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Book Reviews
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The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century
by Paul Krugman
(WW Norton; updated and expanded paperback edition 2004, 516pp. $14.95)
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This is a collection of mainly New York Times columns spanning events from 2000 on, with special emphasis on economics, which is Krugman’s forte and which he teaches at Princeton. Each column is concise and directed to a specific point, which makes the understanding of interrelated ideas easier.
He emphasis throughout the many abuses of power by the Bush Administration, the secretive and false premises upon which policy is now being based, and the disastrous results both foreign and domestic. We have been led into two wars, both unfinished, with no conclusions in sight, while at the same time, financial decisions are being made that have tremendous negative impact now and in the future not only for poor people but also for the shrinking middle class.
Krugman begins by telling how he first began to notice what he terms “world class mendacity” in the issuing of bogus numbers attempting to deceive the general population regarding tax reductions mainly for the rich and the despoiling of social security, Medicare, education and social services, all under the radical anti-government rubric “Starve the Beast” — the “beast” of course being government.
Krugman bemoans corporate greed and ”crony capitalism” at the same time he is generally supportive of Free Trade and the WTO. While reading these sections I was reminded of a thought that has come to me before – that perhaps he, like many people, confuses “globalization” with Free Trade measures in toto and mistakenly assumes that critics are naïve in that they oppose all “globalization,” and desire to turn the world back from the best aspects of modernization. He believes that Free Trade measures are a powerful engine to help stabilize and modernize poor countries.
He points out the inordinate power and influence of Alan Greenspan and regrets to report that that financial guru seems to have given up any pretense of objectivity in his recommendations recently. Krugman also contends that there is more than one reason why public information is so lacking – not only is there much ingrained administrative deceit and lack of adequate reporting, but also a general unwillingness among us all to believe in the malicious intent that actually does exist nowadays.
He sets out a list of principles that determine the behavior of the “big money makers” – a subject many of us have wondered about. He points up how imaginary crises are used to keep people frightened and dependent on authorities. He sees the Iraq War as not only an unnecessary disaster for human beings on all sides, but also a foolish economic policy, then sets forth his own “Economic Plan” as an alternative.
Under “Ways to Cheat,” he details several strategies that have brought down Enron, Dynergy, Adelphia and WorldCom, including tax evasion, slippery accounting methods, and bribery of government via lobbying and compares these methods to the “robber barons” of the 1890s. He also criticizes the Bush sponsorship of anti-intellectualism, an idea that says “real men don’t think.”
Krugman regards the polarization of the country into “red” and “blue” as a disaster symptomatic of an all-pervasive “unraveling” of social institutions. Short of impeachment, he offers no explicit method for saving the country if “four more years” becomes a reality.
Like most of his readers, he contends that Mr. Bush launched a war on false pretenses, which is, “to say the least, a breach of trust. So if you admit that ... such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand accountability – and to do so not only in the face of a powerful, ruthless political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It’s a scary prospect.” (Here, or course is where all of us may be falling short!)
Finally, he asks: “Yet if we can’t find people willing to take the risk – to face the truth and act on it – what will happen to our democracy?”
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