Economics – Page 45 – Public Intelligence Blog

Many Excellent Reviews, Some Additional Related Reading,

April 4, 2006

Tavis Smiley

There are some really excellent reviews of this book, and I recommend they all be read as the authors are better qualified than I to comment on the book's weaknesses.

I want to focus on its strengths. This is a five-star piece of work that is extremely well developed and well-presented. The ten covenants merit listing because all Americans need these covenants, and if the Latinos and the Americans of color can form their own parties and demand equality, then these ten covenants work for all of us:

I. Securing the right to healthcare and well-being. See my review of Paul Farmer's Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (California Series in Public Anthropology, 4) and Andrew Price Smith's The Health of Nations: Infectious Disease, Environmental Change, and Their Effects on National Security and Development

II. Establishing a System of Public Education… See my varied reviews of the work of the university. Thomas Jefferson said “A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.” We've been blowing it since Viet-Nam.

III. Correcting the System of Unequal Justice. Not only do people of color get cheated, but so do white people that are not part of the corporate white collar crime world. See my reviews of both books by Kurt Eichenwald (The Informant: A True Story and also Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story)–U.S. law enforcement is joke in strategic terms, not just with illegal immigration.

IV. Fostering Accountable Community-Centered Policing. Makes sense, with an emphasis on community-building. More recently I have been promoting the need for a “bottom-up” community warning network with 119 and 114 numbers that help National Guard watchstanders “see” patterns that can be used for preventive policing.

V. Ensuring Broad Access to Affordable Neighborhood that Connect to Opportunity. This one really grabbed me, the author pointing out that the Department of Transportation spends 60% of its budget on roads for cars driven mostly by white people, and a fraction on mass transit of greater value to those who cannot afford a car.

VI. Claiming Our Democracy. This short section could have benefited from some mention of the reforms proposed by Ralph Nader (voting on week-ends, instant run-offs, end to gerrymandering), but it is right on target in pointing out that we have a corrupt democracy that does NOT deliver representative accountable representation. Since this is a Republic, we have the authority to dissolve the government and start over–now wouldn't that be something?

VII. Strengthening Our Rural Roots. There is a growing understanding that the centralized models of agriculture and energy are not only bad models from an oil-demand point of view, but they also destroy communities. “Localized” communities spread out and doing their own agriculture, energy production, and moral networking, are the way to go.

VIII. Accessing Good Jobs, Wealth, and Economic Prosperity. All well and good, but it starts with education. We have to give everyone a good education, and that is not happening in the inner cities or the rural areas, in part because we still have an education system built to train docile factory workers, not creative free spirits suited for the age of networked information.

IX. Assuring Environmental Justice for All. See my review of Max Manwaring (editor), “Environmental Security,” and Jeffrey Sachs The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

X. Closing the Racial Digital Divide. Every church needs to become a Collective Intelligence Center where the members can come together to strategic on lowering their mortgage rates, sharing cars, increasing their income with online second jobs, etcetera.

Each section concludes with a Facts sheet, and then sections on what the community, the individual, and leaders can do, as well as short sections on what works.

Over-all this is an elegant collection of very educated views that should yield a very fine “summit” between John Edwards and Al Sharpton.

I completely agree with the reviewer that is disdainful of any attempt to shop this covenant to the Democratic or Republican parties. Both are completely corrupt and out of touch with America. A separate party is exactly the way to go, co-equal to the Greens, Libertarians, and others, but ideally, also helping to bring together the various minority parties, including a Latino party, under a federated American Independence Party. Peter Peterson in Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It has it right: BOTH the Democratic and Republican parties need to be closed down (conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans can form their own minority parties and come together with those listed above as well as the Deaniacs).

EDIT of 11 Dec 07: as I write this We the People appear to be stirring. There is now clear evidence that Dick Cheney is a proven liar and a nakely amoral person, and that Congress betrayed us all, the Republicans by being foot-solders for the White House, the Democrats for being their door-mats. 100 million “opt out” voters could come back into politics in November 2008, and help us take back our government. I for one am absolutely committed to reducing the size of the federal government while at the same time assuring free public health care just as we get “free” police and fire safety, and the same quality education for everyone through high school and thereafter as needed.

