|
|
|
| |
List Price: $21.00 |
|
| |
Our Price: $18.90 |
|
| |
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
| |
Customer Ratings: 4.5 (from 21 reviews) |
|
| |
|
|
|
| Editorial
Reviews |
Product Description
"Gripping, often frightening...should be read by anyone wanting to understand, from the inside, how the international financial system really works." --The Economist Lauded by reviewers and scholars alike, Paul Blustein's The Chastening examines the role of the International Monetary Fund in the series of economic crises that rocked the globe in the last decade. Based on hundreds of interviews with officials at the IMF, the World Bank, the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the White House, and many foreign governments, The Chastening offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Fund during an extraordinarily turbulent period in modern economic history and at a time when the IMF has become the object of intense political controversy. While the IMF and its overseers at the Treasury and the Fed have sought to cultivate an image of economic masterminds coolly dispensing effective economic remedies, the reality is that as markets were sinking and defaults looming, the guardians of global financial stability were often floundering, improvising, and feuding among themselves. The Chastening casts serious doubt on the IMF's ability to combat of investor panics at a time when massive flows of money traverse borders and oceans. A readable, compelling account of the deeply flawed workings of the international political system, The Chastening is vital reading for students and scholars of international diplomacy, government, and economic and public policy. |
Amazon.com Review
An author who tries to write an engaging book about the International Monetary Fund faces a daunting task. Who besides devoted readers of The Financial Times would want to read it? With The Chastening, however, Paul Blustein offers a remarkably accessible account of this off-putting institution and its importance to the world economy. "The IMF cultivates its mystique, seeking to appear all-knowing, scientific, and detached. To outsiders, it often comes across as a high priesthood with pretensions of divine powers and insight," he writes. Blustein tears down this façade as he recounts some of the epic struggles of recent years: "As markets were sinking and defaults looming, the guardians of global financial stability were often scrambling, floundering, improvising, and striking messy compromises." Through dozens of interviews with IMF insiders, Blustein reveals how the institution really works--and how it often doesn't. There are fast-paced stories of success and failure on these pages, as Blustein describes efforts to bail out faltering economies in Korea, Russia, and elsewhere. Best of all, readers don't need economics degrees to keep pace: anybody who simply wants a primer on global financial systems will be well served by Blustein. --John Miller |
|
| Product Details |
| Author: |
Paul Blustein |
| Binding: |
Paperback |
| Dewey Decimal Number: |
337 |
| EAN: |
9781586481810 |
| ISBN: |
1586481819 |
| Label: |
PublicAffairs |
| Languages: |
|
| List Price: |
| Amount: |
2100 |
| Currency Code: |
USD |
| Formatted Price: |
$21.00 |
|
| Manufacturer: |
PublicAffairs |
| Number Of Items: |
1 |
| Number Of Pages: |
448 |
| Package Dimensions: |
| Height: |
100 |
| Length: |
820 |
| Weight: |
105 |
| Width: |
530 |
|
| Product Group: |
Book |
| Publication Date: |
2003-05-07 |
| Publisher: |
PublicAffairs |
| Release Date: |
2003-05-13 |
| Studio: |
PublicAffairs |
| Title: |
The Chastening: Inside The Crisis That Rocked The Global Financial System And Humbled The Imf |
|
| Customer Reviews |
Customer Rating: 5
Review Date: 2009-05-05
0 out of 0 found this review helpful.
Summary: Almost better than Jack London...
Even if you're not an economics geek, this is a great book. Fast-moving, fun to read, balanced, fills out the macro theory with the people/passions/conflicts behind it, and especially fun to read after having lived through the financial crisis starting in 2008 (for example, there are stories of Summers, Geitner and other heavy hitters, giving backdrop to the players on C-SPAN during the crisis). This would be an ideal book for an undergradute macroeconomics course for non-economics majors, and really for anyone with an interest in the IMF, World Bank and monetary policy generally but who doesn't want to jump into the mathematics deep end. |
Customer Rating: 5
Review Date: 2008-12-28
0 out of 0 found this review helpful.
Summary: IMF Needs to Be Exposed
In Thailand, I witnessed the fiscal and monetary policies in the late 80s that were a result of pressure to "open up financial markets" in the Asian tiger economies so that funds from western countries could get a piece of the action.
I will not go to the extent to defend Thai people's role in the mess. But the opening up of financial markets left Thailand exposed to predatory lenders and currency speculators mainly from the US. The interest rate differential between Western and Asian markets was usually enough justification for Thai financial institutions to get syndicated loans from a pool of foreign lenders.
