Product Description
By the early 90s, a raging bull market was delivering spectacular returns, causing some to believe that a market collapse and subsequent depression would soon appear. As a result of these fears, some exited the capital markets altogether. Thereafter, the Internet took off causing the market bubble to swell, many high-tech stocks with seemingly limitless valuations. Over the course of its 13-year stretch, the market appreciated by over 600 percent, with average annual returns in excess of 18 percent. And we all remember what happened at the start of the new millennium. Even after the deflation of the Internet bubble, cautious investors who pulled out of the market a decade earlier missed out on spectacular returns since then. Many investors who entered the market near its peak suffered devastating losses. But most who remained invested since the early 90s are still much better off today. While this correction revealed the most recent illusions embedded within the economy, it s only a small part of what will be a larger correction in the coming years. Despite the scandals in corporate America and Wall Street, many investors fail to recognize that the post-bubble period is quite different from the Bull Run in the 90s. But today, the capital markets have been realigned with authenticity, and economics now control the investment cycle rather than hype generated by Wall Street. Accordingly, Wall Street and the U.S. Government can only hide the realities of America s decline for so long. Unfortunately, America entered the free trade paradigm as a losing participant from the start. While America remains as the centerpiece for the global economy, it relies on record debt to maintain its status as the world s strongest consumer marketplace. But this cannot last much longer. America s vulnerable role in the new economy threatens to erode the strength of its empire. Already, America has witnessed a gradual disappearance of its core citizens; the middle class. As well, poverty continues to grow while America s wealthiest quintile increases their wealth. These trends have been masked by record levels of credit-based spending and manipulation of economic data. For over two decades, several nations have benefited at the expense of America s job base and living standards. This led to a long period of excessive consumption relative to productivity. When the economic boom from the post-war period began to lose steam in the 60s, consumption began to exceed productivity, as Americans refused to acknowledge a decline in living standards. Up until the 70s, America fueled this consumption-production disparity using the surplus wealth generated during the post-war boom. During the 80s, America s growing consumption was compounded by massive government spending and a devastating oil crisis. Shortly thereafter, the consumer credit industry grew to meet the demands of a nation experiencing large productivity deficits. And today, America is vastly different than the post-war period. Rather than increases in net wealth, America s growth over the past two decades has been fueled by credit spending which has created the illusion of impressive productivity, while serving to mask declining living standards. As a consequence of these changes, America s financial industry is now one of its biggest and most profitable. Today, America is more dependent on foreign nations than anytime in its history. Declining oil reserves and a foreign-funded credit bubble have positioned the fate of this nation in the hands of the world. Soon, America will face the economic burden of 76 million aging boomers. Beginning in 2011, mandatory expenditures for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will start to grow rapidly. By 2025, these expenses will have swelled to unthinkable levels.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent presentation of data, some mistakes.......2007-10-11
The author did an excellent job compiling data that is extremely important to understand if one is to thrive in America in the next 2 decades. There will no doubt be sweeping changes to rectify our current account deficit and aging boomer population. The author shed light on the politics behind Greenspan & Co's delay when our country needs to address these problems now. Other topics include: the .com bubble, real estate / credit bubble, free trade, health care, social security, energy crisis, and education.
Yes there are typos and some minor implications that are incorrect, but I don't believe they affect the overall concepts presented. I have also read "The Dollar Crisis" and find both books to be honest presentations of America's current economic state. I would have enjoyed even more information on developing nations, but the title of the book focuses on America, so be it. Overall, I felt this book was an excellent read that is neither conservative nor extreme but simply a presentation of data and well-thought hypothetical analysis of what is to come for America. Only the typos keep it from getting 5 stars.
Riddled with inaccuracies.......2007-07-30
This book manages to cover all major problems faced by the United States in the next 20-30 years - trade deficit, healthcare crisis, education crisis, etc. - and it does so in a fairly comprehensive way, with large numbers of facts and graphs.
The reason why I can't give it more than 3 stars for this achievement is that the number of mistakes it contains (from misspellings to factual errors) is absolutely incredible. It seems that no one (other than the author) so much as read the book before it went to the printing press.
First of all, there are spelling errors. English is not my native language, yet I've been able to notice one spelling error every 20-30 pages. "Notices in-lue of gold" (p.2). "Right to bare arms" (p.25). "America will loose its technology edge" (p.61), and so on. There are factual errors as well. According to the author, Statue of Liberty was erected on Ellis Island (p.27), Berlin Wall fell "a few years" after 1991 (p.10), and Albert Einstein immigrated into the United States in 1940. He thinks that women who give birth after entering the United States illegally are guaranteed citizenship because their newborns become U.S. citizens (p.32) - but he either does not know or fails to mention that they have to wait for their child to turn 18 before they even have a shot at legalization. He frequently claims (or implies) that Chinese goods are cheaper because Chinese government and Chinese companies do not provide healthcare or retirement benefits to their workers (p.41), when in fact they do. All these problems make me wary of any other claims he makes in his book.
There are many interesting graphs and charts in the book, but at least some of them were "cooked up" by the author from third-party data, so they are not always reliable. One rather puzzling chart is located on p. 113. It is a pie-chart labelled "Factors Driving Rising Costs in Healthcare (2001-2002, in $ billions)". However, pieces of the pie are labelled with percentage values and clearly add up to 100% (e.g. "Increased Consumer Demand, 15%"). Author comments, "Someone explain to me the economics of increased consumer demand leading to a 15% increase in healthcare costs in one year". It's clear that he has no idea what's really shown on the chart.
The book is heavy on portrayal of various weaknesses in modern U.S. economy, but rather light on attempts to predict the future. There is almost no discussion about the impact of American crisis on the rest of the world. Author predicts major revaluation of the dollar, but does not provide any macroeconomic analysis of consequences of this revaluation. He seems to think that collapse will not occur at least until 2012, but he's not very clear why he thinks it won't be triggered by deflation of the real estate bubble.
