Review of Best for Britain?: The Politics and Legacy of Gordon Brown (Hardcover)

Simon Lee is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Hull University. In this brilliant book, he examines Gordon Brown's record and his growing embrace of Thatcherite policies and language.

Brown has dropped the Labour Party's rhetorical commitment to state-led modernisation of our manufacturing industries. He has embraced the City of London's liberalised financial markets and the domestic property market, increasing our vulnerability to global shocks.

As a result, Britain lost a million manufacturing jobs under his Chancellorship. Monthly deficits in trade in goods average £6.5 billion. From 1966 to 1994, we had more assets than liabilities; since 1995, vice versa. Outward investment was £5279 billion at the end of 2006, inward investment £5544 billion: a net loss of £265 billion, 20% of GDP.

Average houses are now unaffordable for first-time buyers in 93% of towns, as against 37% in 2001. The housing market now drives increasing inequality and in turn is driven up by increasing immigration: 2.54 million new NI numbers were issued to overseas nationals between 2002/3 and 2006/7.

Inequality has soared: in the 1980s the richest 1% owned 17-18% of the wealth; by 2007 they owned 20-24%. Directors' pay rose by 28% in 2005 alone. The average pay of a Tesco's worker fell from £12.7K to £11.6K while Tesco's CEO got £5.4 million, 466 times the average worker's.

Private and public debts are growing. Training, transport and communications still lack investment. His PFIs and PPPs mean that we taxpayers subsidise firms to run public services badly.

His Foreign Secretary Miliband vaunts `the hard power of economic and military incentives and interventions' - i.e. sanctions and wars. Brown is raising military spending from £34 billion in 2008/9 to £36.9 billion in 2010/11, including two aircraft carriers costing £3.9 billion with 36 Joint Strike Fighters on each, another £5 billion.

Brown said, "We should be proud ... of the empire." Thabo Mbeki reminded us what empire meant - `genocide, vast ethnic cleansing, slavery, rigorously enforced racial hierarchy and merciless exploitation'. Brown's `outward-looking internationalist patriotism' is sanctimonious code for identifying Britain with past, present and future aggressions.

Brown wants above all to enforce trade liberalisation - which has cost sub-Saharan Africa $272 billion in the last 20 years, far exceeding the aid Brown promised (but did not deliver). His proposed International Finance Facility would pay out $500 billion and cost $720 billion, due to interest payments to bondholders profiting from aid. Brown wants profits from climate change too. His key environmental goal is a global carbon market centred on the City.

He wants a Global Europe, an `outward-looking, globally-oriented EU', meaning, again, more wars. The Lisbon Agenda is Brown's agenda - making the EU even more Thatcherite, more like the USA, by making the Single Market more liberalised, deregulated and privatised. The European Commission says that in `Enterprise Europe', "Entrepreneurship is the key to the new economy."

His commitment to Britain is just rhetorical. He is actually breaking up Britain by devolution and regionalisation (unelected regional assemblies and ministers), under EU orders.

Lee indulges in some wishful thinking about the supposed benefits of devolution and about Brown's breaking with Blair's war policies and opposing the revived EU Constitution. But overall, this is a most useful and well-researched book, giving us the evidence to prove that Brown's policies are pro-capital and anti-Britain.




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Review of Fundamentals of Actuarial Mathematics (Hardcover)

The problem with Life Insurance mathematics is that there are very few really good books on the topic. This book does little to alleviate this situation. Inspite of its title, "Fundamentals of Actuarial Mathematics" is essential a text book on Life Insurance mathematics. Of its 372 pages, 243 are devoted to Life Insurance mathematics (the remaining pages focussing on risk theory, in particular compound distributions, Markov chains, Poisson processes and ruin models, all of which are usually considered in the context of property and casualty or general insurance).

The explanations in the book are easy to understand and a reasonable number of worked examples and exercises are provided (with answers to the exercises given at the end of the book). However, at the same time, the explanations lack depth and the text book stops short of covering many of the more advanced topics in Actuarial Mathematics (such as increasing insurance policies and bonuses).

This is an adequate book for beginners and would be appropriate as a first text in Actuarial Mathematics. However, more advanced students are likely to find this book to be lacking.



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Review of Dead Bank Walking: One Gutsy Bank's Struggle for Survival and the Merger That Changed Banking Forever (Hardcover)

Having read other books (Den of Thieves, Barbarians at the Gate, etc.) written on some of the other deals which took place in the late eighties and early nineties, I was looking forward to something similar with"Dead Bank Walking."

While the book certainly delivers aninformative account of Security Pacific's rise and eventual merger withBank of America, it also offers the perspective of one of the deal's maindecision makers. Instead of the 'Monday Morning Quarterback' approach ofmost business retrospectives, Smith offers the reader the opportunity tounderstand all of the factors which influenced this mega-merger and theeventual aftermath.

