BLOOD IN THE STREETS: Investment Profits in a World Gone Mad

by James Dale with William Rees-Mogg Davidson ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1987

The authors of this overlong and overblown exercise fail to deliver on the buy-cheap/sell-dear promise of its title (which alludes to a Nathan Rothschild precept that the best time to invest is when blood runs in the streets). Messrs. Davidson (founder of the National Taxpayers Union) and Rees-Mogg (ex-editor of The Times of London) do, however, make a good job of shilling for an advisory service they publish as well as for an affiliated mutual fund. In the alarmist tradition of Harry Browne, Douglas Casey, Adrian Day, et al., the authors offer a less than sanguine appreciation of socioeconomic prospects. Their shtick is a hitherto unheralded discipline dubbed ""megapolitical analysis."" Using this big-picture approach, Davidson and Rees-Mogg cast a cold eye on the global village, probing for power shifts. Among other bleak outcomes, their audit projects an early end to US hegemony, creeping fragmentation of production means, a breakdown in international order, market instability, and deflation. The bulk of the text is devoted to portentous commentary and what-if scenarios. Many of the briefings provide insights of potential value to investors, e.g., a rundown on the implications of declining blue-collar wage rates for retailing. An equal if not greater number, though, reach tenuous conclusions of dubious utility; typical in this respect is an extended discussion of how Communist-bloc reform could boost the prices of tropical commodities like cocoa. Indeed, beyond predicting that a real-estate crash is overdue, the authors largely avoid committing themselves on which investments might afford advantageous risk/reward opportunities in the volatile market environment they foresee. As a practical matter, Davidson and Rees-Mogg have reinvented a wheel known on Wall Street as top-down analysis. Unfortunately, their application of macrotrend techniques is as tedious as it is conjectural.

Pub Date: June 1, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Summit/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1987

Categories: NONFICTION