Tag: books

RGD: release the hounds

This is the official starting gun for the Amazon book bomb for The Return of the Great Depression. If you’re interested in buying it, either for yourself or for someone else, I’d encourage you to order a copy from Amazon in the next 12 hours. Its initial ranking was 19,795 overall and 50 in Economic History, so that’s the starting point. If you’re keeping track of the ratings as well as your fantasy team, feel free to post them here as they change on an hourly basis. I think 1,000 and 10 would be an excellent objective; anything above that would be a smashing success.

By way of encouragement, I’d like the Dread Ilk to be the first to know about the dedicated book site, which was developed for RGD by WorldNetDaily. In addition to featuring a collection of my WND columns related to the economic crisis dating back to 2002, it also has some economic prediction trackings – including a rather nice one in 2008 that I’d completely forgotten – scheduled events, reviews, and an economics blog where I will be posting daily. The official publication date isn’t until Thursday, but I believe that WND intends to announce the book site tomorrow. Some additional content, such as YouTube videos, will likely appear on the site in the relatively near future. I also plan to make some of the spreadsheets I used in producing the charts for the book available for download from the site as well.

I very much appreciate the encouragement that people here have shown throughout the writing of RGD and I hope that you will find that it does not disappoint you. It is not a massive book, but it is most definitely a data-rich one. And we should probably all hope that it is a massively incorrect one.

UPDATE – Thank you very much if you participated in the Amazon launch last night. It was a huge success and significantly exceeded my hopes for it by reaching #90 overall and #5 in Economics. You even made it the #1 Mover and Shaker on Amazon! I appreciate the confidence you have shown in the book and will look forward to hearing your thoughts on it after it arrives and you read it.

RGD book bomb tomorrow

Are you in? It’s precisely 26 hours away… 12 noon to 12 midnight central. WND mentioned the book in an email last week, which resulted in RGD shooting all the way up to #13 in Economics – two positions above our favorite Nobel Prize winner’s latest – so it will be interesting to see how things go tomorrow. Whether you’re buying the book tomorrow or not, stop by as I’ll be providing a sneak preview of the site where I’ll be doing daily economics-only blogging for the next few months. This will not have any affect on the blogging here as what will be posted there is going to be the more wonkish sort of thing with which I seldom see fit to annoy everyone here.

In other words, we’re talking pure chart-and-spreadsheet porn for the stat sickos. You know who you are. And on that edifying note, I will leave you with Jonah Goldberg’s verdict on the book.

“Vox Day is a punk rock Jeremiah who knows how to use a spreadsheet. In The Return of the Great Depression, he aims his voracious mind at our economic predicament and makes a powerful and well-documented case for why Faulkner was right: The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.”
—Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism

RGD: the second review

Chad the Elder of the Fraters Libertas reviews RGD:

Let me start by passing on a shocking piece of information: Vox Day is not an economist. That may lead some to discount his views on matters economic, but in this case it proves to be beneficial. He approaches the subject as an outsider and is not wedded to any particular school of economic theory from his background. This allows him to be rather dispassionate in his analysis and also forces him to be more vigorous in his research since he doesn’t come into it with a great deal of experience.

It also makes The Return of the Great Depression a more understandable and entertaining read than your average economic tome. That’s not to say its been dumbed down or overly simplified. Vox takes on some rather weighty and complicated economic topics. But, as he previously did in The Irrational Atheist, he does so in his own unique voice (Vox’s vox?). Even while explaining the inner workings of the money supply or the components that make up GDP, he maintains his straight-shooting style infused with the mix of cynicism and sarcastic humor that readers of his blog have come to expect.

I have to admit, after the complete, utter, and admitted failure of mainstream economics to foresee or forestall the present crisis, or to present potential solutions beyond increasing the amount of debt-funded spending, I would think that not being a credentialed economist would be seen as a strength rather than a weakness these days. If the basic theory is bad, learning more sophisticated ways of playing with it is not going to help you understand anything.

RGD: reviews

Right Condition reviews The Return of the Great Depression:

Once in a while, a book comes along that shakes so many of your core beliefs that you are left questioning either the integrity of what you have read or your own knowledge. In this particular case, I had the privilege of a sneak peek at The Return of the Great Depression by Vox Day and with most certainty can state, it is the latter. RGD as it shall be referred to from now on, as can be inferred from its title makes a very compelling case as to the state of our economy and where this nation is potentially headed. However do not be misled by its name, for this is much more than a prophecy, it is principally and foremost an economic text diligently spending the majority of its efforts in explaining why we are standing on the edge of a precipice.

