Books : Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.973
EAN: 9780670019076
ISBN: 0670019070
Label: Viking Adult
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: April 15, 2008
Publisher: Viking Adult
Sales Rank: 482
Studio: Viking Adult
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The bestselling author reveals how the U.S. financial sector has hijacked our economy and put America’s global future at risk
In American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips warned us of the perilous interaction of debt, financial recklessness, and the increasing cost of scarce oil. The current housing and mortgage debacle is proof once more of Phillips’s prescience, and only the first harbinger of a national crisis. In Bad Money, Phillips describes the consequences of our misguided economic policies, our mounting debt, our collapsing housing market, our threatened oil, and the end of American domination of world markets. America’s current challenges (and failures) run striking parallels to the decline of previous leading world economic powers—especially the Dutch and British. Global overreach, worn-out politics, excessive debt, and exhausted energy regimes are all chilling signals that the United States is crumbling as the world superpower.
“Bad money” refers to a new phenomenon in wayward megafinance—the emergence of a U.S. economy that is globally dependent and dominated by hubris-driven financial services. Also “bad” are the risk miscalculations and strategic abuses of new multitrillion-dollar products such as asset-backed securities and the lure of buccaneering vehicles like hedge funds. Finally, the U.S. dollar has been turned into bad money as it has weakened and become vulnerable to the world’s other currencies. In all these ways, “bad” finance has failed the American people and pointed U.S. capitalism toward a global crisis. Bad Money is the perfect follow- up to Phillips’s last book, whose dire warnings are now proving frighteningly accurate.
Average Rating: 
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This is a must read for any elected pol who thinks they know whats going on.
Rating:  -
This book should be read before The Predator State is read. It is a less detailed, somewhat bias claim the understand the current situation in our economy but it lacks the meat that Galbraith covers in the Predator State.
I do believe that is is worth reading so that some understanding of what we are doing by borrowing so much at this time has caused. We seem to need a good recession to get back our ethics and begin real growth sometime soon. We are in very bad shape and now that the problem has become so large, we cannot just keep feeding the greedy. We need taxes and punishment for the white collar stupid managers that got us here. If only we had the ethics that were in place before the Yuppies and Yippies told us they wanted change but forgot what they were doing due to drugs, we might have been better off today. They failed and they failed by huge amounts.
Rating:  -
If you are a Bush hater you will like this one. Too many statistics though. The author does have some interesting ideas about the current economic crisis and I look forward to learning more and deciding which I think are true.
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I'd give this 3 1/2 stars as I found the content fairly well presented but felt some of the issues were too rushed and could be more deeply examined analytically. It felt like the publisher's deadline was the more important criterion. Also, I appreciate that this was not a political partisan or ideological diatribe. Phillips is pretty fair in assigning failures to the people in control.
The loss of a star was due to the Kindle edition not linking footnotes or the index to their references in the text. What use is an index with no links or location numbers? Thus, as a non-fiction work for future reference it fails poorly. How about a revised Kindle edition that previous buyers can upgrade to?
Rating:  -
There is simply nothing better for understanding the mess we are in and what we will have to address if we really hope to dig our way out of this very deep hole. Required reading for all Americans. It is surprisingly readable for the information and deeper understanding Phillips is giving us. Puts things together so well you end up feeling like every other source of information or commentary sees only part of the elephant. Pair this with "The World is Flat" by Tom Friedman and you've got the ideal gift for each of your children, teenage or above, to prepare them for what's ahead.
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