OECD

Attempting to put numbers on past economic activity is a deeply fraught exercise, as the author freely admits.

That being said, this is a book full of useful information and striking estimates. I know of no better place to get a genuine feel for the economic history of the last millennia, but particularly the last two centuries. There is something to startle or surprise anyone within these pages. A necessary edition to the library of anyone seriously interested in history.

This book is seemingly a culmination of the painstaking works taken by Angus Maddison for decades. As I liked his previous works such as the Phases of Capitalist Development, so I like this book very much. Of course, the book contains many 'guesstimations' that are unacceptable to today's economists' rigor. This is more so when the author ventures into almost two millenia before 1820, for which he did relatively little work previously. But even here the book apparently provides reasonable figures synthesizing existing evidences with a lucid interpretation, providing illuminating starting points for future studies.

No tengo ninguna revisión

I am doing a doctoral thesis about national(Spanish)and international tax law. In this book I have read the best commentary about interpretation and the "qualification problem", at the Introduction and at the Commentary to the Art. 3(2)of the OECD MC. I agree entirely with the author's point of view. The exposition about the general concepts in double taxation conventions is really understandable. The literature, decisions and law (acts...) cited is amazing. I have spent a lot of time reading this book. It has more than 1600 pages! But I am completely satisfied. At this moment I have the book on my right and I'll have it for many time

This book is a very good springboard for anyone wanting information on corruption. I am teaching a course on corruption to law enforcement personnel in Europe and this is excellent source material. The OECD is an outstanding organization and has been very helpful in my research for this class.

This short book remains the best introduction available to the economics of public pensions. Thompson explains major issues clearly, without sacrificing rigour.

For over a decade now, Mr. Fingleton has been challenging the conventional wisdom on trade and the economy. While his fellow iconoclasts moved on to other things in the triumphalist atmosphere of the late 90s, Fingleton continues to question the dominant 'Globalist' consensus; i.e. That free trade,
de-regulation and the new economy are the keys to American prosperity, and by extension to world prosperity.

Globalist dogma, especially as propagated in simplified form by Tom Friedman (The Lexus and the Olive Tree) has won widespread acceptance by nearly all political parties and media outlets in America and Britain. This is rather alarming, for as Fingleton notes, there is substatial evidence that the New-Economy-fueled prosperity of the late 90s was a fluke, never to be repeated. Yet while our balance of trade deteriorates, our manufacturing base shrinks, high-wage employment plummets and our foreign creditors get scared, the false prophets of globlization continue to preach the same old gospel.

The fundamental problem-and I am sure Mr. Fingleton understands this-is that reform will only become possible once the mainstream media and both the Republican and Democratic parties stop accepting faulty dogma. I mention this because Fingleton brings up Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan towards the end of his book, noting that they too have challenged the conventional wisdom on trade policy and manufacturing.
I think that this is a very serious mistake.

Nader and Buchanan may be right about certain issues-corporate compensation and trade policy, for instance...But there few people in the world who are more widely reviled by the Democratic and Republican party establishments, for obvious reasons. They are also unpopular in the mainstream press, which considers both of them as dangerous, wild-eyed radicals. And, last but not least, Naderites tend to hate Buchananites-and vice versa! So bringing up Nader (prominently on the cover) and Buchanan may boost sales, but it is also the surest way of alienating the wider public and the 'power elite' of the press and politics.

Still, issues of presentation and public relations aside,
Mr. Fingleton deserves immense credit for his well-reasoned and convincing arguments, no less than for being the first to sound the alarm bells. There is recent evidence that influential people as starting to pay attention to the disastrous effects of US trade policy (Warren Buffett writes an article in the Nov. 10th issue of Fortune magazine, calling for trade restrictions to limit the growing US trade deficit). Hopefully, a wider range of influential figures will be ready to listen to Mr. Fingelton's recommendations, and act on them, before it is too late.

A brilliant look at the looming economic crisis facing America, "Unsustainable" is an important wake-up call for Americans. Fingleton has done a fantastic job of explaining why America's titanic, soaring trade deficits cannot be sustained
forever and how this country is increasingly dependent on oceans of foreign capital.
It's difficult for me to fathom how any clear-minded thinking adult can read this masterpiece and not be deepy worried about the future of America.

I have been waiting a long time for a book like 'In Praise of Hard Industries' to appear.

Tokyo based author Eamonn Fingleton has written a shrewd analysis of the so-called 'New Economy' which ought to stimulate a good deal of much needed controversy.

Using a series of well researched case studies, Fingleton effectively debunks many of the cherished beliefs held by 'Post-industrialists' who promote the advantages of services over manufacturing. In particular, he casts a sceptical eye over the much vaunted 'renaissance' of American industry during the past decade. Unlike so many others, Fingleton goes under the surface to show just how unstable the current American economic boom really is.

This book should be on the reading list of anyone concerned about the direction not only of the North American but some European economies as well.

