Tag: books

End this depression I

I’m going to take a slightly different approach to reviewing Paul Krugman’s latest book, End This Depression Now!.  Ever since writing TIA, I have found it frustrating to read a book, accurately summarize the arguments it contains, critique those arguments, and then find myself addressing various complaints about my summaries and critiques from those who readily admit they have not read the book.  This is particularly annoying because the percentage of people who actually bother to read a book appears to be a small fraction of those who are interested in discussing its contents and its implications.

So, instead of writing a general review and critiquing the summarized arguments, what I’m going to with this book is systematically highlight the 16 sections that I bookmarked and identify the specific claims being made as well as any fundamental flaws I believe are thereby revealed.  This approach should make it easier for people to understand exactly what Krugman has written and reduce any derailing of the discussion on the basis of the supposed inaccuracy of my summaries.  One could, if one liked, also consider this a 101 level course on Krugmanomics.

In Chapter Two, Depression Economics, Krugman explains his thesis:

“The central message of all this work is that this doesn’t have to be happening. In that same essay Keynes declared that the economy was suffering from “magneto trouble,” an old-­fashioned term for problems with a car’s electrical system. A more modern and arguably more accurate analogy might be that we’ve suffered a software crash. Either way, the point is that the problem isn’t with the economic engine, which is as powerful as ever. Instead, we’re talking about what is basically a technical problem, a problem of organization and coordination—a “colossal muddle,” as Keynes put it. Solve this technical problem, and the economy will roar back to life.

Now, many people find this message fundamentally implausible, even offensive. It seems only natural to suppose that large problems must have large causes, that mass unemployment must be the result of something deeper than a mere muddle. That’s why Keynes used his magneto analogy. We all know that sometimes a $100 battery replacement is all it takes to get a stalled $30,000 car back on the road, and he hoped to convince readers that a similar disproportion between cause and effect can apply to depressions. But this point was and is hard for many people, including those who believe themselves well-informed, to accept….

What I hope to do in this chapter is convince you that we do, in fact, have magneto trouble. The sources of our suffering are relatively trivial in the scheme of things, and could be fixed quickly and fairly easily if enough people in positions of power understood the realities. Moreover, for the great majority of people the process of fixing the economy would not be painful and involve sacrifices; on the contrary, ending this depression would be a feel-good experience for almost everyone except those who are politically, emotionally, and professionally invested in wrongheaded economic doctrines….

Think of it this way: suppose that your husband has, for whatever reason, refused to maintain the family car’s electrical system over the years. Now the car won’t start, but he refuses even to consider replacing the battery, in part because that would mean admitting that he was wrong before, and he insists instead that the family must learn to walk and take buses. Clearly, you have a problem, and it may even be an insoluble problem as far as you are concerned. But it’s a problem with your husband, not with the family car, which could and should be easily fixed.”

In summary, Krugman is aggressively asserting that the problems with the U.S. economy are trivial, technical, and easily solved by the economic equivalent of changing a car battery by people in positions of power.  He sees no serious structural economic problems stemming from the trade deficit, the demographic changes in the population, the educational system, the financial system, the shift to a service economy, or the record levels of public and private debt.  He also expects that the process of fixing it will be close to painless for nearly everyone in the country.  He does not, however, claim that it will be politically easy to solve the problem, in fact, the solution is a political one and primarily concerns overcoming those who are “invested in wrongheaded economic doctrines.”

Is everyone clear on this?  Does anyone see any reason to take exception to this summary or claim I am erecting a strawman?  I’ll also be interested to know your opinion of whether this approach is effective or not.

End this depression now!

Paul Krugman has the solution to the economic crisis in his book published earlier this year.  You’ll never guess what it is!

Spend Now, Pay Later

The basic situation of the U.S. economy remains now what it has been since 2008: the private sector isn’t willing to spend enough to make use of our full productive capacity and, therefore, to employ the millions of Americans who want to work but can’t find jobs. The most direct way to close that gap is for the government to spend where the private sector won’t.
There are three common objections to any such proposal:

1.    Experience shows that fiscal stimulus doesn’t work.
2.    Bigger deficits would undermine confidence.
3.    There aren’t enough good projects to spend on.

