Book Review: The Bush Boom

I nearly fell off my seat laughing when I saw this review at Amazon:

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The Bush Boom

53 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars

Through the Looking Glass, October 24, 2003

By Alice (Wonderland)
See all my reviews

Finally! A book that proves the existence of an alternate universe.

Obviously, a rip in the space/time continuum between this universe and the other universe where Bush is presiding over a ‘boom economy’ opened up and this book fell through. Can there be ANY other explanation?


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Best of all, its only 1 cent at Amazon.

This book is of great interest to Theoritical Physicists, especially those that study string theory…

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. wunsacon commented on Apr 15

    I’m reserving a spot on my bookshelf for this one, right next to “Dow 36,000”.

  2. Chief Tomahawk commented on Apr 15

    Wow! A two-fer! Jerry Bowyer the author with a foreward by Mr. Goldilocks.

    No wonder Larry always has Jerry on his show.

    I wonder how well the content holds up to the “how to lie with statistics” Bible?

  3. speedlet commented on Apr 15

    No need for the publisher to withdraw any books from the shelves — just flip them upside down and the arrows will point in the right direction.

    After all, it all depends on your definition of the word “boom”.

  4. Neil Sambol commented on Apr 15

    At $.01 it is way overpriced!

  5. Mich(^IXIC1881) commented on Apr 15

    I am sure Bush will author some during his retirement as well. You may want to spare some shelves for those too.

    “Conversations with God: An uncommon monologue”

    “George W: Straight from the arse”

    ” Who Moved My Brain? An Amazing Way to Deal with Reality in Your Work and in Your Life”

    “Fair to Awful: Why Some Governments Make Wars… and Others Don’t”

  6. Robert commented on Apr 15

    priceless! (well, almost…)

  7. engineer al commented on Apr 15

    When I visit the link, “customers who bought this item [“The Bush Boom”] also bought” “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression”.

    What a pairing that is.

  8. jj commented on Apr 15

    They got lost in their own Dark Matter

  9. FT Woods commented on Apr 15

    Has anyone told the Onion?

  10. km4 commented on Apr 15

    Here’s another one…

    Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism
    by Kevin Phillips
    http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0670019070/groksoup04

    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.

  11. patfla commented on Apr 15

    I thought we’d already collectively determined that “Bush Boom” is an oxymoron.

    Boom as in oxy and Bush as in …

    pat

  12. Jack commented on Apr 15

    Absolutely a bargain…I bet it doubles in value in only 50 years!

  13. Donny commented on Apr 15

    Our economy is like a country exhausted of natural resources. All the tricks of cheap money & consumer debt, to prop our economy up are spent.

    I hate sounding so negative about my own country, but our economy is sick, and the unfortunate medicine is a nasty recession … unlike anything most of us have ever seen.

  14. Philip in Bali commented on Apr 15

    Did anyone else notice the increasing resemblance between Bush and Alfred e. Newman? This might be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that he has detroyed the US economy, thrown away the Geneva convention and destroyed long fought for civil liberties. Bush I mean.

  15. normaldist commented on Apr 15

    Is this book found under fiction or comedy?

  16. engineer al commented on Apr 15

    I didn’t read all of the reviews but my favorite, so far:

    October 23, 2003 By A Customer

    “Anyone who thinks that we are in a “boom” is delusional. Read this book if you have no sense of reality. It will confirm your hallucinations.”

  17. ECONOMISTA NON GRATA commented on Apr 15

    And Hillary Clinton got caught telling the truth the other day.

    No really, I’m serious, Paul Krugman caught her.

    Econolicious

  18. Eren commented on Apr 15

    Robert,
    “priceless! (well, almost…)”

    was a killer. lol, lol, thank you

  19. Jeff B commented on Apr 15

    The Bush boom is real.

    I made my fortune investing in assets that rise in price with ginourmous amounts of fiat money printing.

    And then paid 15% tax.

    Good luck on a repeat with McObamatin.

  20. Marcus Aurelius commented on Apr 15

    Looks like “The Bush Boom” it blew up in the author’s face.

    Pundits and the propaganda hacks they push are the least credible people in America.

  21. Marcus Aurelius commented on Apr 15

    Looks like “The Bush Boom” it blew up in the author’s face.

    Pundits and the propaganda hacks they push are the least credible people in America.

  22. Marcus Aurelius commented on Apr 15

    Looks like “The Bush Boom” it blew up in the author’s face.

    Pundits and the propaganda hacks they push are the least credible people in America.

  23. Marcus Aurelius commented on Apr 15

    Looks like “The Bush Boom” it blew up in the author’s face.

