Current-dollar Books

Len Wood presents Dollars and Sense in a practical manner enabling readers to absorb its content. A must read book for those that "watch" their local governments, school districts and elected officials. Written for fast reading,yet covers the subject matter extensively. If you want to be certain your local government is working at its fullest potential, Dollars & Sense can be a great help to you.

Here is a "no holds barred" approach to describing "real life" shortcomings in handling public finances, and then providing tips to local government policy makers and managers on how to avoid a similiar circumstance.

Len Wood writes from first hand knowledge and experience. He describes the situation; outlines the facts; details the results; and provides the reader with suggestions to lessen financial risk and/or failure in the expenditure of public funds.

While the author's primary target is the newly elected official, the importance of this work to experienced elected and appointed public officals cannot be overstated. No one who has worked in the public sector can peruse this book without saying, "There, but for the grace of God, go I!"

As an elected Treasurer and local government finance director for the past several years, I found this book to be an excellent primer for all elected and appointed officials. The practical advice offered by Mr. Wood is based on his experience and input from his peers and is extremely valuable. The book is written in a very informal and concise way and should be required reading for all elected officials. In fact, I gave this book to each City Council member and they have all indicated that this book provided excellent financial advice.

What a delightful book. The author has presented his subject in an understandable and capitivating manner. He does this by using lots of real life vignettes to make his points. People who want to know what their local officials should and should not be doing will want to read this book.

Clear, documented, factual. Parenti has produced a magnificent gem. As relevant today as when it was first written.

Contrary to a previous reviewer, this is not an objective book, in part, because "objectivity" does not exist; but also because Parenti clearly and honestly presents a point of view. However, the book is an excellent examination of the interrelationship between U.S. economic and military policy, specifically within the mythology of the Cold War. It is this Cold War focus which now dates the book. While its underlying premises are as valid today as in 1988, they should be placed within the context of Post Cold War economic globalism.

I came to know this book and Michael Parenti thru another great writer, Noam Chomsky. I recommend "Make-believe Media" and this book to anyone who has open mind and is seeking a fresh view of lookin at World. Originally from MiddleEast, I did apprecite the objectiveness of his writings.

Some will say this book is too out of date (which it is) and that Chomsky, Zinn, Brecher, and so forth give more descriptive analysis of what this book speaks of, and they do, in a much more "dry" manner. The magic of this book is that with a little bit of curiosity, a 16 year old could ingest the information quite easily. Parenti effectively provides the reader with a description of how capitalism works, why America has imperialistic elements, why corporate predators feed off of the third world, how clandestine operations work in conjunction with big business, and the outcome derived by multi-national corporations in the third world. The second portion of the book gives a conclusive summary of what the myths are of the then-Cold War, and what the intentions of the Arms race really are. A great book for the novice-leftist who wants to get a good start on what the truth really is and what myths our good friends at the top of the hierarchy provide us.

in the very words of the author, "this book presents a technological proposal(or at least the potential for a new outlook) in an era when all plans have become suspect".
And this proposal is credible.
After showing (but some of us suspected this already) that our capitalistic society is going straight into a wall : no answer to unemployment, no education, no care of the elderly, no humanity, an incredible emphasis on property and money, Yorick Blumenfeld shows us more importantly that there are solutions.
Although we may experience some withdrawal symptoms, the author tells us to deccelerate : we are hooked on speed (!)
The details of Blumenfeld's plans on how we should achieve this and what we should replace it with are fascinating.
"Cooperation should replace competition as an overriding goal".
We should shift from "state-created money to a labor-based system" called "Incentive economy".
I believe that this book should be read by our economists, teachers and politicians.
Let us slow down and take some time to read this book!

I believe Dollars or Democracy is as important a
book as I expect to come across in my lifetime. With
down-to-earth clarity, the author has shown me not only
that the economic system in which I have unwittingly
participated all my life is fundamentally amoral, but
even more importantly, there ARE alternatives to
capitalism.
Blumenfeld's underlying optimism to change our world
for the better sustains this book. It prevents it from
merely being a polemic. I'm not an economist so I
can't tell if his plans for universal cooperatives
will succeed, but they seem to hold out promise
for a less greedy and less competitively destructive
society.
Also, I really like the post-script in which he
suggests practical, concrete steps I could take right
now to help the transition to a more sane
national economy. I would love to hear the reactions
of others to this. This book should be required reading
in every economics classroom in the country!