I’ve dealt with the first two objections earlier in this book; let me briefly summarize the arguments again, then turn to the third.

As I explained in chapter 7, the Obama stimulus didn’t fail; it simply fell short of what was required to offset the huge private-sector pullback that was already under way before the stimulus kicked in. Continuing high unemployment was not just predictable but predicted.

The real evidence we should be considering here is the rapidly growing body of economic research on the effects of changes in government spending on output and employment—a body of research that relies both on “natural experiments” such as wars and defense buildups and on careful study of the historical record to identify major changes in fiscal policy. The postscript to this book summarizes some of the major contributions to this research. What the work says, clearly and overwhelmingly, is that changes in government spending move output and employment in the same direction: spend more, and both real GDP and employment will rise; spend less, and both real GDP and employment will fall.

What about confidence? As I explained in chapter 8, there’s no reason to believe that even a substantial stimulus would undermine the willingness of investors to buy U.S. bonds. In fact, bond market confidence might even rise on the prospect of faster growth. Meanwhile, both consumer and business confidence would actually rise if policy turned to boosting the real economy.

One would probably have to read this book to believe the astonishing simplicity of his Neo-Keynesian approach.  I could have written it in in a single page.  Actually, I could have written in in a single sentence: More public debt and more government spending is the solution to this economic depression because government spending is capable of creating the jobs necessary to produce economic growth, while the resulting public debt is not a problem because any country with its own central bank can issue an infinite amount of it without any long-term costs.

I think what we are seeing here is the beginning of the death throes of Neo-Keynesian economics.  They can’t assert that debt doesn’t matter at all anymore, since the conventional Samuelsonian argument was blown away by the growth of foreign debt and the financial crisis of 2008, so now Krugman and company have shifted to arguing that a certain and specific type of debt can be amassed infinitely.  Time will soon prove this move of the goalposts to be false as well.

There is a lot to question in Krugman’s book and I will be addressing those questions over the next few weeks as I have 16 sections bookmarked.  But this is the essential summary.

Mailvox: hey, free book

Hunter Riley, the author of a book on metal investing, is giving it away until Halloween.  I get a lot of questions concerning the subject, so if you’re interested in metals, this would be a reasonable place for you to start.  He writes:

I just wrote and published a book on Amazon.com about how to start
investing in gold and silver. I am giving the book away for free for 5 days starting this Saturday 10/27 and lasting until 10/31. 
Its called Stack Silver Get Gold.  
I thought your readers might appreciate a free kindle book on how to begin investing in gold and silver without getting ripped off.

 It’s #1 in commodities and has good reviews, to say nothing of the fact that it’s impossible to beat the price.  It normally goes for $9.99.  Have a look if you’re so inclined.

Bones at the Black Gate

Since so many people here were involved, I asked the cover artist, Kirk DouPonce, to share his perspective on the occasionally contentious process of creating the cover for A THRONE OF BONES.  It turned out to be so interesting that I suggested posting it at Black Gate to John O’Neill, who readily concurred:

Over the past 17 years, I’ve gotten to design a pile of book covers, well over a thousand if my math is correct. And if I learned anything at art school, it was math. So when I say A Throne of Bones is my favorite cover so far, it does mean something….

Scientifically speaking, women read approximately a lot more books than men do. This is especially true when it comes to fiction. So when I design fiction covers for publishers, no matter what the genre, I know how important the female demographic is. Covers need to appeal to women. Simple enough.

Or not. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning of the process. 

Read the rest at the Black Gate.

Introducing Arts of Dark and Light

the novella featuring LodiIt hasn’t exactly been any great mystery, but I am happy to finally be able to share exactly what I’ve been up to for the last year.  Last summer, after finishing A Dance with Dragons, I found myself deeply disappointed with what Mr. Martin, whose earlier work in the series I so enjoyed, had produced after making us all wait six years.  “Good Lord, even I could do better than that”, I thought, which may not, strictly speaking, actually be true, but regardless, that was the thought that struck me after slogging through 1,100 pages of tedious river journeys, Tyrion “humorously” falling off pigs, and being subjected to Important New Characters for approximately the 4,853rd time.  Being somewhat despondent about George Martin’s descent into Robert Jordan territory, I turned to other so-called epic writers, including Joe Abercrombie, R. Scott Bakker, Steve Erikson, Daniel Abraham, and Brandon Sanderson.  Some of their books were quite good, others somewhat less so, but in no case did any of them provide me with that same sense of EPIC and wanting to experience the depths of the world that Martin presented so effectively in the first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire.