    Pundits and the propaganda hacks they push are the least credible people in America.

  24. VennData commented on Apr 15

    It’s ‘Boom’ as in explosion

  25. The Decider commented on Apr 15

    Jerry Bowyer is living proof that Aliens exist.

  26. Al Czervic commented on Apr 15

    A penny? On a page per sheet basis, wouldn’t that make a copy cheaper than a role of toilet paper? Hmmm…might be some utilitarian value there. Then again, considering the content already on the pages, that might be redundant.

  27. $19.09 commented on Apr 15

    The Book is $19.09

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594670870/thebigpictu09-20

    Bowyer’s book sells for more than PPaannzznneerr’s Financial Armageddon, Revised and Updated 2008 Edition – $11.53 and 32% discount with free shipping just to buy it please

    Just the facts Barry, just the facts.

    ~~~

    BR: Yes, facts:

    Amazon has Bush Boom for sale used at 1 cent
    Amazon has Financial Armageddon used at $16.00

    How about Amazon sales rank?
    Bush Boom: Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,928,415
    Financial Armageddon #4,886

    Any other facts you care to discuss?

  28. Mich(^IXIC1881) commented on Apr 15

    Financial Armageddon:
    4 used & new available from $19.99

    Bush Boom:
    15 used & new available from $0.01

    Also available in [BARGAIN PRICE] category: 7 used & new available from $19.09

    So, the bottom line is, on Amazon, the lowest price for Bush Boom is 1cents and Financial Armageddon is 19.99. Unless you like to pay more for Bush Boom, what is it that you’re trying to say?

  29. Mich(^IXIC1881) commented on Apr 15

    I saw the 11.53 price but that is for paperback… which brings me to the question: Why doesn’t Bush Boom have a hardcover version? (rethoric question)

    Also, the reason that Financial Armageddon is included in the “free shipping for orders over $25” is because you can actually buy it directly from Amazon. You can’t buy Bush Boom directly from Amazon because they don’t sell it. The inventory costs and profits ($0.01) are left to the flea market sellers.

    just the facts!

  30. wingnut commented on Apr 15

    Mich(^IXIC1881),

    One is new with free shipping and another one used and without shipping.

    I wanted to buy the book for $0.01 but it was used, with missing pages and additional $10 shipping charge.

    Instead, I have purchased Financial Armageddon 2008 edition for $11.53 with 32% discount, free shipping, and free car wash by the author. It says the author of Financial Armageddon will come and wash my car if I buy his book. I thought it was a better bargain. Hey, you cannot go wrong with free car wash for $11.53

    http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Armageddon-Revised-Updated-Economic/dp/1427797412/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208313450&sr=8-2

  31. Mich(^IXIC1881) commented on Apr 15

    Blatantly misleading messages keeps coming:
    frugalmedia01 sells for $0.01 (s/h $3.99) in “Used – Good” condition

    -usedbooks123- sells it for $0.01 (s/h $3.99) in “Used – Acceptable” condition and adds “Lots of visable wear from reading, spine and cover have creases, all pages in good shape, reading copy.”

    aammarket sells it for $1.49 (s/h $3.99) in “Used – Very Good” condition and commments “corners are a little scuffed. Book appears to be unread.”

    If you want new,
    outlook_books sells it for $4.96 (s/h $3.99) in NEW condition and adds “New book, unread, ships out in 24 hours, 100% satisfaction guaranteed”

    I would like you to see the “just facts” proved by pointing me to the sentence where it says $10 for shipping or says “pages missing” in any of the examples above.

    It pisses me off when people uses the words “facts”, “truth”, “reality”, “unarguably”, “undeniably” to blatantly lie to your face.

    What kind of fanaticism gets people this blind that they can’t even tell a man for who he is, a puppet moron, who messed up every task he was given, who lied and cheated his way to power, who took a great country to a reasonless (preemptive) war, who caused thousands of his fellow citizens, and hundreds of thousands of innocent people to die??? What kind?

  32. brion commented on Apr 16

    “What kind?”

    um, ok. I’m going out on a limb here but……

    a bastard?

    Bush, btw, is God’s retribution on America for Larry Kudlow.

  33. Mich(^IXIC1881) commented on Apr 16

    What part of “New book, unread, ships out in 24 hours, 100% satisfaction guaranteed” was confusing in my copy&paste?

  34. ScrewBush commented on Apr 16

    You missed the best review quote on Amazon by Robert I Cruickshank:

    “…As a serious study of current political economy, this book is a joke. As an example of the total disconnection of conservatives with basic human reality, however, it is a tour de force.”