Eamonn Fingleton has written a magnificent and important book. He shows that countries committed to manufacturing, like Japan, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland, grow far faster (and have more jobs, at higher wages, and produce more exports) than countries committed to 'post-industrialism', like the USA and Britain.

Fingleton observes that post-industrialists have 'a childlike faith in the efficacy of free markets', noting, "The basic error in the laissez-faire model is that it greatly overemphasizes the interests of capital over those of labor."

He argues that we cannot rely on financial services to rebuild our economies. He points out that basing the US economy on 'information industries', as post-industrialists have recommended, would cost 25 million jobs. Post-industrial services' start-up costs are low - but so are real gains. (IBM, then Microsoft, made exceptional gains only because they monopolised setting the standards for computer operating systems.) US financial trading grew thirty times over between 1970 and 1995, while American workers' real living standards actually fell in that period. Fingleton calls finance 'a cuckoo in the economy's nest': even George Soros called on governments to regulate capital markets to 'stop the market destroying the economy'.

In Britain, we need a manufacturing renaissance. We need a national strategy for becoming self-reliant in our most important manufacturing needs. First, we have to channel savings into industrial investment and into educating more people in the most advanced skills. Second, we must retain those skills and production bases that we still have, because modern manufacturing industries need large amounts of production experience and capital. We should protect our home market, to give new industries time to grow. Third, we need to be able to produce the means of production: machine tools, production machines that make hi-tech components and electronic materials, equipment for the engineering, telecommunications, textile, chemical and power-generating industries. And fourth, we need to produce the goods that people need, particularly textiles (especially polyesters and carbon fibres), pollution control equipment, shipping (the world's fleet has more than doubled since 1970), and high quality steel.

In 1998-early 2000, I was noticing that good old manufacturing stocks were priced at insanely low prices. The stocks were trading at valuations that suggested many solid small & midsized manufacturers essentially worthless. I was semi-baffled.

It must have been terrible for the managers and employees of these wonderful companies to come to work each day. They probably thought they were dinosaurs in the dot com world.

Mr. Fingleton was praising these salt-of-the-earth firms when others had written them off. After the dot com bubble started bursting, these great firms had tremendous returns.

Mr. Fingleton was way ahead of the curve when he wrote this book and was a bright light in a dot com mania wilderness.

This book has pierced the hubris of laizze-faire thought so common amongst the current economic pundits. It is a clear evaluation of the limits of capitalism and its failure in light of the human notion of an expanding economy. It should be read with an analytical attitude and should not be prejudged solely because of the title. It elucidates "the trouble with Capitalism" and why it will continue to spawn the normal up and down cycles. It presents clear examples of how political expediency, practiced by most OECD governments in their quest to appear as defenders of the public good, continues to play into the hands of private investment seeking contined increases in returns at the expense of real value. If you have ever wondered why taxes continue to rise, this book will explain how the public purse has become the corporate trough for ever increasing returns. He gives some interesting solutions of how the future could unfold if society can refocus its prioities and look to the "real" public good. A good read for any student of economic thought. The quote attributed to Marx that "the trouble with capitalism is that it eats its young" may come to mind after reading this book.

Harry Shutt makes a strong case that private for-profit capitalism is nearing the end of its useful lifespan. He argues that capitalism's crisis is marked by an oversupply of capital desperately seeking investment opportunities in a world possessing a limited supply of secure, profit-producing activities.

The author has written an unique and insightful economic history of the post-WW II world, tracing many contemporary problems back to their root causes and exposing official explanations as propaganda. For example, the privatization of state assets has been aggressively promoted principally because they provide new homes for investment dollars -- not necessarilly because the private sector can more efficiently run these enterprises (which in fact they often can not).

Shutt suggests that the industrial economies have created an untenable situation for themselves. Public debt has been increased in order to prop up asset values (witness the Savings and Loan bank bail-out in the U.S. and other corporate welfare policies), making it difficult for governments to invest in either their own infrastructures or third world governments. This means that the world economy can not grow at a fast enough pace to satisfy the needs of private capital. Eventually, the oversupply of capital will lead to a crash in asset values.

Events that have occurred after the book's publication suggest that the author was on the mark. The Internet stock investment mania and its subsequent collapse illustrates how desperately capital latches onto any opportunity that might promise above-average profits, however risky it may actually be.

Shutt finishes the book with an outline of what the world might look like following a crash of the present system. The author suggests that an institution such as the European Union (or more precisely, an expanded and modified version of the E.U.) could be used to manage a more just and equitable system: namely one that balances the needs of labor, environment and capital, with primacy given to local, sustainable business enterprises that are fully accountable to the public.

This is a highly readable and stimulating book. Anyone with an interest in contemporary political economy should enjoy it.

The aim of the book is to test the relevant academic thinking against current industrial practice, analyse the actual situation, make recommendations and draw relevant conclusions.

This monograph is a very useful review of the economic literature on savings and the likely impact of demographic trends on savings and investment in industrial countries. Should be updated soon!!.