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The End Of The Free Market: Who Wins The War Between States And Corporations? (2010)

by Ian Bremmer(Favorite Author)

3.34 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1591843014 (ISBN13: 9781591843016)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Portfolio Hardcover

review 1: This is an incredibly dumb book and it’s very boring. It lacks clarity and decent research to back up it’s point, whatever it is. For example, the author implies that the Smoot-Hawley Act was responsible for the depth of the Great Depression, yet all academic studies show that the act had little impact on the severity of the Great depression. On top of that, Bremmer argues that modern nations don’t attack each other much, but “In 2010, the US troops are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they’re struggling to overcome militants and insurgents, not foreign military powers.”How brain dead can one get? The United States was not invited by the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan to help them against militants and insurgents. Apparently, Ian Bremmer doesn�... more�t know the United States invaded and occupied those nations. That’s how profoundly stupid this book is.The central argument of the book is that Wall Street is good, although he doesn’t say for what, and that free trade is good, although he doesn’t say for what. All Wall Street needs is more regulation. As if Wall Street would want that.An accompanying argument is that foreign governments own corporations that compete with private US corporations. And they do this for political purposes. Duh! But the author’s ignorance is so enormous that he cannot comprehend that US corporations own the US government, lock, stock and barrel. For example, agents of the Monsanto corporation wrote the recently passed Monsanto Protection Act that congress passed and President Obama signed. Wall Street investment banks don’t want more regulation, and so the government of which they are the primary shareholders via their investments in politicians, such as Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, isn’t going to regulate them.Bremmer is woefully ignorant on too many levels to be taken seriously. He doesn’t comprehend how free trade treaties, for example, redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent and wreck the economy in the process. According the Federal Reserve, over 27 million US jobs have been off shored since Nafta. The difference between the old higher wages and the new lower wages gets redistributed into the pockets of the rich via higher corporate earnings, rising share prices and more dividends.This book doesn’t even deserve one star because it reads like an apology and justification for Wall Street and the many crimes committed by its CEO’s, lawyers, traders and others. It’s pure pointless propaganda with a weak central argument.
review 2: An excellent overview of the globe's state sponsored capitalism. What seemed like a pessimistic view of the rise of states like China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia and their perverted approach to capitalism ended in a fairly optimistic future view. If we look back 20 years, no one would have imagined how much capitalism and free markets are driving the global economy. It is only time before these "partial capitalists" make the eventual move towards American and European style free markets. less

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