    I’m sure Mamma Bush will buy out the first printing.

  35. mock turtle commented on Apr 16

    you can buy the used copy real cheap cause the pages have been stuck together.

  36. SR commented on Apr 16

    Medical diagnose of author is that he is afflicted with Cranial Rectal Inversion.

    Hence Kudlow as a ‘Butt Buddy’

    Your mileage may vary….

  37. Quiddity commented on Apr 16

    That book came out in 2003, and most of the negative review are from that year as well. I wonder what kind of reaction it would get if it was published this year.

  38. tanya commented on Apr 16

    “The Bush Boom,” will be observed by future historians with the same amount of respect currently reserved for former President Jerry Ford’s WIN buttons.

  39. hidebound commented on Apr 16

    quote
    Bush, btw, is God’s retribution on America for Larry Kudlow.
    unquote

    who said god doesn’t have a sense of humor?

  40. Formerly Known As… commented on Apr 16

    Selling for $0.01 on Amazon… maybe Jerry Bowyer can use this as an example of low inflation!!!

  41. John Wellman commented on Apr 16

    Let us know how y’all really think. I’d much prefer the current president to anything named Clinton. BTW, the economy is great with tons of high paying jobs, as long as you are in engineering, energy, and science. It appears that many less rigorous individuals hate the president because it is his fault they have “bubble economy job skills”. Katrina being his fault confirms this outlook. Supply of qualified individuals is low, demand for qualified individuals is high. Giddy up boys, since I am riding green energy while you fret about the past. Retrain yourselves so you can join me and quit whining, or you can continue your lives and keep paying me.

  42. john commented on Apr 16

    You do have to wonder who buys books like this. As the Iraq fiasco clearly demonstrates there is a segment of the population who are quite willing to suspend belief if it accords with their deepest prejudices. This ranges from the grieving parents trying to rationalize the deaths of children killed over there by convincing themselves they “died for their country” to the economically deprived laying out scarce bucks for this sort of tripe which demonstrates that they have really not been shortchanged economically over the last seven years. It can’t be explained anymore than can belief in miracles or alien abduction, but it’s hard to hide one’s disgust for shills like Bowyer and Kudlow for perpetrating this nonsense. Someone above mentioned the Amity Shlaes revisionist conservative critique of the New Deal. It’s deeply ironic that many of the policies/agencies she said didn’t work in this book have just been used to bail out the paymasters on Wall Street of the AEI or Heritage Foundation where she perches. These people have zero personal or intellectual integrity but like the poor they will always be with us.

  43. john commented on Apr 16

    Mr Wellman above proves my point. He takes essentially an anecdotal fact and transmutes it into a broad analysis. As it happens I’ve done extremely well over the past five years but it doesn’t blind one to the wider picture. After all certain industries boomed during the great depression- the movie for example. Does he suggest we all get jobs in green energy because if we did he’d soon find out what the economic consequences were. Overall by just about any measure this has been the weakest economic expansions since the war and has had all sorts of malign consequences which we can now see unfolding. Unfortunately, Mr Wellman’s deepseated prejudices, apparently about Bill Clinton, blind him to the obvious, but perhaps he also believes in alien abduction.

  44. BG commented on Apr 16

    Now you see what this Supply-Side/Goldilocks Bullshit is truly worth when served up without the spin.

    It’s just one more piece of trash being sold to the public trying to mask their true intentions.

  45. BG commented on Apr 16

    You know why this Country is in the shape it’s in?

    -GREED, DECEPTION and blatant DISHONESTY-

    A perfect example is the guy above in this post who was unwilling to even admit the true price of the book in question. People elect to lie rather than tell the truth when the obvious truth is staring them directly in the face.

    So when discussing more complex topics where the ultimate outcome is not yet known, people who flood the channels with disinformation cause serious repercussions in the final result. This Country is now facing the end result of this most recent failed policy, where the cost is simply incalculable.

    Get over it! The book is fairly priced at one penny. It’s actually even less than a penny considering the inflation we are now experiencing.

  46. RenoDino commented on Apr 16

    You sure that book wasn’t ghost written by Bill and Hillary? Unlike for most folks, the Bush years have been very good to them.

  47. Jon H commented on Apr 16

    So, wait. If I agree to take 100 of these, then I’ll get a dollar? They’ll pay me a dollar to take possession of a year’s worth of fine kindling? Sweet!

    Wait, what? They expect me to *pay* for this?

