Product Description

The bestselling author reveals how the U.S. financial sector has hijacked our economy and put America’s global future at risk

In American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips warned us of the perilous interaction of debt, financial recklessness, and the increasing cost of scarce oil. The current housing and mortgage debacle is proof once more of Phillips’s prescience, and only the first harbinger of a national crisis. In Bad Money, Phillips describes the consequences of our misguided economic policies, our mounting debt, our collapsing housing market, our threatened oil, and the end of American domination of world markets. America’s current challenges (and failures) run striking parallels to the decline of previous leading world economic powers—especially the Dutch and British. Global overreach, worn-out politics, excessive debt, and exhausted energy regimes are all chilling signals that the United States is crumbling as the world superpower.

“Bad money” refers to a new phenomenon in wayward megafinance—the emergence of a U.S. economy that is globally dependent and dominated by hubris-driven financial services. Also “bad” are the risk miscalculations and strategic abuses of new multitrillion-dollar products such as asset-backed securities and the lure of buccaneering vehicles like hedge funds. Finally, the U.S. dollar has been turned into bad money as it has weakened and become vulnerable to the world’s other currencies. In all these ways, “bad” finance has failed the American people and pointed U.S. capitalism toward a global crisis. Bad Money is the perfect follow- up to Phillips’s last book, whose dire warnings are now proving frighteningly accurate.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1350 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

About the Author
Kevin Phillips has been a political and economic commentator for more than three decades. A former White House strategist, he has been a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio, and has written for Harper’s Magazine and Time. He is the author of ten books, including The New York Times bestsellers American Theocracy and American Dynasty.

Customer Reviews

People Hurt People
"Guns don't hurt people. People hurt people." It's the same in shadow finance. If you invest for yourself, or if you want to invest for yourself, but you don't trust a system that keeps the middle class investors in the dark, that over-extends its borrowing to crisis levels, that sells questionable contracts & mortgages not only to naive Americans but to unsuspecting foreign institutions (buyer beware), then you will find the root causes of our 2007 financial lock-up in BAD MONEY useful. Like Roger Lowenstein's books describing earlier lock-ups, Kevin Phillips' book outlines how people we trust repeatedly let us down. Notice that I use the phrase "lock-up" & not "sell-off". From the early 1990s to the present, Lieberman, Greenspan, Paulson, Gramm, etc., all have fought against transparency in the financial markets by turning the discussion towards the fear of more regulations. Buyer beware!

Powerful but Depressing
I read this book after hearing the author, Kevin Phillips, give a radio presentation to the Cambridge Forum. Phillips was familiar to me as a spokesman for conservative perspectives over a span of decades, a perspective that I never shared. Thus, I was a bit skeptical when I first heard his presentation on this topic. However, I was quickly impressed by his careful, scholarly analysis, and have come to agree that he is exactly right. Phillips' central point is that the United States has abrogated its leadership position in the world by virtue of having stopped being a nation that produces goods and services of real value and becoming a nation who's primary business is the manipulation of financial markets and debt. He cites earlier examples of the Maritime Dutch republic of the 1700s, Great Britain around the time of WWI, and even Rome. The sobering point is that once a nation has gone this route, the course is irretrievable. He finds lots of blame for this situation, and it is not all deposited on any single political party...there is plenty to go around! He discusses our biggest product, Credit Debt, the root causes of the rise in oil prices, and the impact of right-wing evangelicals on the administration's feeble approach to dealing with our major challenges. This is not a feel-good book, but it is an important contribution to helping Americans understand our current situation. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Tough read but worth checking out
Since there are so many long reviews of this book that pretty much cover most of the salient points, I'll keep mine fairly short. This book is interesting if you are one of those people that suspect there is something wrong with the way our country has been doing things, and there are a number of important ideas you may not have heard about or thought about in the way they are presented. I have only a couple of small complaints. As others have pointed out, the style is often extremely dense, especially when dealing with economic issues, and sometimes he seems repetitive. A layperson will feel like he or she pretty much has to trust the author because he uses so much jargon and brings in so many complex examples that there is no way a non-expert can evaluate his arguments. The book is mostly a rehashing and updating of his earlier book American Theocracy which might make more interesting and easier reading. The book is quite recent, yet it seems quite out of date because it pretty much assumes Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee in 2008 and barely even mentions the actual nominee in an aside. Finally, as others point out, the author doesn't really give any hints of where he thinks it will all lead or what we should do about the problems we face. Part of this is by design and he gives an explanation of why he doesn't do it, but in my opinion, this leaves the book open to many interpretations, and it is easy to jump to severe conclusions. On the positive side, the author does briefly point out, without dwelling on it, that the US does enjoy some potential advantages in geography that previous empires did not, and he also mentions that many of those previous empires now enjoy a relatively successful existence as a non-empire.

This book is relatively short so it's woth checking it out if you are interested in the topic. You might want to read his book American Theocracy first.