Imbalance of Power: US Hegemony and International Order Book

Posted here
02/25/10

Starting Over by Andy Serwer (Rating 2)

At the request of The Book Trib, a HC copy was sent, at no cost to me, for my honest opinion.

Synopsis: (from the book jacket) Bookended by 9/11 at the beginning and an epic financial meltdown at the end, the first decade of this century will surely go down as one of the most difficult in American history. We were plagued by a series of catastrophes and major missteps, from the convoluted presidential election in 2000 to the invasion of Iraq to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, as well as all manner of financial upheavals such as the collapse of Enron, the tragedy of General Motors and the Bernie Madoff scandal. .....Andy Serwer explains how we fell into this national hole and, more important, how we can and will pull ourselves out of it........

My Thoughts: My forte is not finance but after reading the book's jacket, I thought it would be a somewhat interesting read in learning about the nation's economic status that has touched many Americans in some way. I was also interested in learning when financial experts thought the housing crisis would rebound and the nation's unemployment numbers would turn around. And if there were some factual information that I might not have understood, my son is a financial analyst and knew that he would explain it to me in a way that I would understand. However, there were no questions that I needed to ask and it took me approximately one hour to finish the book. The first ten chapters consisted of one page of a picture from that year and one page, consisting of approximately 80 words, highlighting the main stories of that year. The writer appeared to put a lot of thought into what the last decade should be called as compared to "the nineties". There was a line on page 71 stating one of the reasons for the downfall, which I found to be ironic. It stated "We will never eliminate greed, of course, and a certain amount of if may even be necessary...

My Opinion and Rating: And this is only my opinion, which could be very different from other readers of this book. I found that the extensive damage of the financial institutions in this country, that took ten (10) years to destroy and crumble, could be conveyed in a book consisting of 85 pages, 13 of those are pictures. And again, this is only my opinion, but I find it ironic that with a book about our economic crisis and a book of this size would be affordable to the average American who has been affected. (Rating 2)