2006/03/292009/12/04

Review: American Theocracy–The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (Hardcover)

5 Star, Corruption, Economics, Misinformation & Propaganda, Religion & Politics of Religion

Brilliant integration of oil, debt, religion, Bush, and crime,

March 29, 2006

Kevin Phillips

This is a five-star book that offers up two very serious values:

1) There is no other author who has written in such depth, over the course of four books, on the Republican party, the Bush dynasty, and the inter-relationship between the religious right and corporate wealth. This Republican is as serious an analyst as any that can be found. he joins Clyde Prestowitz, Paul O'Neil, and Peter Peterson as “go to guys” for when Senator John Edwards forms the American Independence Party and breaks away from the idiot Democrats and the Clinton mafia.

2) The author has done his homework and very ably integrated, with all appropriate footnotes and index entries, three broad literatures, two of which I have read multiple books on (oil and debt), one on which I have not (radical US religion–fully the equal of Bin Laden and suicidal terrorists, these folks just send others to do the dying for them).

So I have to say, given that this is a serious book by a serious author, why so many obviously loosely-read individuals writing short dismissive reviews? I have to conclude he has touched a nerve. When I used to appear on NPR, before I was kicked off for condemning Israeli lobbyists and suggesting that the common Arabs (the real people, not the sadistic opulent corrupt House of Saud or the other dictators) never got a fair shake from the US, I would get hate calls and mail from what I now realize were know-nothing radical right-wing religious nuts. We'd get into the issues, and I would ask, “what books have you read on this?” only to be told, “There is only one book that matters, the Bible.”

Well, this author has helped me understand where the Bush constituency comes from: these are the folks that graduated from rote reading of the Bible to the “Left Behind” fiction series. They are the intellectual equals of the Islamic kids learning to be suicide bombers by reciting old Arabic they don't understand.

If you do not have the time or money to buy all the other books I have reviewed, spanning emerging threats, the lack of strategy and the inappropriate force structure, the anti-Americanism that we spawn, the corruption of Wall Street and the shallowness of white collar law enforcement, the end of cheap oil, the end of free water, the rise of pandemic disease, the coming date with destiny when the 44 dictators we support are overthrown and the US pays the price for its long-term nurturing of all but three of them….this book brings a lot together. It avoids only two really important topics: the environmental implications such as covered by TIME Magazine in the 3 April 2006 cover story on Global Warming; and the minutia of how America is no longer a real democracy–not only do most voters not vote, but once elected, most Congressman are corrupted immediately by lobbyists.

The author, who is uniquely qualified to sum this all up in this book because of his three prior books centered on the Bush Family, oil, and wealth, does a tremendous job of outlining how oil money ultimately bought the White House and Congress. If you have time for two other books, I recommend Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil in which a former LAPD investigator makes a case for indicting Dick Cheney for fabricating the march to war on Iraq under the delusion that we would get another ten years of “cheap oil” and Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy in which it is clearly documented that both Congress and the White House knew in 1974-1975 that Peak Oil was over, and they concealed this for another 25 years in order to keep the bribery coming–this was nothing less than a treasonous betrayal of the public interest worthy of retrospective impeachments for all concerned. The books by moderate Republicans Prestowitz (Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions) and Petersen (Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It) should be read as well as Brand Hijack : Marketing Without Marketing which is about why Paul O'Neil quit the Bush Administration–he realized that ideological fantasy and Dick Cheney had displaced a reasoned policy process, the Cabinet, and Congressional concurrence…..

This is a very bad time. This book is as good as any at setting the stage for intelligent people to campaign and vote in 2006 and 2008.

EDIT 7 Dec 07: Since I wrote this review, several gems are newly available:
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom
God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (Plus)
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

and on and on and on….