    More seriously, I expect this reality-defying book was pooped out on the market for the limited purpose of sustaining the support of the dumber part of the Bush base through the 2004 election. I’m sure the book generated plenty of favorable airtime and column-inches for Mr. Bowyer, propagating his ‘argument’.

  48. Jon H commented on Apr 16

    BTW, the pre-production title of this was “Yum! Shit sandwiches! My favorite!”

    So I hear.

  49. Dave commented on Apr 16

    I’m very much looking forward to the Obama boom which will be driven by higher taxes, protectionism and hope!!

  50. Jon H commented on Apr 16

    “I’m very much looking forward to the Obama boom which will be driven by higher taxes, protectionism and hope!!”

    Don’t forget competence, good judgement, and lower deficits.

  51. Bob A commented on Apr 16

    I hope the paper is soft like Charmin

  52. RedCharlie commented on Apr 16

    Hey, the Bush Boom is real! (at least for the top 1%!!)

    For the rest of us, we still get a Bush Boom too, however it’s better known as the Bush “KA-BOOM”

  53. Uncle Jeffy commented on Apr 16

    Quite possibly the funniest post (and comments) on TBP yet. Thanks to Barry and everyone who posted – even the wingnuts, although they’re almost certainly incapable of appreciating the reaction their comments elicited.

    My own guess: on Amazon’s best-seller list, this book will be 2,898,410th out of 2,898,409.

  54. A commented on Apr 16

    I guess nobody bothered to take a look at the publication date of this book. After this book was published, GDP took off and stayed strong for years, and the stock market hit record levels, which it has only slightly receded from.

    So, sorry to spoil the fun, but it was, uh, right…

  55. tanya commented on Apr 16

    Speaking of booms and busts, how would McCain react as President were his phone to ring at 3:00AM? He would call Amity Shlaes and by 9:00am the following morning, she’d have convened an emergency press conference, where in urgent tones, she’d condemn the New Deal.

  56. p.a. commented on Apr 16

    Boom as in ‘fall down go boom!’. Remember the old Warner Bros. cartoons with the hobos making soup from boiled shoes? Won’t even be able to do that this time because of all the synthetics.

  57. ef commented on Apr 16

    Preemptive revisionism.

  58. wprestong commented on Apr 16

    About $0.01 stuff on Amazon: I used to work for the group at Amazon that did that. It is called Amazon Marketplace. These are remainders and used books. If you click on the link you can get an idea of “market depth” for a book. You do not want to quote the Amazon retail price for anything because Amazon deliberately keeps those prices a bit high so as to help the Marketplace sellers (which it gets a commission on).

    $0.01 is still profitable because the fixed shipping price for these is $3.99 and anything you can actually ship for less than that gives you a profit on it. It is really going to cost you $4.

    Amazon sellers are not permitted to quote a price of $0 or a negative price. That is one reason this particular title keeps piling up unsold.

  59. John Wellman commented on Apr 16

    Personal biases aside, how many Americans are willing to take the road less traveled? It took me eight years to acquire my job skills in nuclear energy. Just as a general rule of thumb, between 20 and 30 percent of the overall energy industry is currently undermanned and that figure will only get worse as more people retire and more powerplants are built.
    Before I spent my time aboard a submarine, I realized that I wanted to get involved in alternative energy. Foresight, patience, discipline and hard work has positioned me well. I want more people in my field because our nation needs the stability and technology development in energy to close the loop on pollution. This endeavor will take over 50 years. Why is it that we have to import so many engineers and scientists from overseas? We need to take charge in this field and lead the world in energy. There will not be enough engineers, technicians and scientists available in my life to solve this problem.
    Lets encourage students to properly leverage their careers by choosing careers that will actually pay off their student loans, purchase homes and provide for their families. Lets not continue creating degrees for people who use them as fashion accessories and then wonder why they cannot make more than 40-50k per year with no upward mobility because they are mired in debt. I want to attack this problem with many solutions and create wealth for greater number of motivated individuals.
    Rhetoric is great, but results are what differentiate the educated from the productive.

  60. sujiwani commented on Jun 14

    I like to read this book because it must be very useful to us. It will be great interest to us because the Environment becomes pollution day by day. Amazon is the largest forest in the world. The forests help to save the role of climate and weather also the earth. If we know about the theoretical physics we can easily save our Environment.

    ………..
    sujiwani

    There are a lot of sites out there showing book video. BookVideoTV, BookTelevision and of course CSPAN, but I like how BN.com and Reader’s Entertainment TV have specific genre channels and original shows. There’s just more to see and I can be specific in what genre I’m interested in. Anyone else watch online tv?
    http://www.readersentertainment.tv

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