So, I decided that I would write an epic novel and I would do it in one year.  It would be the same length as A Game of Thrones, it would be loosely based upon an interesting period in military history, (in case you didn’t realize it, the Wars of the Roses are the starting point for Martin’s series, Stark = York and Lannister = Lancaster), and its focus would be on story, world, and character.  Nothing else.  No cleverness, no preaching, no subtexts, no reinventing wheels, no larger lessons, no deep philosophical insights.  In reading all the various would-be epics, I realized that most of them suffered from trying to do more than simply tell a fascinating story, which was also a problem with most of my previously published fiction.  I assumed I would self-publish it, since obviously no one would want to publish such a monster, and I would set it in the world of Summa Elvetica since I rather liked that world, as did most of those who read that flawed, but interesting failure of an esoteric literary exercise.  However, to do so, I needed to get the permission of Marcher Lord Press, the publisher of Summa, and much to my surprise, Jeff not only loved the idea of an epic series set in Selenoth, he insisted that he would publish it, even if it turned out to be more than 1,000 pages.

Umberto Eco once said that he wrote The Name of the Rose because he wanted to murder a monk.  I decided to do him one better and begin by killing the Holy Father.  That sets the stage for a story that is large and sprawling and is inspired by the Roman Social War, which is a little known quasi-civil war that was arguably the most perilous situation the Roman Republic faced in between the Gauls laying siege to the Capitoline Hill in 390 BC and Caesar crossing the Rubicon.  Amorr isn’t Rome, of course, but the historical scenario provides the novel with a certain amount of structural verisimilitude that I have often found to be lacking in other books.

So, I’m very pleased to announce A THRONE OF BONES, the first novel in the series entitled Arts of Dark and Light, which will be published by Marcher Lord Press on December 1, 2012.  We’re not sure of the final page count yet, but at 295,000 words, I expect it to be well over 750 pages.  It will be available for $4.99 in ebook format and $34.99 in hardcover.  There will be no paperbacks, trade or mass-market.  Marcher Lord is accepting preorders for the hardcovers starting today; those who preorder will pay only $29.99 for the hardcover and they will also receive the ebook on December 1st.  (We can’t say precisely when the hardcovers will ship, except that it is expected to arrive with time to spare for Christmas.)  This preorder offer will be run from October 15th until November 30th.  Also, since I wanted to provide those who are potentially interested in the book a less esoteric introduction to the world of Selenoth than the one provided by Summa Elvetica, I am pleased to announce the publication today of A MAGIC BROKEN, which is a 50-page novella featuring two of the perspective characters from the novel.

A MAGIC BROKEN is available from Amazon for 99 cents and the reviews to date are mostly positive.  If you think you might be interested in A Throne of Bones, I would encourage giving the novella a whirl in the meantime.  Here are a few of the comments from the first reviewers:

  • “a sword and sorcery tale with a cerebral bent”
  • “the two main characters are likable in their non-perfection”
  • “an entertaining, fast paced read”
  • “I found the story line to be unpredictable”
  • “The environment and characters are on par with the best of George R.R. Martin”
  • “Despite the number of twists it remains coherent and believable as they unfold”
  • “a masterful act of guile and misdirection reminiscent of the style of Umberto Eco” 
  • “The world has a depth not found in much writing today.” 
  • “the promise of it all leading somewhere grand and exciting is what interests me more than anything else”

Also, and I would argue this is a strong point in its favor, there are no river journeys, no “amusing” porcine-related pratfalls, and no whining.  Actually, come to think of it, there is a little whining, but rest assured that the whiner speedily meets with a literary device that I devoutly wish Robert Jordan had utilized with regards to his character Rand al’Thor at an early stage in The Wheel of Time.  In my opinion, Chapter One would have been about right.