2006/03/152009/12/04

Review: The Coming Economic Collapse–How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel (Hardcover)

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Economics, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Get out of oil-dependent assets, as long as politics corrupt, energy policy will never be real,

March 15, 2006

Stephen Leeb

I am giving this book a 5 instead of a 3 or 4 because I believe that it does a superb job of laying out some facts that every normal adult needs to understand, and I want to encourage everyone to buy and read this book.

That having been said, I also found it disappointing. The author's main points can be summed up in this review, and take less than an hour to absorb in the actual book:

1) Peak oil and the need for alternative energies are being over-shadowed by myopic media and lack-luster academics that focus on poverty, climate change, terrorism, everything but the core Achilles heel of the Western world, its addiction to cheap oil which is no more.

2) Cheap oil is made possible by blatant political and financial maneuvers that enrich a few and set the rest of us up for life long poverty. Government subsidies and tax breaks purchases by expensive lobbyists giving expensive gifts and cash bribes to our politicians are directly responsible for pre-determined failure of our energy policy and the lack of an energy strategy.

3) The catastrophic nature of the collapse of cheap oil is dramatically enhanced by the combination of the *huge* U.S. deficit and by the increased prospects of war over oil.

The author concludes with some bottom line advice for investors: get out quickly from stocks associated with high oil usage (airlines, autos, chemicals; followed by cosmetics, food requiring processing and transport, and retail dependent on far away factories and raw materials).

I disagree with one key point he makes. He assumes that Wall Street and the media have been ignoring this problem because of “group think.” I certainly do agree that the larger mass of the public and the average bureaucrat that do not know any better have fallen prey to unethical propaganda, but I am quite persuaded by Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy; Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil; The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century and other books that this catastrophe in the making was clearly understood by the White House and the US Senate in 1974-1979, and a very deliberate selfish even treasonous decision was made to profit in silence and let the people fry.

This is a much simpler book than most of the others I have read and recommend, but I give it a solid five stars because if you can only afford to buy and read one book, this is the one that will be easiest and most to the point.

And just to drive the point home, when WIRED had the cover story on alternative energy, Cheney was meeting secretly with Enron and Exxon, and went on to amass 25 documented high crimes, 23 of itemized in my review of this book (Cheney makes Agnew and Johnson look like wall-flowers–this is the guy that put HIGH into “High Crimes.”
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

2006/03/152009/12/04

Review: The 86 Percent Solution–How to Succeed in the Biggest Market Opportunity of the 21st Century (Hardcover)

5 Star, Economics

Tactical/Neighborhood Implementation for Ethical Profit from the Poor,

March 15, 2006

Vijay Mahajan

This book is best appreciated if you have first read C.K. Prahalad's “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” William Grieder's “The Soul of Capitalism,” and Stuart Hart's “Capitalism at the Crossroads.” It is a tactical or foreign neighborhood (both in the Third World and in the immigrant sections of the First World) implementation manual for profiting from sales to the poor.

It makes many obvious points as well as many not so obvious points, and I will not list them here. This is a book that requires patience and careful reading. The author has brought forward a great deal of detail in a very easy to read way.

I will end with thought that the Wharton School's publishing arm has really catalyzed for me with these varied book. The five billion at the bottom of the pyramid are the last remaining super-power on this planet. The good news is that we can profit from enriching them. The bad news is that we still have morons in power that think we can keep them down by using guns. Newsflash: there are not enough guns on the planet to keep the five billion and their off-spring from over-running us. Capitalism, and the rapid nurturing of indigenous self-sustaining wealth that includes the rapid education of women (which leads to saner men, less disease, limited growth) is our only salvation.

This book is one of a handful that could be said to be truly revolutionary in terms of transforming the planet from one beset by poverty, to one inspired by entrepreneurship at the neighborhood level.

2005/12/182009/12/04

Review: The Chinese Century–The Rising Chinese Economy and Its Impact on the Global Economy, the Balance of Power, and Your Job (Hardcover)

5 Star, Economics, Future

Balanced, Helpful, Historical, Covers Values, Piracy, & Commoditization,

December 18, 2005

Oded Shenkar

This is a very fine book that is narrowly focused on the topic of Chinese economic competition over the course of the next 100 years. In his effort to simplify the book, which is helpful from a straight trade/economic competitiveness point of view, the author has been forced to lose context, not the least of which are the impact on China of the end of cheap oil, the end of free water (they have 300 water-stressed cities see De Villier “WATER”), and the rise of pandemic disease.