Then suddenly, the very same lenders see the country's exchange rate differentials (onshore and offshore rates were quite different back then) and begin to sell off the currency and assets, with the Thai central bank having to defend the currency using dwindling reserves...a vicious circle of panic.
The IMF was called in to make sure that Thailand did not default on the loans.
A new Thai government was formed, but was forced to take an IMF loan (to first pay off the foreign lenders) with strict instructions to change monetary and fiscal policy in order to make sure that the IMF loan was paid back in full.
In the eyes of the public, the government was responsible for the policies...even though a large part was dictated by the IMF.
Even today, many Thai people don't realise that the country narrowly escaped IMF mismanagement. They seem to often leave the country stuck in endemic financial crises...as was the case in countries like Russia and Argentina. |
Customer Rating: 4
Review Date: 2007-01-01
0 out of 0 found this review helpful.
Summary: A Primer on Why Third World Debt Is Such a Mess
There are many good reasons to bash the IMF but few reasons to do so if you don't know what you're talking about -- this books lets you do both.
I've spent years in social circles that carry on a tragic lament of third world debt to first world countries, a lament I agree with but often find is expressed through oft-repeated anti-globalization mantras with no perception of how hideously complex the situation is.
This book gives you the tools to make cogent criticisms of the IMF while simultaneously learning about the herculean chore the IMF has before it. Blustein describes the mechanics of how financial crises arose in the fateful year of 1997 in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Korea, and later in Russia and Brazil. A combination of cookie-cutter shock therapy schemes, out-of-touch IMF officials, incompetent and often corrupt finance ministry officials and Wall Street Bankers converge to make it nearly impossible for countries to escape the wrath of an increasingly volatile group of investors the author appropriately dubs the "Electronic Herd."
The pattern is now a familiar one -- irresponsible fiscal and monetary policy leaves a country exposed to predatory lenders and currency speculators. Investors and debt holders see the country's dwindling hard currency reserves as sign of imminent collapse and begin to sell off every asset they have there, creating a vicious circle of panic. The IMF is called in to make sure the country doesn't go bankrupt by providing loans of hard currency -- but who's being bailed out, the country itself of the lenders that put their money there?
Blustein explains how this dynamic was repeated in each of the countries of the 1997 and 1998 crises, with the IMF response working in everyone's favor in only two cases among a string of dismal failures. He extensively explores the issue of "moral hazard," or the idea that big loan packages to economies in crisis just reinforces irresponsible behavior on the part of both the lenders and the borrowers.
Can get a little tedious at times, and the sequence of events is sometimes hard to follow because so much is being explained at once -- but overall a well written work by a reporter who covered the subject for years.
|
Customer Rating: 5
Review Date: 2006-09-26
1 out of 1 found this review helpful.
Summary: A Case Study in the Failure of Political Rationalism
The Chastening is a ripping, white-knuckle read. This IS the best single book about the IMF, but it is also a lesson in political theory. Like Milton Friedman's "Monetary History of the United States," David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest," and Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow," this book is a case study in how superempowered and unaccountable bureaucrats tend make natural disasters incalculably worse. It is an object lesson in how policymaking ambitions are frustrated by human fallibility, especially when the policymaker in question fails to account for that fallibility. At every step, the Fund's planners made horrible missteps with smug confidence, thereby prolonging the suffering of untold millions of people. At every step, they were shocked when reality failed to coorespond to theory and their best intentions backfired. In a subtle way, the doctrinaire rationalist approach taken by the Fund during the Asian crisis presages the failure of the remaking of Iraq. The inherent weakness of theory-laden, top-down political and economic planning is a lesson we must apparently learn over and over again. (For those who appreciate this philosophical dimension to the book, I highly recommend James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (The Institution for Social and Policy St).")
The IMF is the most powerful single human force on the planet and yet it remains totally almost unknown to public at large. Blustein is to be commended for making the Fund transparent and accessible to all educated people. |
Customer Rating: 5
Review Date: 2006-08-16
1 out of 1 found this review helpful.
Summary: Entertaining & Imformative
Clearly the best book ever written on the IMF & its inner-workings. Great detail on the theater and players within the IMF and those that make policy. The book is a must read for anyone interested in the world economy.
Regarding the crisis that hit the world financial markets the author does an outstanding job in educating the reader on all of the key elements from Nation/States to Hedge Funds.
By taking individual chapters to break down the elements of the distressed finances of Korea, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, Thailand & wall street the author takes us on a roller coaster ride of international politics, high finance, intrigue & history.
|
|
|