I'd recommend this book to anyone involved in thefinancial services industry or considering a career in finance.



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Review of Energy and American Society Thirteen Myths (Hardcover)

This is an excellent introduction to real energy issues, written by experts, with many useful references for further study.Energy mythinformation (inadvertent or otherwise) propagates all too easily, and this book does a good job of debunking the common myths.

Anyone involved in policies regarding energy&climate change should be familiar with this material, and that includes ordinary citizens, especially those who might care about the US economy and environment seen by any grandchildren.

I'd summarize the book as saying:
a) We face serious problems, as we *will* run out cheap oil, and then cheap gas [look up "Peak Oil" in Wikipedia], and if we keep burning coal without sequestering CO2, we will push the planet into a much hotter state with serious economic downsides. Right now, the US economy depends on cheap oil, and of course, it might be better not to be selling off big chunks of the US economy to other countries to feed our oil habit forever.

b) However, we actually have pretty good solutions for many of the problems, mostly without requiring magic technology leaps.There is no one silver bullet, but a myriad of small actions to be taken to stop wasting energy, many of which actually save money right away.

c) Most of the actions required are actually policy choices, with help from widespread use of existing technologies, plus rational R&D investments.Low electicity-per-capita use in some states has been achieved with no obvious economic catastrophes.[Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and California are not usually considered poor places.]Of course, we have much further to go, but in many cases, it really is a matter of choosing to do the right things.

The editors provide an introduction and summary bookending 13 myth discussions by (mostly) other authors.Following is a list of the 13 myths, with comments on a few of the chapters:

1. Today's Energy Crisis is "Hype"

2. The Public is Well Informed About Energy

3. High Land Requirements and an Unfavorable Energy Balance Preclude Biomass Ethanol from Playing a Large Role in Providing Energy Services
- This is an especially important chapter, as the topic engenders much confusion. Not all biofuels need be from corn, and there is more land available than many think.

4. The Hydrogen Economy is A Panacea
- Dr. Joseph Romm shows why hydrogen (especially for vehicles) is a long way off, if ever, compared to PHEV/FF (plug-in-electric-vehicles with flex-fuels).He shows why research is appropriate, but not spending huge $$ for premature deployment, especially to the detriment of truly useful steps doable much sooner.

I also his recommend Joe's website http://climateprogress.org/, and his book Hell and High Water: Global Warming--the Solution and the Politics--and What We Should Do.

5. Price Signals are Insufficient to Induce Efficient Energy Investments

6. The Barriers to New and Innovative Energy Technologies are Primarily Technical:
- The Case for Distributed Generation
- In many ways, distributed generation of electricity would be more efficient, but power companies are geared for centralized generation, even with expensive long-distance distribution.

7. Renewable Energy Systems Could Never meet Growing Electricity Demand in America

8. Worldwide Power Systems are Economically and Environmentally Optimal
- Tom Casten and Robert Ayres show how far off we are, illustrating the efficiencies gotten with waste-energy recycling / cogeneration ... that are strongly inhibited by regulatory issues and market distortions, compared with places like Denmark or The Netherlands, etc.See Casten's website: http://www.recycled-energy.com/index.html

9. Energy Efficiency Improvements have Already Reached Their Potential
- Amory Lovins shows why not, why "negawatts" are really cost-effective, and whynuclear plants don't seem very cost-effective compared to other options.I especially liked his description of his Rocky Mountain house that lacks a conventional heating system, but whose design cuts heat losses to within 1% of various free heat gains."The last 1% can come from a 50-watt dog, adjustable to 100W by throwing a ball..."

10. Energy Efficiency Measures are Unreliable, Unpredictable, and Unenforceable

11. Energy R&D Investment Takes Decades to Reach the Market

12. Climate Policy will Bankrupt the US Economy
- California is pretty aggressive on this, because we have to be, as all the impacts of global warming will cost us money.Nevertheless, California is hardly poor, and we expect that reworking our infrastructure for energy efficiency, and heading towards minimal use of fossil fuels as early as we can, will only make us more competitive in the face of increasing oil costs.

13. Developing Countries are Not Doing Their Part in Responding to Concerns about Climate Change

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This is a very useful book.I expect to study many chapters in further depth and chase down references.





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Review of The Economics of Financial Markets (Hardcover)

This book presents the basic economic concepts behind daily activities onfinancial markets, such as stock price or exchange rate movement, and triesto explain the relations between them.It briefly introduces choice underuncertainty, risk aversion, portfolio optimization problems, marketefficiency hypothesis, and equilibrium of asset markets.In addition, theCapital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), and Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) arepresented.It brings the most exciting part of academic evolution offinancial economics in the last three decades to the pubic with modestknowledge of mathematics.It also shows the weakness of these theories. Very self-contained and readable.However, if you want to pursue a groundunderstanding of these theories, you should go further.



