. That era is OVER, and this book is one of the building blocks for the new world of public intelligence in the public service.

AA Mind the GapClick Here to Vote on Review at Amazon,

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