| BAD MONEY Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism Kevin Phillips New York: Viking Penguin, 2008 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
|||
| ISBN-13 978-0-670-01907-6 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-670-01907-0 | 239pp. | HC/GSI | $25.95 | |
| Page 17: | Schlesinger: "...the battle is over and the partisans of peak oil have won." | |
| Does not match the quote on page 130. And I wonder if Dr. Schlesinger thinks peak oil is just a political gambit. |
| Page 61: | "Treatises on the origin of scientific economics leave out mercantilism, and its preoccupation with gold, silver, and national aggrandizement of precious metals, as unscientific. But economics can be emotional as well as scientific..." | |
| I don't accept the premise that economics has any scientific basis. The comma seems wrong. And what is "the unlikely specialty of neuroeconomics"? |
| Page 69: | "Yet your real cost of living—what you keep after taxes, medical bills, college expenses, and other household costs—is probably much higher than the 2 percent annual rate the government reported in July." | |
| This quote from John Wasik, which leads off Chapter Three, has garbled syntax: Costs do not equal "what you keep." |
| Page 79: | "The risk of risk is no longer just a bad pun." | |
| It's not a pun at all. |
| Page 80: | "From there he delivered a double machete swipe at..." | |
| A mediocre mixed metaphor. At least it doesn't rise to the depths of "take a thinly veiled swipe at the sacred cows entrenched in naval circles." |
| Page 163: | "Rome's late-stage politics—the waning of the Senate and the rise of tyranny, corruption and abuses of legalism—seems analogous to our own, but I am no expert, so these pages will omit them." | |
| Confusion over number. the sentence treats "politics" as both singular and plural subject. |
| Page 191: | "This threatened enclave [of Kivalina] is known to environmentalists because rising waters from the melting polar ice cap will soon require evacuation before the village is submerged." | |
| This refers to the Eskimo village of Kivalina, Alaska. It misattributes the cause of sea level rise. In the Arctic, "polar ice cap" generally means floating ice, which cannot raise sea level by melting. The Greenland ice sheet could, but it has not melted enough to affect level significantly. |
| Page 199: | "...many Flemings, Huguenots, and Jews also moved there..." | |
| Should this be Flemings, or Flemish? |
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.