Overall this is an interesting and comprehensive book that's worth reading for anyone who thinks that U.S. economy is doing well, but it's not scientific or reliable enough to be of real value for an investor.
I recommend "Dollar Crisis" as a complementary treatment of the U.S trade deficit / credit bubble problem.
A chilling but accurate expose of how we came to be in such economic peril as a capitalist nation.......2007-06-10
In writing "America's Financial Apocalypse: How To Profit From The Next Great Depression", the author draws upon his many years of experience and expertise as a business, financial, and investment consultant for two of Wall Street's largest investment firms and elsewhere in private financial markets. Strathis provides an impressively analytical explanation as to how the liberals on the left and the conservatives on the right are working in differing ways to destroy America's fiscal and economic well-being; how the federal government in Washington is dominated by corporations; how China has taken total advantage of America's trading policies to our nation's detriment. Readers will be shocked to learn how America is legally bankrupt; how today the 'American Dream' cannot be achieved by most American citizens; the truth concerning the future of Social Security; the inevitable and looming consequences of the present pension plan crisis; and why most Americans working today will not be able to retire as their parent were able to in the past. "America's Financial Apocalypse" also addresses just how the American government manipulates economic data; how the Bush administration is responsible for the worst economic recovery in American financial history; how the real estate bubble could cause the stock and bond markets to collapse; how America's political and economic fate is in the hands of foreign countries; why the American government is really allied to the Saudi Arabians despite the established identities of the 9/11 attack; the looming global oil crisis; Alan Greenspans dismal performance as a Fed Chairman; the plummeting value of the dollar in the international currency markets; and the continuing rise in value of precious metals and oil. After laying out all of these 'inconvenient truths' about America's economic future, Strathis also lays out how the wise and savvy investor can still profit from an inevitable depression that will collapse America's economy in the very near future. A chilling but accurate expose of how we came to be in such economic peril as a capitalist nation, "America's Financial Apocalypse" is especially recommended reading for its clear and methodical explanation of just how the individual investor can survive what will prove to be the 'Next Great Depression'.
This Book Has NO Comparable!.......2007-04-05
Finally, an insightful, detailed, and massive compilation of America's economy and investment markets. This book is HIGHY recommended.
The reviewer below is actually wrong in his simplistic assumption that deflation is the exact opposite of inflation. While deflation tends to cause a relative increase in buying power, this effect is only when deflation is modest and in the early stages. During a more prolonged period, deflation creates a decline in GDP and therefore purchasing power due to the relative effects on currency exchange rates.
I find it amazing that a person could give such a bad review over one statement that he thinks is wrong (when in fact it is not) despite all of the massive data and extensive coverage of material. If a reader chooses to cherry pick from within a massive resource such as this book, they will miss the forest from the trees.
Hold on there...........2007-04-05
After spending $55+ for this book, I started to leaf through it and promptly came across the following comment: "...rising gold prices usually result from a deflationary economy not an inflationary one, as investors seek to minimize the loss in buying power of their currency." So far as I know, a deflationary environment INCREASES the buying power of one's currency, as prices generally decrease during a deflationary episode. In other words, one can buy more loaves of bread per dollar in the bank. Gold is generally a hedge against inflation or fiat currency collapse, not deflation. Given what seems to me a basic error of this nature, I will be skeptical of other information in the book.
Book Description
This frightening book shows how massive consumer debt will trigger the next depression, starting in 2007. With interest rates increasing, savings rates near zero and debt at its maximum, people will be pushed over their debt limit, causing the depression.
Customer Reviews:
A THESIS OF EXCELLENCE ON HOW DEPRESSIONS HAPPEN.......2007-09-09
A Timeless work of Mastery in that it exposes what will be obvious in a few months to years. Based on concrete fact the conclusions support the facts. A Brilliant Writ which should be in every Economics class from High School to College!
A must read from the young entrepenuer to the MBA.
What the Government wishes to avoid is the harsh reality of impending Depression. After a brief dicussion with the author I can state he is a solid concrete thinker. I have injected thoughts of Taxflation (TM) which are sure to happen. I hope for sequele where the author can expound on defensive manuvers. One which I thought of is the "Roth Shuffle" (T.M.) about to take effect where 401 K's, IRAs and Sep Iras can be converted and taxed up front removing the Draconian "Taxflation" T.M. from future years of the Next Great Depression.
This gives more leverage to the author's well done tables of pension and investment income preserved by TIPS. Don Iden MD,FAAD,FABD,Mayo Clinic Alumnus. 4521 S Staples Street Ste 100 Corpus Christi, TX 78411-2603
Dated and not so great.......2007-03-15
This book doesn't really contain anything I didn't already know from books like "Empire of Debt" by Bonner and Wiggin. The latter is a much more well researched and well written book in addition to being more current. I would recommend it instead if you haven't read it. This book at hand had mediocre writing and some arguments that were crankish, especially the ones regarding investing in the stock market. It has many charts but most of them are rather obvious from the text and often unnecessary. Much of the data tables are things anyone could crank out on a spreadsheet program with ease and are embarrassingly simplistic at times. I do not recommend this book.
Debt on top of debt as we survive on a sort of "flywheel" effect. (but when happens when they call in the loans?).......2006-11-21
Being an Engineer myself, I appreciate his approach to analyzing a problem and breaking it down into parts. I think the data he has pulled together is very relevant, and his conclusion make sense. (I only wish they did not)
The world assigns a certain "value" to everything, and the value we have as a country is that of a consumer. Without our consumption, these fast climbing countries would NOT be able to grow their production capacity. (their own value)
The problem is that we are such poor savers that these "growing" producers are actually loaning us the money to buy their goods! in doing so, they are handing us the rope to hang ourselves!