Chad the Elder of the Fraters Libertas reviews RGD:

Let me start by passing on a shocking piece of information: Vox Day is not an economist. That may lead some to discount his views on matters economic, but in this case it proves to be beneficial. He approaches the subject as an outsider and is not wedded to any particular school of economic theory from his background. This allows him to be rather dispassionate in his analysis and also forces him to be more vigorous in his research since he doesn’t come into it with a great deal of experience.

It also makes The Return of the Great Depression a more understandable and entertaining read than your average economic tome. That’s not to say its been dumbed down or overly simplified. Vox takes on some rather weighty and complicated economic topics…. if you want to read an informative, thoughtful, and even sometimes entertaining book on the current economic situation, you can’t go wrong with The Return of the Great Depression.

WND column

End the Fed
by Ron Paul
Rating: 10 of 10

“The Federal Reserve System must be challenged. Ultimately, it needs to be eliminated. The government cannot and should not be trusted with a monopoly on money. No single institution in society should have power this immense. In fact, I believe that freedom itself is at stake in this struggle.”
– Ron Paul, “End the Fed,” p. 11

In 17 years of writing game and book reviews, I can count on two hands the number of times I have ever given out the highest rating. True excellence is to be distinguished from the merely very good, and it is far rarer than the heavy use of superlatives in our everyday language would tend to indicate. End the Fed is more than a timely political polemic, it is also the story of the long and patient campaign by a small group of freedom-loving patriots to restore economic liberty to the American people.

Reading List

1. We are Doomed by John Derbyshire

2. Ilium by Dan Simmons

3. Cool It by Bjorn Lomborg

End the Fed by Ron Paul: 10/10. I’ll be reviewing this in more detail soon and have requested an interview with him. A fascinating book; it significantly surpassed my expectations.

The Empire series by Conn Iggulden: 6/10. Lightly alternative historical mind candy. It was entertaining enough and the man clearly did his homework, but I still don’t see the point of trying to turn Brutus and Caesar into David and Jonathan just to get a bit more dramatic bang out of that final “et tu, Brutus?” The relationship was never really convincing and it weakened Caesar’s character significantly. Caesar winds up coming off a bit schizophrenic, as Iggulden is forced to juggle between portraying the historical Caesar capable of his astounding actions and the kinder, gentler romantic that Iggulden wants him to be in order to serve the story. Brutus, on the other hand, would be convincing if only he wasn’t the bestest blade in the West… I mean, Rome.

The Painter of Battles by Arturo Perez Reverte: 8/10. A brutal book by a very good writer. Introspective and sparse, it paints an intriguing portrait of the narcissistic and unintentional evil of the compartmentalized intellectual. Shows definite flashes of greatness which are countered by occasional periods of textual tedium. The sort of book that leaves you staring at the ceiling afterward, contemplating Man’s capacity for pointless depravity.

The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics by Michael Shermer: 7/10. I reviewed it at WorldNetDaily.

WND column

Evolution, Economics, and Evil

The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics
Michael Shermer
Rating: 7 of 10

It is no secret that I hold a rather low opinion of various books produced by a few well-known atheists. Without exception, they are riddled with factual ignorance, easily demonstrable illogic and fraudulent appeals to science. While Michael Shermer is every bit the atheist that Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins are, his scientific expertise happens to be applicable to his subject matter and his approach is entirely different. And unlike the New Atheists, Shermer makes intelligent use of both science and logic in utilizing various aspects of evolutionary theory to consider homo economicus.

By the way, something that I didn’t manage to work into the column was Shermer’s articulation of “Darwin’s Dictum”, which he developed from a letter Darwin wrote to Henry Fawcett.

“About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorize, and I well remember someone saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!“

Shermer writes: “This quote was the centerpiece of the first of my monthly columns for Scientific American, in which I elevated it to a principle I call “Darwin’s Dictum,” as identified in the final clause: all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service. Darwin’s Dictum encodes the philosophy of science of this book: if observations are to be of any use they must be tested against some view—a thesis, model, hypothesis, theory, or paradigm. Since the facts never just speak for themselves, they must be interpreted through the colored lenses of ideas—percepts need concepts. Science is an exquisite blend of data and theory—percepts and concepts—that together form the bedrock for the foundation of science, the greatest tool ever devised for understanding how the world works. We can no more separate our theories and concepts from our data and percepts than we can find a truly objective Archimedean point—a god’s eye view—of ourselves and our world.

I found this to be an intriguing perspective, especially in light of the vociferous claims of science’s pure objectivity made so often by those who fetishize it. It tends to raise two questions, of course. In service to what, or to whom? And by what standard are competing interpretations of the same facts to be judged?