Thanks are in order to JartStar, who created the cover for A Magic Broken and may even do the map for A Throne of Bones if I ever get my act together and get him the information he needs, as well as Jamsco, whose determined interest in Lodi not only inspired the novella, but his inclusion in the larger work as well.  Thanks to Markku and the Original Cyberpunk, who between them made my foray into ebooks viable and without whom these books would never have been conceived.  I also appreciate the reviewers, 15 20 of whom managed to read the novella and post their reviews over the weekend.  I’m very appreciative of Kirk DouPounce, who somehow managed to surpass the very high standard he’d set with Summa – about which more later – of Jeff Gerke of Marcher Lord, who was enthusiastic about taking on yet another ludicrous literary risk, and most of all, of Spacebunny and her encouragement of my efforts.

Requesting reviewers

I will be announcing two new works of fiction on Monday, both set in the world of Summa Elvetica.  I’d like to get some reviews of the first one up on Amazon over the weekend, so I’m giving away 30 electronic review copies of the forthcoming 50-page(1) novella to those who are a) interested in my fiction, b) willing and able to post reviews on Amazon, and, c) not the Anklebiter of Many Names.

I’m not asking for mindless puffery or anything like that, just your honest perspective on the novella.  So, if you’re interested, please fire off an email to me and I’ll send you the same epub that will be available Monday from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.  If you don’t have an eReader, that’s not a problem, you can use Calibre to read it on your computer.

UPDATE: Okay, the thirty review copies are all spoken for.  Thanks very much to everyone who responded so readily.

(1)  Page count isn’t really meaningful for an ebook, but the novella is 20,000 words.  At the standard 400-word page of a trade paperback, that’s about 50 pages.

Stupefying Stories September 12

The Original Cyberpunk is on a serious roll of late. He is releasing new anthologies faster than I can write short stories to celebrate them. Here is a description of the new September 2012 edition, now available on Amazon.

The STUPEFYING STORIES “Pirates and Dragons” edition is chock-full of all-new tales of dastardly pirates, lonely dragons, quarrelsome petty gods, meddlesome slimy aliens, and profoundly philosophical chickens. Featuring “Riddle Me” by Richard Zwicker, “Corsairs of the Concrete Sea” by Thoraiya Dyer, “The Thundering Dragon of Heaven” by Michael Matheson, “God Mic” by B. Sanford, “The Thirty-Ninth President and the Fourteenth Tentacle” by Theodore Carter, “Thief of Hearts” by Auston Habershaw, “In the Castle of the Assassins” by Melissa Embry, “The Lord of Flocks” by Alison Pentecost, and “The Little Thief” by Phil Temples. From a road in the middle of nowhere to the day after tomorrow, from a shattering tale of First Contact to the long-suppressed story that finally makes it possible to make sense of the events of the past thirty-five years, you’ll find it this time out in STUPEFYING STORIES!

If you like good old school SF/F, check it out. Stupefying Stories is rapidly becoming what Asimov and Analog were back when I was a kid.

Better Ayn Rand than Asimov

I find this criticism of Paul Ryan by Paul Krugman to be richly ironic, coming as it does from a man whose economic philosophy is based on an imaginary science called “psychohistory”:

So far, most of the discussion of Paul Ryan, the presumptive Republican nominee for vice president, has focused on his budget proposals. But Mr. Ryan is a man of many ideas, which would ordinarily be a good thing. In his case, however, most of those ideas appear to come from works of fiction, specifically Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged.”

For those who somehow missed it when growing up, “Atlas Shrugged” is a fantasy in which the world’s productive people — the “job creators,” if you like — withdraw their services from an ungrateful society. The novel’s centerpiece is a 64-page speech by John Galt, the angry elite’s ringleader; even Friedrich Hayek admitted that he never made it through that part. Yet the book is a perennial favorite among adolescent boys. Most boys eventually outgrow it. Some, however, remain devotees for life.

If Ryan wants to silence Krugman’s attempts to attack him in this vein, he need merely point out that Atlas Shrugged is considerably more mature fiction than Foundation, the adolescent science fiction novel that Paul Krugman never outgrew.