If and when they build up enough wealth and consumption in their own society that they do not need us.....they will cut off our allowance and expect us to pay them back....then what?
This book has a similar view of our problems as another book I read called "Three Billion New Capitalists", though the author of that book was the Counselor to the Secretary of Commerce under Ronald Reagan. So while that book talked with quite a bit of first-hand knowledge, Mr. Brussee lookst at the same situation by analyzing all the data that is available to each of us...except he pulls it all together and makes sense of it.
I think Mr. Brussee has a more negative outlook for the situation, though I don't think either book paints a rosey picture of how our debt and imbalance of trade is doing anything by killing our value/worth to the world.
Both of the above books are worth the price and I suggest you read both books.
Very worthwhile reading.......2006-11-10
The author offers fairly complelling evidence for his prediction - I have actually checked the Personal Savings Rate [...] and found that his prediction in that area is still holding firm. Recent (Nov '06) news reports also agree that the public debt is reaching unsustainable levels. Now the stock market is going even higher (read over-valued) so we have a situation that appears to be just the scenario that the author paints.
The book is fairly dry but unfortunately the bare facts usually are.
Convincing!.......2006-06-12
Based on clear analysis of economic facts, Brussees conclusions are very convincing. Get ready!
Max Otte, Ph.D.
Professor of International Business
Book Description
For over fifteen years, New York Times bestselling author Harry S. Dent, Jr., has been uncannily accurate in predicting the financial future. In his three previous works, Dent predicted the financial recession of the early nineties, the economic expansion of the mid-nineties, and the financial free-for-all of 1998-2000.
The Next Great Bubble Boom -- part crystal ball, part financial planner -- offers a comprehensive forecast for the next two decades, showing new models for predicting the future behavior of the economy, inflation, large- and small-cap stocks, bonds, key sectors, and so on. In taking a look at past booms and busts, Dent compares our current state to that of the crash of 1920-21, and the years ahead of us to the Roaring Twenties. Dent gives advice on everything from investment strategies to real estate cycles, and shows not only how bright our future will be but how best to profit from it.
Dent gives us all something to look forward to, including:
- The Dow hitting 40,000 by the end of the decade
- The Nasdaq advancing at least ten times from its October 2001 lows to around 13,500, and potentially as high as 20,000 by 2009
- Another strong advance in stocks in 2005, with a significant correction into around September/October 2006
- The Great Boom resurging into its final and strongest stage in 2007, and even more fully in 2008, lasting until late 2009 to early 2010
Dent's amazing ability to track and forecast our financial future is renowned, and here he takes that ability to the next level, showing not only what our economy will look like but also how it will affect us as individuals, as organizations, and as a culture. From the upcoming wealth revolution to the essential principles of entrepreneurial success, the book describes a new society where economic and philanthropic development go hand in hand.
In The Next Great Bubble Boom, Dent shows not only how the economic growth of the late 1990s was a prelude to the true great boom right around the corner but how all of us can reap its benefits.
Customer Reviews:
Next Great Bubble Boom, Revised Again.......2007-09-03
Hindsight tells us a lot of things. For the Next Great Bubble Boom, hindsight shows that Harry Dent's analysis of a 40,000 Dow and 20,000 Nasdaq are just as fanciful now as they were when he made the predictions in 2004. His latest revisions, which came out last year, show he has cut his original estimate in half, and that the predicted outcomes are much more within reason. The difficulty with accepting his predictions now is that the past ones ended so dismally. The seductive part of Dent's analysis is that it squares with historical and demographical cycles. The ridiculous part is the extrapolation into predictive behavior. It you want some really wild stuff, just look at what he says will happen from 2023 on. If anybody made any investment decisions based on this book, they're about due for a thorough reality check. His most powerful cycle, the 10-year cycle, seems the most likely one to come true. But the difficulty with predicting what will happen in each 10 year cycle is that Dent bases it strictly on stock market past behavior. And whenever that prediction fails, Dent finds some new cycle to explain his error. His latest cycle, the geopolitical cycle, supposedly explains the failure of the markets to rise in 2004-2005. What he failed to recognize early on was the impact of commodities, hedge funds, and Fed interest rate policy. Whenever the Fed raises rates, the stock market goes numb, because large institutional investors stay away. This time around, those investors put their billions into hedge funds, to get the promise of 40%+ returns. That alone explains the 2004-2005 doldrums. Add the spectacular housing boom/bust and you see why Dent's predictions went south. Now that the Fed has stopped raising rates and is apparently going to drop them, some of what Dent predicted still could come time. But notice that the title for the short book now says 2006-2010 rather than 2005-2010. The revisions just keep coming. I can't wait for the next one.
Is Dent Such A Big Liar or Just that Stupid?.......2007-06-26
I really do not know what to think. So many people write books based on a positive premise rather than reality because they know positivity sells. There's nothing wrong with positivity, but it should be reserved for motivational speakers not investments and economics. We are talking about people's retirement funds here!
Dent does not say much of anything new that he hasn't already said in his previous books. He is just trying to cash in on a rebound from the Internet bubble collapse. What kind of value is there in predicting a stretch of 4 years of great market returns? Regardless, we have yet to see this spectacular market performance. I'll tell you why he did this. Anyone with common sense knows that extremes in the market are followed by compensatory reversals which may or may not last. What this means is that Dent (like many others) expected a rebound from the lows in the market merely due to normal stock market behavior. The fact that he has restricted it to 2010 tells you where he thinks the market is really headed--down.