After hearing it spoken about on my local radio show, I figured it was worth the price to understand what all the buzz is about. I now understand the impact our national debt is having on the economy and our country. This book really made me think. I had never realized the ability politicians had to use the credit of our country to buy things the nation can't afford. It is able to be done becasue so few in American actaully understand the economics of it all. This book helped me and family understand what is actually happening - and was an interesting (& quick) read!

The book can be read in less than one hour. It is not an economic treatise, but rather an easy-to-read story in which a child prodigy explains what a trillion dollars is, the massive size of the US national debt and most importantly how economists have ignored the serious concequences of the interest on the Light Dollar debt. As you will see, the authors realized that astronomers had to come up with a term to decribe trillions of miles in space and choose a Light Year to represent how far one would travel at the speed of light in a year (5.87 trillion miles.) From that premise, they created a Light Dollar to represent $5.87 trillion, which is the amount one would spend in a year at the speed of light. At the current time, the US national debt is $7.2 trillion, or about $1.23 Light Dollars. Since most kids can understand a Light Year, presumably most parents and grandparents can easily grasp the idea of a Light Dollar. There also are a lot of interesting quotes from our founding fathers, politicians and even Walter Cronkite. After reading this book, you will know facts and have sound bites that will make you sound like an expert. However, it also will raise your consciousness about how serious the national debt problem to the current and next generation of Americans.

This book fills a big gaping hole in economic history. There are probably hundreds of books on Nixon and Vietnam, China, and Watergate. But very few exist on his other policies, including his economic policies. This is especially strange considering that his Administration presided over the final destruction of the gold standard, first sustained budget deficits, and the beginning of the Great Recession of 1970s.

Thus, this book is extremely useful. Almost month-by-month it describes the swinging pendulum of booms and busts that resulted from Nixon's economic mismanagement and the world economy's response to it. This is a very thorough work, meticulously documented. The author carefully documents endless cases of sacrifice of economic policies to blatantly short-term political goals.

It's also a good narrative, it weaves all the facts and explanation together, and it's organized very well. I found it very easy to read and understand it. It sheds much light on the economic causes of all those strange events of the 1970s. It's also a great companion to a more general history of USA during those years.

Over the last decade or so, there has been a substantial rethinking of the Nixon presidency.... Until the appearance of Allen Matusow's new book, however, Nixon's economic policies had not received a similar reassessment. In a very readable and well researched exploration of Nixon's economics, Matusow makes a compelling case that Nixon held no principled position whatsoever and that his economic policies were overtly and explicitly driven by his attempts to create a new electoral majority.... The Nixon presidency, as seen through Matusow's account, becomes an excellent case study in public-choice economics and the failures of interventionism.Three major strengths of Matusow's book deserve special mention. First, he has made extensive use of archival materials that were inaccessible until recently. By using the presidential office files, Bob Haldeman's extensive notes, and the various books and recollections of Nixon's associates, he has assembled a large amount of material from a variety of sources to document various meetings and discussions in great detail. The result is a very ugly view of the politicization of economic policy that puts one in mind of the old saw about not wanting to know how sausages or laws are made....A second strength of the book, of special interest to economists, is Matusow's careful documentation of the role played by well-known economists in the Nixon administration. Arthur Burns, Herbert Stein, Paul McCracken, Milton Friedman, and others all have starring roles in the drama. Except Friedman, none of them presents an appealing picture. Matusow extensively documents the ways in which Nixon's economic advisors were quick to sacrifice principles, particularly free-market principles, for political expediency.... Matusow makes extensive use of Friedman's Newsweek columns to illustrate the ways in which Nixon's policies did not correspond with the Friedman's free-market, monetarist line....The book's third strength is Matusow's use of economics. In more than three hundred pages of analysis of Nixon's economics, I found very few places where Matusow made an obvious error of theory or history.... But in most cases he handles the economics nicely, especially in his discussions of inflation, where he keeps the behavior of the money supply always at the forefront, and the energy crisis, where he does a fine job of documenting the various government interventions that precipitated the crisis and the horrendous policy mistakes that exacerbated it.... Matusow deserves particular praise for his discussion of Bretton Woods and the gold window, in which he deals with some complicated issues in international monetary economics and does a good job of rendering them comprehensible....Matusow has carefully and cogently documented Nixon's use of the instruments of power in pursuit of his own political goals and illuminated the disastrous results (double-digit inflation and the worst recession since the 1930s, not to mention a legacy of interventionism that has continued to the present) that Nixon's economics engendered. Matusow's book, though not couched in such terms, is an excellent case study in public-choice economics and is recommended to students of public choice and recent U.S. economic history.

