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Book Reviews
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Hoax: Why Americans are Suckered
by White House Lies
by Nicholas von Hoffman
(Nation Books; 2004; 195pps; $13.95)
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I recall telling a friend that I wanted to do a special issue on Scathing. I like the word and I enjoy reading scathing attacks on Americans for being so retarded, lazy, apathetic, gullible, etc., ad nauseam. Then I picked up a book by Nicholas von Hoffman called Hoax: Why Americans Are Suckered by White House Lies and sure enough I banished the idea of doing a special issue on it since this book IS a scathing attack. It is so good that I became mesmerized by the words, the tempo, the energy. Hoffman is non-stop. Way too many dog ears in my book, but here’s one I have to share with you. Even though he doesn’t really write about economics here, I thought this particular excerpt would go great with Professor Kahl’s article on the deficit in this issue:
“Outside the terrarium [the bubble that America believes is the only world] looking in, it is plain to see that the nation, which F. D. Roosevelt called the “arsenal of democracy,” no longer makes its own shoes. America no longer makes its own living. The greatest threat to the oil supply is not war or embargo but a demand by Arab suppliers that they be paid in euros instead of dollars, because every year America buys more from people abroad than it sells to them, and then borrows the money to pay for its purchases from the people it buys from. It is now the biggest debtor in the history of the world. Like many another debtor, it owes so much money its creditors are petrified of what might happen if they foreclosed on the mortgage.”
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