NEVER BUY A BOOK BY ANYONE WHO HAS A VESTED INTEREST IN a BULLISH STOCK MARKET (THOSE WHO WORK FOR MUTUAL FUNDS AND WALL STREET). ALSO NEVER BUY A BOOK BY ANYONE WORKING FOR A HEDGE FUND UNLESS YOU WANT TO HEAR THAT THE MARKET WILL GO DOWN. THESE GUYS ARE ALREADY TAKINGYOUR MONEY IN TEH MARKET AND NOW THEY WANNA TAKE YOUR MONEY BY SELLING YOU BOOKS FILLED WITH DREAMS THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
Don't waste your money on this book. Instead get some books that talk about how bad the economy really is and how it is going to get worse for many years.
interesting read.......2007-04-11
interesting read. I am still waiting for his predictions to come true...
Dent in my wallet.......2007-04-07
If only I could express how much time and optimism I wasted after reading this book...
The fact is that the forecasts are wildly out of sync with reality, Dent's methods are proving to be nearly useless and market risks are actually on the INCREASE as I write this review.
Dent did not predict the real estate boom, he did not predict the commodity boom, he did not predict the 2000 bear market, he did not predict the dollar loss against the Euro... the list goes on. When he gets a prediction wrong, he just adds another "cycle" to his forecasts... the stock market turned to goo after 2000? "oh, well we discovered the 10 year stock cycle, and this PROVES that stocks should have gone down"... the Dow didn't go to 14,000 (as predicted in this book)? "Oh, we forgot about the commodity super-cycle". How many other 'cycles' does Dent not know about?
After reading this book a couple years ago, I'm sad to say I subscribed to his newsletter at around $400-500 /year, and while their knowledge of economic fundamentals was clearly solid, I can't say I made any money from his insights, or that his insights were any better than what I'd read on the Internet for free.
I'd recommend you take this book (along with everything else) with a grain of salt, and learn from a lesson that sinks in only after you've blown money... no one knows the future, especially Dent.
Wealth takes research.......2007-03-09
Harry Dent has another winner. Being the third in a series of books by Harry Dent, "The Greatest Boom in History: 2006-2010," tells us again how to save what wealth we have and increase it during the current economic and investment boom. Anyone with money to invest must read this book.
Customer Reviews:
Mark Twain meets the 1950's and Topps.......2007-08-11
Here's a little time travel for you. I first got my hands on this book when I was a little baseball-loving kid, back in 1974. This book scared the hell out of me back then.
Thirty years later it turned up again, and this time it blew my mind. It's one of the most creative, touching, thoughtful, mildly mean-spirited works of literature I've ever come across (And I read books for a living.)
Here's the backstory on the book. It's the early 1970's in Boston, and two witty, profound, slightly geeky local bookstore employees decide to rummage through their childhood baseball-card collections and write a book about their love of the game. Please note: this book **isn't** about baseball or even about baseball cards (here I'm citing the authors in their preface), it's a book about childhood as recalled through the prism of baseball cards.
This book isn't for everyone. It's for grown-up men who loved baseball as boys, weren't very good at it (as the authors admit about themselves), and were probably picked near the end in gym class when teams were being chosen.
This book is probably best (and most mind-blowing) for people who grew up during the late 1950's and early 1960's, as the authors did. But the generations of childhood baseball fans ever since will also find great pleasure in this entirely irreverent and clever book.
"GOOD NIGHT, SIBBI SISTI, WHEREVER YOU ARE." When I read this line in the book back in 1974, it gave me the willies. Now I just grin.
I see the boys of summer in their ruin. . . .......2005-12-16
Each of us occasionally has experiences that are so vivid that they make immediate and permanent imprints upon the memory. For example, I can still remember my excited first day of kindergarten, as well as my first glimpse of Three Rivers stadium, as our family car approached it along the jumbled, congested streets of the North Side.
Believe it or not, I can similarly remember my first experiences reading this book, as though they were yesterday. I was in grad school in California, and a friend was visiting me with this book in tow. As he spread out a sleeping bag and nodded off to sleep, I curled up with his magnificent book. I can still picture that entire scene, my old apartment as it was then, and even one particular page on which I lingered in fascination (the Joe Fornieles profile.) The feeling of reading it was that electric, that hyper-engaging.
A book has got to be good if reading it is remembered as a formative experience.
Let me try another way to explain how much I loved this book. When I couldn't find this book anywhere (it being out of print), I directed a nationwide book search to try to find it for me. They did, a flawless hardback edition that I still treasure, and still maintain in carefully guarded, pristine condition. Mind you, I was a starving grad student when I did this, and could hardly afford such luxuries.
As you can see from the other reviews below, this book takes that type of hold on those who love it.
There are three major sections in this book; one covering the sensory atmosphere of a 1950s suburban childhood, one on the baseball card industry as it existed in 1973, and one a series of profiles of players as depicted on samples from the authors' baseball card collection. The first and third of these are the great ones.
I adore the opening chapter, which brought childhood back to me even though I didn't grow up in the same era as the authors. But some things are universal I guess, including the way that childhood memories exist as scraps and floating debris of the odd popular cultures through which we guide our children.
Boyd and Harris's childhood world will be recognizable to anyone who grew up in America -- a world of advertising jingles, cap guns, yo-yos, Pez, and of course, baseball cards. A time cycle in which the kids learn to break down the interminable flow of their school year according to the changing weather, the holidays and favorite activities of each mini-season. And even those of us whose childhoods weren't so innocent nevertheless cling to those small fragments of memory of a time when we had no responsibilities and the world was a fascinating and wondrous place. I once wrote a newspaper review of this book in which I referred to this opening chapter as Marcel Proust in Levittown, and I think it still fits.
But the real core of the book is the "Profiles" section. This is a procession of baseball cards, one after another, two per page, each of which triggers a particular set of memories from the authors. Many of these, if not most, are really funny. But others are poignant.
