A blend of alarmism, intrigue, and solid financial advice. Fans of Rickards will know just what to expect.
An ambitious, eccentric look at the wreckage of the American economy in a time of pandemic.
In his latest book, investment guru Rickards has four goals: describe the origins of Covid-19, suggesting more than once that it’s the product of a Chinese lab; contest the wisdom of the pandemic-triggered lockdown of America; show that the economy is crashing and won’t recover for decades; and give investment advice that includes one of his favorite strategies, stocking up on gold. “If the United States decides to raise the price of gold, you win,” he writes. “If the United States does not raise the price of gold, it will go up anyway because of debt and lost confidence in the dollar. Again, you win.” With the possible exception of gold, about which no two financial counselors agree in every particular, his advice seems sound enough, especially when it comes to diversifying a portfolio across asset classes—and he advocates holding real things like cash and property along with intangibles. The first has more than a whiff of conspiracy theory to it, as if viruses, even novel ones, have to be engineered and don’t just evolve. His account of the collapse of the economy owing to lockdown and fear would be more convincing if it allowed for the differential responses state by state, given that it wasn’t a single fiat that plunged us into a financial spiral. The sometimes fatalistic pronouncements (“Once critical systems break down, civilized behavior lasts three days. After that, the law of the jungle prevails”) won’t improve the reader’s mood, but there are some good takeaways amid the swirl and mayhem, as when Rickards vigorously rejects the theory of efficient markets (“they freeze up at the first sign of trouble”) and advises investors to study history, which may not be quantifiable but offers actionable patterns all the same.
A blend of alarmism, intrigue, and solid financial advice. Fans of Rickards will know just what to expect.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-33027-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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