Nopoleoni's research into the subject of teeror fincing is incredibly thorough and unparalleled. I initially purchased this book as a source for a research paper, but quickly found myself completely engaged in her writing.

The author not only tackles the most obvious and current situations of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, but she also provides an in-depth look into such groups as the IRA and the Red Brigades, and why this information is relevant to terror financing.

Napoleoni spells out very clearly that terror is just as much, if not more, of a business than it is an ideolgy. She has coined the term "terror state-shell" to decribe the voids created in areas, such as Chechnya, in which terrorist investors scramble to find recruits by offering financial stability to these poverty-stricken areas.

The author also clearly examines, step-by-step, the methods by which money leaves your hand and reaches terror groups.

Compelling book!

Loretta Napoleoni is the world's expert on terrorism financing. She is very well known in Europe as the sole writer who has explained the international economic system created by armed organizations since the end of WWII.
I have just attented one of her lectures in San Francisco and was amazed at her knowledge and undersanding of the phenomenon.
I think her book should be a required reading for anybody who wants to know the truth about the world we live in.
The book is fascinating, written like a thriller will have the reader stay up all night turning the pages.
Well done and congratulation,

Richard

Try reading this book. It incites the desire in me to shrink it down to something else, like any psychiatrist would approach a case of psychotic multiplicity. There are a number of individuals with credible positions presented in this book, and the summaries of those positions express matters that are highly important. The problem with the story is that, instead of hinging on the things that are important, the whole picture is in danger of becoming unhinged whenever a decision approaches the bottom line. This is like great art which has no conception that the whole world might see this picture and consider it absolutely nukers. As crazy as all the other nukers in the world might seem to us, it takes a lot of effort to keep from applying the same judgment to the system which inflicts the costs mainly on ourselves. There are things in this book, like William Greider's comment about "payoffs for layoffs" on page 200, which make it too obvious which bottom line matters. His personal suggestion to "turn out the lights rather than waste all this money waiting for world war three" (p. 201) is coupled with his knowledge of officers who "question this choice of toys over boys" (p. 202) because of what's happening: "they're being rolled by the industry." (p. 202) Even Wilson has to report that "There are too many fiefdoms." (p. 202) That might be the main conclusion here, except that it is followed by some comment about a president who would rather "chat by the side of the road until a compromise route is agreed upon." (p. 203) The index doesn't have an entry for "depleted uranium" weapons, but we are still planning for some part of the world to become a dumping ground for our bombs, and it is highly unlikely that there will be much of a chat by the side of the road before the choice of mistakes on where we can hurt our enemies the most is made. The story of how "the American military's fighting edge was being lost for lack of money" (p. 90) hardly makes sense in a world that keeps complaining when we do destroy things.

George C. Wilson is simply the best reporter alive writing about the American military. THIS WAR REALLY MATTERS brings into the cold light of day the federal budgetary process and its effect on national defense issues. The book is relatively short--just twelve chapters--and is written in the clear, easy-to-understand style of the professional reporter Wilson certainly is. He tackles the tough questions: Why is the military orgainzed the way it is? Does it have the weapons it needs to fight now and in the future? Why and how are new weapons systems procured? As you might suspect, Wilson confirms, It's the money, Stupid! THIS WAR REALLY MATTERS is a literate, lucid masterpiece that should be read by every military officer and candidate for federal office. It should also be read and re-read by every student interested in the way decisions are made in a major democracy.

This is a well written and concise account of the mechanisms by which wealthy individuals and corporate interests manipulate the legislative process. Anyone who wants to understand why, despite clean-air legislation, we do not have clean air, or why tax cuts always seem to be for other people, should read this book. The authors supply cogently argued solutions as well as detailed analyses of why the political system needs fundamental reform.

McCarthy's book on Florida's lighthouses is wonderfully thorough and marvelously concise. Each lighthouse merits a few solidly written pages of its history and lore, graced by dramatic William Trotter paintings of each light. Directions and maps conclude each chapter. This is a delightful work, easy to read and ready to use. Anyone journeying to Florida to see the state's 30 lighthouses should take along a copy of McCarthy's book. Among the growing number of lighthouse books, this one is well worth having on the shelf.

This is a superb book setting out the development of the post-war international monetary system. It is full of insights on the negotiating positions etc. of the major countries involved, the US and UK. This book is highly recommended for anyone who wishes to gain a fuller appreciation of the work of Keynes etc.