Not all of the little capsule profiles are about the players themselves. Sometimes the authors take the opportunity to laugh over the baseball card itself -- a goofy pose, a bad airbrushing job, an inexplicable caption, an ill-considered description on the back.
It's an exquisite feeling, thumbing through their card collection with them. You feel the pang of reverence for the Ted Williams card. You snicker over Choo-Choo Coleman and the lousy catchers collected by the New York Mets. You ponder how it could be that Charlie Smith was traded straight up for Roger Maris. You nod knowingly over the author's continual confusion of Mike de la Hoz and Bob del Greco.
The visual design of the book is central to its power, which is why I particularly treasure my hardback edition. One page of umpire cards has a colored backround on which is stamped,simply, "Boo, Boo, Boo, Boo. . ." A page with the cards of Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente contains no commentary, just a respectful black background (each had recently passed at the time of the book's original publication.)
Somehow it all seems to mean something, even without seeming to try to mean anything. And therein lies the book's genius.
I know of no other baseball book like this one. It defies categorization, and despite my poor effort above, it really defies description. Buy it, hide it, shut the door and turn out the world, savor it, ponder it, laugh at it, love it.
Have a good time. It's meant to be fun, you know. Let's play two.
Christmas treasure.......2004-04-13
I received this as a Christmas gift one year and was initially disappointed. I had only heard of a few of the guys that were showed on the cards and I set it aside, figuring on sticking it up on my bookshelf with the other boring books that I had and never bothered with. Several days after Christmas we went on the annual family gift return, a day I truly hated. In desperation I grabbed this book off of my pile and took my accustomed place in the back of the station wagon. For the rest of that day and night the only time I put the book down was to eat, and then only briefly. This is a completely irreverent look at baseball as a whole, and the thing that really sealed the deal for me was the card of Whammy Douglas and the comments made by the author. I tried to get my dad to read it because I figured he would get more out of it than I did, (I'm 41 and consider myself to be on the trailing edge of those who might "get it",) but he wasn't interested. Maybe I'll try again. This book might have a limited range of interest, but if you have fond memories of baseball in the 50's and 60's, I think you'll fall right into that range.
"Goodnight Sibi Sisti, Wherever You Are"--From The Book.......2003-12-31
This book is a treasure. I think if I had to pack one bag of books for a long stay on a desert island, this would be one of the first ones included. Like one of the other reviewers, I have worn out more than one copy and find myself puzzled why it's been allowed to go out of print.
"The Great American Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Card Book" has three principal sections. The first, "Where Have You Gone VINCE DiMaggio" is a warm and very witty recollection of the co-author's childhoods in the 1950s and the central role that baseball cards played in them. Part two, "This Kid Is Going To Make It," is a look at how the baseball card business operated circa 1973, the date of the book's original publication.
As entertaining as these openers are, the best (and largest) part of the book is the one simply called "Profiles." Reproduced in full color are hundreds of cards from the early 1950s to the late 1960s, accompanied by the author's observations about the players immortalized on them. You'll find greats on these pages, like Richie Ashburn, Stan Musial and Ted Williams...but the real joy is the rediscovery of the men on the fringes of the game's glory...."immortals" like Chris Cannizzaro, Frank Leja, Foster Castleman, Clyde Kluttz and Coot Veal. It's tempting to quote from the book at length, but that would spoil the fun. Just to give you a sense of the flavor though, I opened at random to the page featuring Hector Lopez, poor-fielding third baseman for the Yankees and Kansas City A's. After judging Lopez not to be just a bad fielding third baseman for a baseball player, but for a human being, they declare, he did not "simply field a ground ball, he attacked it. Like a farmer trying to kill a snake with a stick."
This is a wonderful book for any baseball fan, and should especially be treasured on those short, cold winter days when the crack of the bat and the warm blue skies and green grass of summer seem oh-so-far away.--William C. Hall
A forever treasure.......2003-02-05
Beautiful, brilliant and witty. Once you have the book, you'll never forget it, and you'll probably keep wanting to show parts of it to fellow fans. However, in the name of humor, the book is a little cruel to some players -- for example, "Hal Griggs was to pitching as Wayne Causey was to hitting -- that is to say, nothing." Even as a kid I was made uncomfortable by things like that. But, some of those things, I just LOVED, like the teasing about how ugly Don Mossi was and about how lousy a hitter Hank Aguirre was ("...I mean to tell you, he couldn't even come close..."). So, where should they have drawn the line? Heck if I know. Also, the book seems to show a bias toward players from Boston and Philadelphia, giving them more space than they deserve, and a lot more kindness. But actually I enjoyed that, since, as a New Yorker, I've always been embarrassed about the disproportionate attention that is usually given to the Yanks and Mets. It's nice to see a couple of other towns getting their turn.
Book Description
With his singular gift for turning complex financial events into eminently readable stories, Roger Lowenstein lays bare the labyrinthine events of the manic and tumultuous 1990s. In an enthralling narrative, he ties together all of the characters of the dot-com bubble and offers a unique portrait of the culture of the era. Just as John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash was a defining text of the Great Depression, Lowenstein's Origins of the Crash is destined to be the book that will frame our understanding of the 1990s.
Customer Reviews:
Another Great Book!.......2007-09-10
Great read! I have been a financial advisor for over 15 years and love the markets and their history. Lowenstein has written two fabulous books about market changing events over the past decade, and "Origins" could be the best. For me, it was like reliving the boom (and bust) all over again; at times painful, very insightful, but not too techinical. Also, the section devoted to Enron was spectacular.
Prepare to be entertained but not educated.......2007-09-10
Mr. Lowenstein tells a compelling story about the fraud, avarice and delusion that infused the stock market's heady ride during the late 1990s, and its subsequent crash.