What most impressed me about the book, something other reviewers have not noted, is the author's emphasis on values. He clearly understands the historical context for China's evolution, and he clearly understands that China wants to adopt Western technologies without being obliged to adopt Western values. I could not help but realize that the USA–a 200+ year upstart–is now challenged by multiple major powers each thousands of years old, whose common view is that they do not like US values in the negative sense (see Jimmy Carter's new book).

In the flyleaf, inspired by the author but drawing on the many other books I have reviewed here, I drew the USA and then the following surrounding it in clockwise direction, all with arrows pointed at the heart of the USA: India (9), China (10), Earth (11), God (12), Russia (1), Islam (2), Cuba (3), Venezuela (4), and Brazil (5).

Reflecting on the following pages from the author, I found it quite interesting (the dramatic corruption in China not-with-standing) that the Chinese were intent on achieving some form of “communal capitalism” (my new term) that spawned innovation and created the needed 15 million new jobs each year, while avoiding what happened to Russia, where Harvard helped a few oligarchs loot the Russian people, and took its endowment from $3B to $19B as a reward.

The author takes pains to discuss China's shortcomings from an economic and political point of view, but completely avoids any discussion of the severe ethnic and environmental (energy, water, disease) challenges facing the Chinese.

Over-all the author succeeds at making the point that China is not analogous to Japan or Korea or the European Union because it is vastly larger in terms of achieving scale quickly, with a growing reputation for low-cost reliability that is burying brands and substituting Chinese generic offerings using Wal-Mart among others for global placement. The book also makes the point that the Chinese will not give up their low-cost labor advantage (30 to 1 advantage in hourly cost, displacing USA's 5 to 1 productivity advantage) as they move up the value chain to high technology production.

I was very pleased to see an earnest and complete discussion of Chinese piracy (unauthorized sales) and counterfeiting (passing off a false replica). Together with his discussion of Chinese corruption, the near fatal state of Chinese banking and the near comatose nature of Chinese law, he provides a very troubling account that suggests that the Chinese will be able to flagrantly violate intellectual property laws as part of their growth. However, the author is equally balanced in noting that most nations of the world will have little sympathy for the USA and its multinational corporations that have spent 50 years looting the Third World.

One other point the author makes is that it will be the lesser developed countries such as Lesotho and the countries in the Caribbean and Central America that will suffer most from being displaced by the Chinese.

The author specifically suggests that China is non-expansionist in military and political terms, while likely to have enormous influence, perhaps displacing the USA, through its dispersed economic activities that will explode in the next quarter-century.

I put the book down pensive. In combination with “Future Jihad” and “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” and “The Soul of Capitalism” and “Unconquerable World” and “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,”, what I see in China is hope. Despite its corruption, it is just barely possible that the Chinese government might realize there is a meld of communism and capitalism that is not socialism, not communism, certainly not fascism or immoral capitalism. I coined the term “communal capitalism.” I envision communal capitalism as a system that is transparent, limiting interest rates to 10%, limiting executive compensation to 1000 times that of the lowest paid worker, but allowing for any one individual to accumulate up to $1B. Such a society would have extremely severe penalties for corruption, crime, drug trafficking, tax avoidance, and usury. It is a system that could focus on “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.” I am influenced in my view by the author of “Crossing the Rubicon” who has pointed out that with the end of cheap oil, the Amish and the Cubans are the model for the future in the sense of pioneering sustainable agriculture and full employment without the reliance on pesticides and other energy/oil intensive interventions.

Most interestingly, and the author is to be thanked for pointing this out, such as society would reserve the traditional Mandate of Heaven: if the regime in charge fails to achieve prosperity for the majority of the Chinese, they get booted out. Values and education-whether we face the Chinese, or the Russians or the Islamic fundamentalists or the populists of Latin America, it comes down to values that are supportable, and education that is sensible. America needs to take a close look at its cards-right now they are not a winning hand.