WND column

Bernanke’s ‘Essays’

“It should also be emphasized, though, that not just the existence of financial difficulties during the 1920s but also the policy response to those difficulties was important. Austria is probably the most extreme case of nagging banking problems being repeatedly “papered over.” That country had banking problems throughout the 1920s, which were handled principally by merging failing banks into still-solvent banks. An enforced merger of the Austrian Bodencreditanstalt with two failing banks in 1927 weakened that institution, which was part of the reason that the Bodencreditanstalt in turn had to be forcibly merged with the Creditanstalt in 1929. The insolvency of the Creditanstalt, finally revealed when a director refused to sign an “optimistic” financial statement in May 1931, sparked the most intense phase of the European crisis.”

– Ben S. Bernanke, “Essays on the Great Depression,” p. 96.

One of the benefits of having an intellectual at the helm of the Federal Reserve during this ongoing economic crisis is that intellectuals tend to leave a paper trail. Bernanke, famous for being a student of the Great Depression, is without question very well-informed on the relevant historical issues. His book reveals an intelligent and scholarly mind that does not shirk from the details but, rather, leaps without hesitation into statistical analysis of the most technical economic minutiae. The book simply wallows in charts, equations and log changes; the net result is impressive, especially when compared with his predecessor’s lightweight, revisionist chronicle, “The Age of Turbulence.”

Umberto Eco on Jules Verne

Umberto Eco writes of the great science-fiction author on the centenary of his death in an article that was published on 11 April, 2005, in L’Espresso:

VOYAGE TO THE CENTER OF JULES VERNE

When
we were boys, we were divided into two groups: those that held to
Salgari [Italian author Emilio Salgari] and those that held to Verne. I
quickly confess that at that time I held for Salgari, and now History
compels me to revisit my opinions of that time. Salgari, retold, cited
from memory, loved for all the colors it gave one’s infancy, no longer
seduces new generations or – to tell the truth – the elders either.
When they reread him in search of a little ironic nostalgia, the reading
simply makes them tired, and too many of those mangroves and wild pigs
come to be an annoyance.

Instead, in 2005 we are celebrating the
centenary of the death of Jules Verne, and not only in France are there
daily and weekly conventions dedicated to him, searching to demonstrate
the many ways that his fantasies anticipated reality. A look at the
editorial catalogs in our country suggest to me that Verne was
republished far more often than Salgari, to say nothing of France, where
there exists an absolute industry of Vernian antiquities. The old
hardbound Hetzel editions are certainly very beautiful. (In Paris, on
the Left Bank alone, there are at least two stores possessing these
splended volumes laid out in red and gold, offered at a prohibitive
price.)

For all the merits that our Salgari must be remembered,
the father of Sandokan did not have a great sense of humor, (not unlike
the rest of his characters, with the exception of Yanez), while the
romances of Verne were full of humor. It is enough to remember those
splendid pages of “Michele Strogoff” where, after the battle of Kolyvan,
the reporter from the Daily Telegraph, Harry Blount, goes to the
telegraph office and spends thousands of rubles transmitting verses of
the Bible* to his corrispondent in Paris in order to impede his rival,
Alcide Jolivet. But Jolivet succeeds in robbing Blount of his position
at the telegraph and blocks him in turn by transmitting the little songs
of [François] Béranger.

“Hallo!” said Harry Blount.
“Just so,” answered Jolivet.”

And tell me if this is not style!

Another
reason for this fascination is that many futuristic stories, read at a
temporal distance when that future is already known, leaves the reader a
little disappointed, because the things that truly happened, the
inventions that were actually realized, are more marvelous than those
imagined by the books of the previous era. With Verne this is not so,
no atomic submarine will be more technologically wonderful than the
Nautilus and no dirigible or jumbo jet will ever be as fascinating as
the majestic helix ship of Robur the Conquistador….

And if we
do not have the money to buy the old Hetzel editions from antique
bookstores and we are not satisfied with the contemporary re-editions?
You can go on the Internet, to the address http://jv.gilead.org.il/.
There a gentleman by the name of Zvi Har’El, a collector of all the
news of Verne, has a list of the worldwide celebrations, a complete
bibliography, an anthology of sayings, 304 incredible stamps dedicated
to Verne from various countries, translations in Hebrew, and most of
all, a virtual library where you can find integral texts of Verne in
various languages and see the original French editions as well all of
the engravings to save and afterwards enlarge as you like because,
sometimes, we are even more captivated the second time.

One
of the most decent things about writers, a famously indecent lot, is
that they are one of the few disciplines who trouble to remember those
who went before.

*Eco makes an uncharacteristic mistake here,
as “the verses learned in his childhood” do not refer to the Bible, but
rather “the well-known verses of Cowper”, which is to say, William
Cowper, the English poet.