While the stories of Enron and WorldCom are quite gripping, Mr. Lowenstein doesn't really provide the type of analysis the book's title would imply. Mr. Lowenstein enumerates a few themes, such as executive pay and stock options, that undoubtedly played a part in executives' zeal to inflate their stock prices, but does not attempt to quantify the degree to which these themes influenced stock price movements or behaviors. He also focuses on a few stories, such as Enron, but fails to provide any technical analysis on price movements in the market as a whole. Stocks rise and fall off-stage, as in a Greek drama. In fact, there is not a single chart in the entire book.
The book also lacks detail on the mechanics of the accounting entities create by Andrew Fastow of Enron to offload liabilities. Surely the reader who cares enough about the topic to read this book must hunger for the R-rated version, rather than the G-rating given to Mr. Lowenstein's recounting. I was left craving more detail.
I would have loved to see a greater comparison between the 1929 stock market crash and our contemporary crash, but Mr. Lowenstein only devotes a few pages to such a comparison and uses faulty analysis. For example, he contends that there was less fraud in the 20s, and that it was "... mostly confined to a handful of brokers, bankers, and stock-pool operators". This understates the degree to which stock-pool operators manipulated stock prices to benefit a few insiders, and ignores some egregious characters, like Alfred Wiggins of Chase.
I really enjoyed Mr. Lowenstein's book, "When Genius Failed" and feel that he gave his readers more credit in that book. "Origins of the Crash" will leave the reader entertained but not educated. While it is a compelling read, it forces me back to the bookshelf to answer all the questions this book leaves unanswered.
A Valuable but Unhistorical Perspective.......2007-06-03
There's quite a lot to like in this book. Lowenstein has the details of the way the 'New Economy' of the '90s was hyped down pat, and how it all, inevitably, fell apart. But there's an important missing dimension. Lowenstein's book suffers from a lack of history.
As I read ORIGINS OF THE CRASH, I couldn't help but think of other books, describing astoundingly similar situtations. EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS by Charles MacKay, UNACOUNTABLE ACCOUNTING by Abraham Briloff, CONTRARIAN INVESTMENT STRATEGIES by David Dreman, ONCE IN GOLCONDA by John Brooks, THE WALL STREET WALTZ by Kenneth Fisher, THE ONLY OTHER INVESTMENT GUIDE YOU'LL EVER NEED by Andrew Tobias, and especially THE MONEY GAME and SUPERMONEY by George 'Adam Smith' Goodman.
The core of the great bubble was the fact that human beings don't naturally think in a logical manner, can't deal with large numbers well, are short term oriented, have a great capacity for believing nonsense, overoptimism, the use of case and other faults being unravelled by the emerging disciplines of behavioral economics and prospect theory, associated especially with Amos Kahneman and Daniel Tversky. Depite Lownstein's belief that this time was different, in fact, the elements of the bubble were exactly the same as the canal and railway manias, the small computer boom of the late 1970s, the 'era of wonderful nonsense' in the 1920s, the Great Electronics and IPO Mania of the 1960s, and the conditions just before the Crash of 1987.
So read this book, but remember the perspective is overly narrow. And especially remember that it will all happen again, in your lifetime. I've already seen it three times in mine.
Covers the topic but flawed.......2007-04-29
Lowenstein took a juicy and let's face it easy to write about topics greed and avarice, and tossed in a bunch of throw away simpleton comments that overall made me dislike him almost as much as the thieves he wrote about. Why authors can't stick to the topics at hand these days without interjecting blatantly over and over their political bias is beyond me. He also tries to adjust Adam Smith writings to support his own which comes off nonsensical to say the least. Quoting the noted liberal NYT economist, Paul "I hate Bush" Krugman says it all about Lowenstein bias. Overall, Lowenstein came off as a lightweight and this book is written for people with their minds made up already.
An important book.......2007-03-08
Roger Lowenstein is a terrific financial journalist. One of very few who really knows what he's talking about. Each of his 3 books - this one, When Genius Failed and his Warren Buffet biography are must reading for any investor. If you are going to be dealing with Wall Street you MUST be aware of what you are up against. Those guys are not your pals - they want your money!
Book Description
The jargon of economics and finance contains numerous colorful terms for market-asset prices at odds with any reasonable economic explanation. Examples include "bubble," "tulipmania," "chain letter," "Ponzi scheme," "panic," "crash," "herding," and "irrational exuberance." Although such a term suggests that an event is inexplicably crowd-driven, what it really means, claims Peter Garber, is that we have grasped a near-empty explanation rather than expend the effort to understand the event.
In this book Garber offers market-fundamental explanations for the three most famous bubbles: the Dutch Tulipmania (1634-1637), the Mississippi Bubble (1719-1720), and the closely connected South Sea Bubble (1720). He focuses most closely on the Tulipmania because it is the event that most modern observers view as clearly crazy. Comparing the pattern of price declines for initially rare eighteenth-century bulbs to that of seventeenth-century bulbs, he concludes that the extremely high prices for rare bulbs and their rapid decline reflects normal pricing behavior. In the cases of the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles, he describes the asset markets and financial manipulations involved in these episodes and casts them as market fundamentals.
Customer Reviews:
A Good Read!.......2004-06-10
During the collapse of the so-called Internet bubble, the legendary Dutch fiscal intoxication with tulips, called tulipmania, was widely cited as a lesson from history. The financial press hyped stories of deluded Dutch farmers who mortgaged all their worldly possessions to purchase a single prize tulip bulb, only to meet financial ruin when the bubble inevitably burst. Economist Peter M. Garber dug into history, and found that most of the common wisdom about the tulipmania was false. So, if you ever wondered how Dutch investors could have been so foolish, there is a simple answer: they weren't. Famous First Bubbles clearly evolved from a series of academic papers but, nonetheless, the book is entertaining. The primary focus on the tulip bubble makes the sections on the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles seem like afterthoughts. We recommend this to iconoclasts who enjoy debunking historical legends and to bubble watchers everywhere.