One final note: by coincidence of interest I have read four Wharton School Publishing (WPS) books, and I have a note to myself that the four books are characterized by exceptionally detailed tables of contents, and that there is a clearly a publisher's hand visible hear (unlike some books I have reviewed, where great substance is trashed by poor presentation). I will more attentive to WSP offerings in the future.

2005/12/092009/12/04

Review: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid–Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Hardcover)

6 Star Top 10%, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Economics, Future, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Nobel Prize Material–Could Transform the Planet,

December 9, 2005

C.K. Prahalad

There are some excellent and lengthy reviews of this book so I will not repeat anything that has already been said. This book review should be read together with my review of Stuart Hart's “Capitalism at the Crossroads,” which points to several other related books, and Kenichi Ohmae's book, “The Next Global Stage.” All three are published by Wharton School Publishing, which has impressed me enormously with its gifted offerings.

Here's the math that I was surprised to not see in the book: the top billion people that business focuses on are worth less than a trillion in potential sales. The bottom four billion, with less than $1000 a year in disposable income, are worth four trillion in potential sales.

In combination, Prahalad and Hart make it clear that business suffers from the same pathologies as the Central Intelligence Agency and other bureaucracies: they are in a rut.

I will end by emphasizing that I believe this author merits the Nobel Peace Prize. As the U.S. Department of Defense is now discovering, its $500 billion a year budget is being spent on a heavy metal military useful only 10% of the time. Stabilizization and reconstruction are a much more constructive form of national defense, because if we do not address poverty and instability globally, it will inevitably impact on the home front. This author has presented the most common sense case for turning business upside down. He can be credited with a paradigm shift, those shifts that Kuhn tells us come all too infrequently, but when they come, they change the world. It may take years to see this genius implemented in the real world, but he has, without question, changed the world for the better with this book, and make global prosperity a possibility.

NOTE: This book comes with a DVD that is an extraordinary value all by itself. Wharton Publishing has really delivered a one-two intellectual punch, first with the book, and then with the DVD which as a short introductory presentation by the author, and then a series of 2-4 minute multi-media snap-shots of the various case studies and the “faces of poverty” transformed. I am really impressed–I've had Wharton MBAs work for me before (but please note, it was Michigan MBAs that excelled in the work I am reviewing(, examining OSS.Net and how to take it to the next level, but the work reflected in these case studies and by the author as a manager of budding intellects has taken my respect for Michagan (and Wharton) to a whole new level.

Note: while this book is totally unique, and inspired my idea to create the Earth Intelligence Network and be intelligence officer to the poor, organizing 100 million people to teach the five billion poor “one cell call at a time,” there are several other books that have given me enormous hope, and I list them below.
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization
Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives

2005/11/242009/12/04

Review: India and the Knowledge Econom– Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities (Wbi Learning Resources Series) (Paperback)

5 Star, Economics, Information Society, Information Technology

These guys are creative and business geniuses,

November 24, 2005

Carl J. Dahlman

This is a seriously powerful volume. Published by the World Bank Institute, it lays out a strategy for leveraging strengths and opportunities within India's emerging knowledge economy.

This book is so well written and clearly organized that it could be a strategy document for any country, from China to Venezuela. Indeed, what I see in this book is the possibility of India becoming a knowledge “hub” nation, where its call centers make the leap up to becoming intelligence analysis centers, with Indians skilled in all languages, having access to all information all the time, and able to create distilled synethic knowledge–answers on demand–across all topics for all levels of users.

The six chapters, 12 appendices, and numerous figures and tables reflect the very highest quality of thinking, clarity, and purpose. This is an extraordinary reference, and I will read it again on my way to India in December, where we will be discussing the creation of a global Information Merchant Bank that builds on and exceeds what Google has been able to accomplish, by adding the human element–human translators, human finders, human analysts, human reporters.

Category: Economics

Review: The Covenant with Black America (Paperback)