Reviews for International encyclopedia of the social sciences

The average rating for International encyclopedia of the social sciences based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-10-13 00:00:00 Millicent Sullivan I became interested in the book when I saw Phillips on Bill Moyers, and Moyers offered a strong endorsement, saying that this was the best thing out there to help understand what was happening in the financial crisis. From what I have seen, tough sledding and all, he was right. A better title, might have been Bad, Worse, Worst Money. Kevin Phillips - image fromi BillMoyers.com This is a very thoughtful, information-rich look at the shaky underpinnings of the contemporary American economy. (circa 2008) Our current precarious position was not due merely to crony capitalism or the corruption of the few. It is endemic in our system, part of a global irresponsibility. Booms brought about by credit expansions out of proportion with real economic growth are doomed to bust. But burst housing bubbles have a greater and longer-lasting effect on the economy that mere Wall Street meltdowns. He shows how the government consciously attempts to mask the true inflation rate (and thus the value of the dollar) by tweaking calculation of the Consumer Price Index to keep it artificially low. As many public benefit programs are tied to this it acts as a means by which those on, say, Social Security, are forced to accept annual increases that do not come close to covering the increase in real prices. Phillips notes changes in the world, the shift from private corporate control of oil to state control. (although not noting the increase of corporate control over states) He sees the increase in foreclosure being a result not just of consumer exuberance, but of lender malfeasance. This has been well documented since the book came out. As boom times extend there is a tendency for such economies to begin to produce less and less stuff and more and more “financial instruments.” In short, more money but less real product, with much of the paper being traded back and forth backed up by exactly nothing. At some point it goes boom. He notes one credible source that believes the current (The Great Recession) fiscal problems are the worst in history. Really? Worse than the Great Depression? The book is not long, only 207 pages, but it is no one’s idea of a fast read. Although it is not completely opaque, Phillips style is somewhat turgid, despite his many years on NPR. It is thick going for the content, but it may be that no one can make a breezy read out of such serious material. Obama did what he could to save the nation from a complete economic implosion. But many of the protections installed when it was still possible for bills sponsored by Democrats to reach the president have been removed or cut back. Just as polluters have now taken over the management of government agencies charged with controlling pollution, the economic bad actors that brought us the last major threat to not only our domestic, but the global economy, are now back in charge. Phillips's look at the private acts and public inactions that nearly destroyed our economy is worth studying to better understand the forces that seek to shift more and more wealth from the middle and working classes to the uber-wealthy. Yes, it most certainly can happen again, and in the absence of significant regulatory control of the financial markets, it most definitely will happen again. Review originally Posted October 2008 Review re-posted - May 22, 2015 Phillips' stuff -----Profile on Wikipedia -----writings in The Nation -----writings in articles in The American Prospect

Review # 2 was written on 2008-08-13 00:00:00 Kevin Lyons This book is both prescient and dated. It covers the credit crisis up the end of 2007 and correctly forecast the credit problems in the fall of 2008. Kevin Phillips is also a policy wonk and his tendency is to focus general political realities rather than just finance. Which is often a good thing, but finance viewed in isolation can be a stifling view. Phillips makes every attempt to make his subject readable but this is still a chart-heavy book. I agree with his approach, we need the charts to understand the material. I have a finance major, so this book is not daunting to me. Phillips has a few really good ideas that he belabours. Some, like peak oil and $100 barrels of oil, which sounded so inevitable in the spring of 2008, are now viewed in an entirely different light. Even after all the recent coverage about the credit crises and how the major players managed to get us in this mess, Phillips revealed many telling details of how things happened behind the scenes.