Excellent debunking of the myth about tulipmania.......2003-09-05
The author does an excellent job debunking the myth about the Dutch tulipmania from 1634 to 1637. He conducted detailed economics and historical research, and uncovered that just about everything about tulipmania as described in Charles Mackay book "Extraordinary popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" is either inaccurate, or exaggerated. The Dutch never mortgaged their entire properties for a single bulb. Also, Holland did not suffer a depression after the tulip market crashed. According to the author, very little net wealth was actually wiped out. Instead, the price of rare tulips was driven by rational economic considerations reflecting the short supply and the rising demand for this rare tulip bulb type. The price of these tulip bulbs at anyone time reflected expected investment returns from investors. Other economists have also documented that the price of tulip bulbs did go back up to similar level several centuries later associated with favorable economics change in this market.
The author goes on to further explain the rational economics fundamentals behind the Mississippi Bubble of 1719-1720 resulting from an attempt to swap French government debt for equity in a private company, financed by printing paper money. He similarly explains out in similar economics terms the South Sea Bubble of 1720 which was the equivalent of a leveraged buyout of the national debt of Great Britain. Both investment schemes ultimately collapsed, but their respective economics and strong government support at the onset gave these investment propositions very strong fundamentals. These investments are not so different than investments today in GSEs like Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Sallie Mae. Because of accounting irregularities, the stocks in these GSEs have recently taken a beating. But, there is no ground for talking about a GSE stock bubble.
The author has strong credentials to support his iconoclastic thesis that is not that well known by the economics establishment. He is a global strategist at Global Markets Research at Deutsche Bank and Professor of Economics at Brown University.
The Internet bubble has often been compared to the three investment bubbles mentioned above. Sadly enough, internet stock investors were by far the most foolish among investors of these four different investment bubbles. This is because at the onset the fundamentals behind internet stocks were far weaker and speculative than the ones associated with the investments associated with any of the three other bubbles.
A Good Read!.......2003-05-06
During the collapse of the so-called Internet bubble, the legendary Dutch fiscal intoxication with tulips, called tulipmania, was widely cited as a lesson from history. The financial press hyped stories of deluded Dutch farmers who mortgaged all their worldly possessions to purchase a single prize tulip bulb, only to meet financial ruin when the bubble inevitably burst. Economist Peter M. Garber dug into history, and found that most of the common wisdom about the tulipmania was false. So, if you ever wondered how Dutch investors could have been so foolish, there is a simple answer: they weren't. Famous First Bubbles clearly evolved from a series of academic papers but, nonetheless, the book is entertaining. The primary focus on the tulip bubble makes the sections on the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles seem like afterthoughts. We from getAbstract recommend this to iconoclasts who enjoy debunking historical legends and to bubble watchers everywhere.
Good, but not very academic.......2003-02-03
Episodes as the Tulip Mania, The South See Bubble, the Crash of 1929 are going to leave a permanent trace in financial science. So they deserve close investigation. The Author has achieved to make really a very interesting and vivid one. His ideas are very controversial, but exactly they make the book amusing. However, I haven't seen anywhere in the book a formula, integral, etc. Perhaps the purpose was to give more informal treatment of the bubbles phenomena, but it will be very interesting a formal one to be made in future by fitting concrete rational expectations models in the historical data.
Vilimir Yordanov, Bulgaria
Good Topic, Poorly Written.......2000-09-23
I picked up this book with high expectations as the topic is very timely, the author has a good reputaiton, and given the size of the volume thought it would efficientyl get to the point.
While the arguements made are important they are lost in a difficult ot read academic writing style. Hence while I did get the point, I didn't enjoy the process. The three events discussed, "Tulipmania", the "Missiissippi" and "South Sea Companies" are well know within financial circles. Each carries a lore and mythology which is what perpetuates them today. Humanizing the narrative would have been a more effective way to make the points that each had logical explnations other than manias that distorted asset prices.
Finally, particularly as the author is works in contemporary finance, the book really should have a chapter on the lessons applied to today.
Book Description
Daniel Gross is one of the leading economics and business writers in America today. His prolific commentary and unnerving insights are a staple of Slate, The New York Times, Fortune, Wired, New York magazine and dozens of other publications. In this lively romp, Gross makes a counter–intuitive argument. America in the first decade of the new century is not thriving despite the folly of the Y2K bubble–nor has it made a surprisingly quick recovery from the devastation of the crash in 2001 and 2002. Our current economic growth–and, indeed, the globalization that is a part of that growth–is a product of that wasteful bubble.
Pop! will take readers on a fast–paced tour of economic history where the reckless expansion of previous eras in railroads and automobiles, telegraphs and land, streetcars and stocks all led to unsustainable booms, collapses and, then, surprising blossoms of prosperity. Gross is gifted writer with a deep well of historical knowledge and easy grasp of economic conflicts. His book will re–orient our view of recent economic history and re–color our understanding of American growth throughout the national experience.
Customer Reviews:
A Short History of Financial Bubbles.......2007-06-15
There's nothing really new in this book. The idea that bubbles are "naturally" recurring phenomena is a standard concept of economics known as the business cycle. The idea that bubbles lay down the expensive infrastructure investments that make the next boom/biz-cycle-upswing possible is also not new. An example of this is: Google's current success would not have been possible if tech companies had not built out our broadband infrastructure in the first dot-com bubble.