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Review of Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before (Hardcover)

First, the high points.The author has a lot of interesting survey data that she uses compare the attitudes of "baby boomers" and "generation me".

She shows how today's youth are much more accepting of other races, cultures and sexual orientations; how people are open about their feelings; how women no longer face the kind of discrimination that they did 30 years ago; how young people want to do fulfilling things with their lives and are more self-reliant than ever.

And of course we see the downside: narcissism due to what can only be described as too much self-esteem; an unwillingness to take personal responsibility; too much of a focus on money and celebrity; and an epidemic of depression that no one has yet found a cause for.

The contrast between the generations is very interesting - dating someone outside your race is no longer an issue; the average woman in 2005 has a more aggressive personality (as measured by her survey) than the average man did in 1968.All cool stuff, and it would have been great if the author could have distilled the most significant of these differences into a single chapter.

Unfortunately, she didn't, and I found this to be a very frustrating read overall.She discusses the mismatch between the ambitions of young people and the careers they ultimately end up in.She is right to question kids who want to be "made" into famous hip-hop stars or models or actors, but she also sneers at all of the kids who want to be doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc.

She devotes pages - if not chapters - to the idea that "work should suck" and that young people should not expect to find their dream jobs, let alone fulfilling employment - but then when she discusses what young people can do to be more realistic, she lauds two 25-year-olds who quit their jobs and biked across the US to raise money for charity.

To make matters worse, she chides young people for being cynical about the government, and then chides them for not being cynical enough about their jobs.To top it all off, she thens admits that, as a professor, she "[doesn't] know much about nonacademic career paths".

One thing she does know - and she repeats it numerous times in the book - is that not just anyone out there can become a college professor like her.In many ways, this book feels like the author's attempt to get back at people who made fun of her and wronged her when she was growing up.Even though she's 33 years old and some of the subjects she talks to are 12, she often calls this "her generation" and makes generalizations about it based on her experience.She writes: "Publish the damn honor roll...[I]t's [a] small bit of high school glory enjoyed by the kids who will someday be our doctors and lawyers."Though of course she cautions against encouraging even the smartest and most capable students lest they become convinced that they don't need to work hard to accomplish their goals.

Ultimately, she ends up blaming the victims.Today's 15-to-25-year-olds don't run the world, their parents do.For all her talk about personal responsibility, she devotes exactly one sentence to telling parents that they bear some of the blame for how their kids have turned out.

The author had the opportunity to write something substantial about the changes that have happened over the last two generations.Instead, she decided to write a polemic against people who are not just like her.This will certainly appeal to anyone who likes to believe that "these damn kids are so disrespectful these days", but an insightful book, it's not.



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Review of The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke (Hardcover)

How many people graduate from high school and even college within knowing the basics of financial literacy - deciphering credit ratings, maintaining and balancing a bank account, getting through college with a minimum of student debt, making the most of that first job and, eventually, buying a home and planning for retirement?
Orman strives to close this "financial illiteracy" gap by providing invaluable info for those just starting out - although I found plenty of information I needed to know as well - and I'm well outside the "young and broke" range she seems to be targeting.
The info is not only cutting edge but many of the websites have NOT appeared in other books. One example of how new the info is: Orman notes the recent changes in credit rules noting that EVERYONE has access to a FREE credit report once a year.
Because she knows younger adults may be intimidated by a ton of financial info, Orman (wisely) delivers her advice in innovative, user-friendly ways. Each page is short, easy to read and yet chock full of info. In short, she doesn't waste words.
Each section is launched with a Lowdown on what will be covered in the chapter and there is a quick summary at the end with checklists to make sure readers know what they shouldn't have missed. A Glossary at the back of the book explains some of the more complex terms. Important website resources and key terms are boldfaced in green, a great asset when looking for important info.
Reading this book could help young people avoid many pitfalls, since Orman covers the basics such as:
* Understanding that all important credit rating and deciphering your FICO score

*Making a small paycheck stretch as far as possible while maximizing opportunites for career advancement.

* A special area on her website where buyers of the book can get UPDATES on info in the book and CONNECT with others on message boards, a great way to get info and share viewpoints (and Suze stops in regularly to answer a few select questions, giving readers an opportunity to have her answer YOUR questions)

* Current websites to get information quickly and fill in gaps. She even notes that readers can now get their FICO score FREE once a year, valuable information that is on the cutting edge of new legislation. This info alone could well be worth the price of the book.

* The rignt and wrong way to handle student debt

* How to start investing and the best funds for ROth IRAs and 401(k) accoutns.

* Buying a car, auto insurance and a home.

I consider this MUST reading for anyoone just starting an independent life and this will definitely be at the top of my gift list for any high school or college graduate. What better gift than to give someone the tools for an independent and financially secure future?



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