Nanny Nation: NYT/Freakonomics Review
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Very nice review of Bailout Nation in the NYTimes/Freakonomics blog:
Barry Ritholtz, in his new book Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy writes, “The iconic image is the American cowboy. You can picture him on a cattle drive, wearily watching over his herd. All he needed to get by were his wits, his horse — and his trusty Winchester.”
Americans are proud of this heritage, proud of being a country of “determined, self-reliant individuals” where hard work, not government handouts or family connections, promised a shiny future. Ritholtz’s book seeks to explain how the United States, once so proud, became “a nanny state for well-paid bankers.”
Ritholtz may be just the right person to explain the transition to both the disillusioned amateur and the finance junkie. He doesn’t pull his punches or bury the truth in layers of finance-speak, caveats, and disclaimers. Since he began blogging seven years ago, in-the-know readers of his popular blog, The Big Picture, have turned to Ritholtz for his prescient, refreshingly honest commentary on the economy. Anyone interested in understanding the roots of our current crisis should check out the book, but while you wait by the mailbox, here are some highlights.
Ritholtz On Bailouts
Unlike some commentators and economists who have blamed the crisis on a failure of capitalism and free markets, Ritholtz bases his book on the premise that we haven’t had a properly functioning capitalist system since 1971, the fateful year that the U.S. government bailed out Lockheed Martin.
Before 1971, “ … excessive greed, recklessness and foolish speculation were punished by the market.” If an early American cowboy left his herd to pursue a shaky investment deal, he most likely ended up ruined, stuck on a construction crew in some dusty outpost while he tried to scrape together enough money to start again. Meanwhile, the conservative cowboy who stuck with his herd, growing it carefully and cautiously, prospered — and perhaps picked up a few of Cowboy #1’s cattle at a steep discount.
After 1971, all of that changed . . .”
Way cool!
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Source:
The Nanny Nation
Dwyer Gunn
NYT Freakonomics Blog
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/the-nanny-nation/
July 9th, 2009 at 10:48 am
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/276589/Budget-Crisis-%22Embarrassing%22-But-Businesses-Aren‘t-Fleeing-California-Economist-Says
Budget Crisis “Embarrassing,” But Businesses Aren’t Fleeing California, Economist Says
…Let us remember a time long long ago, (last September), when this whole mess started and the pundits noted that restuarant meals had not fallen off…this was early in the crash…”We are a nation that must eat out now”…so went the talking head wisdom…
…I wonder if this fellow is just to early in the California business bust cycle…he is after all looking at studies down in the recent past, but nonetheless in the past…
July 9th, 2009 at 11:43 am
as always, *History is a multi-faceted Jewel. With that, we’ve, yet, to create enough Paper, on which, to Transcribe all of its salient characteristics..
“It all ended on August 15, 1971, when Nixon closed the gold window and refused to pay out any of our remaining 280 million ounces of gold.”
http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/ron-paul-gold/2007/06/01/
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Jewel
LSS: the Trail leads back to The Federal Reserve, its phony Notes, and the Treasonous ‘Politicians’ that are bought by them..
July 9th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Congrats on the positive PR, Barry! I still think you’re blind to the fact that this country has bailed people and companies out since 1776, though. It has only been a question of what people and what companies receive bailouts.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Ritholtz, what Hoffer and franklin are actually agreeing on – if you can believe it – is that your whole country is a bailout. You don’t really think you are paying only $0.07 cents per kilowatt-hour for nuclear power, do you? You don’t really think gas is only $3 a gallon, do you? Our whole economic system of so-called “free enterprise” buries as much of its actual costs under the rug in externalities and the national debt. To maintain the world economic status quo, hell, we even store France’s nuclear waste in South Carolina and protect Japan’s oil with our Fifth and Seventh Fleets. Since at least LBJ, the American brand of capitalism and democracy has not actually worked, but to this point, we are able to maintain the facade of success and bury all of OUR shortcomings in the national debt and printed money.
So why the hell didn’t you write about this before 2009?
July 9th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Barry — being endorsed by the New York Times is definitely a mixed blessing…. at least it’s a blog vs the Grey Lady’s suitable-for-puppy-training edition.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Barry — being endorsed by the New York Times is definitely a mixed blessing…. at least it’s a blog vs the Grey Lady’s suitable-for-puppy-training edition.
Oh please. First, a favorable book review (ie. one that says “this is worth reading”) is not an endorsement by the NYT editorial board. Book reviews are “endorsements” by a newspaper only in the sense that a favorable restaurant or automobile review is an endorsement.
The “mixed blessing” jibe necessarily implies that the NYT must always be wrong on all things — and never right. While I might often disagree with … say … the WSJ editorial page … I wouldn’t reconsider my position on the Earth orbiting the Sun just because the WSJ also says it does.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Douglas Watts, welcome back. I thought you were going to “mind the progressive store” on this blog, but you disappeared and The Great CNBC Sucks had to stick around. I can’t depend on you, Wunsacon, VennData, or Marcus Aurelius (MA is a lone wolf anyway)…and franklin is a useless liberal, not a progressive. Do we need a signup sheet or something to make sure someone is available? We can’t leave the more neutral Democrats and independents on this blog to be eaten up by Libertarians.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
i Franklin is correct, cause there have been more than a few instances of that bailout thing going back as far as the 1800s when we bailed out the railroads. not sure about before that though
and i suppose one could also count things like tea pot dome scandal.
and some of the automakers (at least Ford that I know of) that had factories in Germany got paid by our government because they got bombed. how stupid was that?
and there were a few (American) oil companies that were selling oil to Germany in WW2 also.