What's useful about this book is that it conveniently lays out several bubbles and how the overinvestment in each bubble contribute to economic rebirth. History may repeat in the chronicles of business cycles, but it's amazing and interesting each time. My recommendation is that you read this book if you find this angle interesting, but if you only want the main point, save your money as I've already given it away above.
I found the prose very distracting. I couldn't get more than a page before the author felt the need to write another glib metaphor comparing something to something else totally unrelated. It's as he feels a constant need to show you how clever he is. Read this book if you want to find out how annoying metaphors can be.
Simple Thesis...Nicely Done.......2007-06-13
Taking the long view, bubbles - manic bursts of investment by entrepreneurs and investors - have had a positive impact on our economy. This is the simple idea that supports POP! a quick history of American hyper-growth. The infusion of capital, uncritical enthusiasm, and grand expectations - all to excess - leave in their abrupt aftermath an infrastructure - physical, legislative, or psychological - that those who follow ("consolidators") can use to ultimately realize the goals of the early dreamers. It is another of author Daniel Gross' contentions that the uniquely American aspect of the bubble experience has to do with the role of government. Government tax credits and grants stimulate American investment without an outright attempt to control the end results and thus diminish its longer term benefits to society.
Daniel Gross looks at the development of the telegraph, the build-out of railways, the internet boom-bust, the recent real estate boom, and the now bubbling, alternative energy phenomenon. In each earllier instance a collapse resulted in havoc and pain for the initial investors that left behind infrastructure (viz. national rail system, telecommunication network, new construction) that successors used for their profit. The 1929 stock market collapse is a classic bubble representing the pursuit of easy money (viz. credit and its wily twin, leverage). The infrastructure that resulted was not physical but legislative. Laws and regulations put in place after the Crash created an investment environment that would position the U.S. financial markets as preeminent. There is not a lot that is new in POP!, and its main idea that bubbles have had a positive effect on the economy is perhaps too fragile a foundation to support a book, but the commentary is presented selectively and with journalistic wit.
Average customer rating:
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Great Bubbles
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ASIN: 1851965254 |
Book Description
The early years of the eighteenth-century produced two great monuments: one, Christopher Wren's new cathedral of St Paul's, an enduring testament to principled craft and masterful construction. The other an empty fraud of such magnitude that its collapse threatened to overturn monarchies and governments. Its failure delayed the introduction of modern market economies by two generations. Yet the full scale of this monumental deceit was quietly covered up and hidden, its enduring legacy a poorly understood colloquialism: the South Sea Bubble. It was all planned by one ambitious promoter, who had decided to launch `a company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is'. This eighteenth-century mission statement has now acquired an almost uncanny resonance: these words could aptly have been applied to the bursting of the Internet bubble and the collapse of Enron. With the financial scandals that have beset global companies recently, such as Rank Xerox and Worldcom, this tale is all the more relevant today. Balen reveals the full story of corruption and scandal that attended the birth of the first shareholder economy, and with it uncovers a parable for our times.
Customer Reviews:
An entertaining account.......2004-01-19
Balen's account of the "South Sea Bubble" is an entertaining account rather than an exhaustive historical examination of the events surrounding the South Sea Companies rise and fall in the early 18th century. This is not to say that the book lacks historical analysis and insight - but it does not qualify for the sobriquet of a "learned" text.
After a few opening pages of purple prose (through which the reader should plough through, for there is better to come) Balen sets out to paint the circumstances surrounding the "South Sea Bubble". He composes a good picture of the fevered speculation of the period, and in particular is very strong in drawing the parallels to the French experiment with paper money under Law. The view of England being drawn into a speculative frenzy in part because of the need to beat France in commerce is a neat interpretation - and Balen's researches amongst the diplomatic archives bolster the view that the bubble grew out of competition with France.
A reader familiar with analysis of the period will come across the usual clichés - the company formed for "an undertaking of Great Advantage but no-one to know what it is" makes its obligatory appearance, for instance. Alongside these crowd-pleasers, Balen also offers some interesting details of the rise of the company, and the politics surrounding it. In so short a volume, the background setting is necessarily fairly cursory. Nevertheless, the political intrigue (with Walpole cast as the Machiavelli of his day) is well written.
Overall, this text serves as an excellent, entertaining introduction to the bubble. It provides some nice analysis of the bubble in an international context. Heading each chapter is a quote from an apposite article on the internet bubble - but without further elaboration - which struck me as a nice if none too subtle commentary on the ability of human nature to forget bitter experience in the face of wanton greed. For a really serious historian of the period, there is little to be gained from this work, perhaps - but for a generalist, it serves its purpose admirably and gives an nice overview of the phenomena.
Painful and meandering.......2003-06-28
This book just moves slowly from one topic to another with no clear reason of where its going. I found it shallow on facts for the length of the book. Its like a magazine article was teased and pulled into a book.
An Excellent History of the First Great Stock Market Scandal.......2003-05-24
The Secret History of the South Seas Bubble, written by Malcolm Balen, a television journalist who has worked for the BBC and ITV, recounts the first great stock market scandal involving a purely financial company known as the South Seas Company which occurred around the year 1720 along with the Mississippi Bubble that occurred in France at about the same time.
Though a number of books have been written about the Bubble, this one is written as a narrative which revolves around three different personalities: John Law, John Blunt, and Robert Walpole. Balen uses these three and other people who lived through the time of the Bubble to give the reader an idea of what the atmosphere of those heady times were like. One quickly sees many parallels to the tech bubbles of out own time, with its grand promises of easy wealth before reality rudely crashes the party.
The Secret History is an excellent primer for those readers that have never read about the South Seas Bubble before and is very enjoyable reading even for those who are well acquainted with the facts. After reading this book, you may never see scandals like Enron, Worldcom, and others in quite the same light again.
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