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61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Henwood describes the state we're in, November 8, 2003
This review is from: After the New Economy (Hardcover)
Doug Henwood announced this book (his follow-up to "Wall Street") back when the so-called New Economy was still around. Those of us who read his Left Business Observer newsletter waited impatiently for over five years. It was worth the wait. Henwood starts off just where you'd expect --- poking fun at the Internet revolutionaries, the intellectual
frauds who claimed the US economy had reached a new age. Then he gets into the numbers. Oh man, does he have numbers. Chapters two and three are all about productivity, income, and
wealth. He gives you a few statistics, he explains what they mean, and then he tells you that the numbers can't be trusted. (He has a habit of saying, "What does this all mean? Honestly, no one knows. But I'll make an educated guess.") This kind of
humility is rare among economists. He forces you to form your own opinion about the accuracy of the numbers and their
relevance. Despite the constant caveats, a clear picture emerges. The US economy is deeply integrated into the world economy, with Third
World patterns of wealth and worker control developing right here in the First World. Although the US is still more comfortable
than, say, Colombia, it's falling behind countries like Belgium and France. Divisions of wealth, a pathetic social safety net, and weak unions keep an overworked, low-paid, insecure workforce in their place. Then he turns to globalization. This chapter has a few problems. Henwood likes cosmopolitanism --- the social form of
globalization. And he says the international economy has been around for over a century, so we shouldn't treat it like something new. Then he picks a handful of people who don't represent the anti-globalization movement --- people from Earth First and self-appointed experts such as David Korten --- and uses their crazy quotes. But it turns out that he agrees with the
anti-globalization protesters on most issues. So why does he take this approach? Because the anti-globalization activists are using the wrong name for their movement. That might sound like a petty basis for a chapter in a book about the New Economy. And it is. Then he gets back on track. He finishes with a brilliant chapter on finance. Picking up where he left off in his previous book, he
shows that economists don't care how international investment or the stock market *really* works. He describes crooked stock
analysts, corrupt CEOs, and disciples of the "broadband future." He quotes former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz
saying that the IMF can't avoid programs that bankrupt Third World countries because bankruptcy isn't in their computer
models. By the time you're done with this book, you'll want to read it again. It's packed with small, easily-understandable charts. The
writing style is very good --- Henwood sounds like he's sitting next to you, talking to you about economics at your level. I highly
recommend After the New Economy to anyone who cares about the current state of work and money in the world.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
. . . Come the New Possibilities, November 15, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: After the New Economy (Hardcover)
Although this book is an "excercise in kicking the thing [the concept of the New Economy] while it's down, to make sure it won't get up again," Henwood is more interested in finding ways to think about recent economic history than in assaulting the proponents of the New Economy. He divides his analysis into 5 general themes: "novelty" (economics should be viewed historically so as to identify both the old and the new, both patterns and changes); "work" (productivity gains do not clearly show up in increased wages or increased profits and have not led to better jobs for most workers); "income" (income and wealth disparities continue to exist and inequality continues along racial, gender and national divisions; and workers are not as upwardly mobile as we would like to believe); "globalization" (a concept about as fuzzy as the "New Economy," whether used by its advocates or its enemies, that often obscures thoughtful consideration of the long-standing and long-increasing international reach of the economy); and "finance" (the increase in the number of financial assets and especially the increaed speed at which they trade in the financial markets may have less to do with smart investment in productive activities than in benefitting financial managers and top executives and in increasing profits of already-financed companies). Henwood suggests that the bursting of the New Economy bubble is likely to have long-term effects that will lead to continued polarization of income/wealth, insecurity, etc. However, he also sees reason for optimism because of continued calls that we can understand the world and the economy in ways that will allow us to move beyond misleading concepts such as "New Economy" and/or "globalization." To support his optimism, he points to Hardt and Negri's book, Empire; to his own belief in the power of unionized labor and domestic politics/policies to battle inequality/polarization; and even to the well-kicked New Economy's proponents' call for the democratization of ownership. Some readers may find this book most interesting for Henwood's pulling together far-ranging economic indicators and his ability to discuss them coherently without glossing them (with concepts such as New Economy or globalization). Whether these disparate indicators can bear much analytical weight when used in conjunction with one another is a different matter, of course, but Henwood's lead-by-example optimism that we can get into the nitty gritty details ourselves to look at what our economy is doing and find a way to improve things is compelling.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Ironies of the Nineties, February 10, 2004
This review is from: After the New Economy (Hardcover)
Henwood does a superb job of illuminating many of the ironies of the Ninties, whether simply quoting George Gilder (who Henwood notes, rivals Whitman as an exuberant list-maker) or pointing out that the phrase "New Economy" was first used by President Reagan in a speech at Moscow State University. Too good to be true--but it is. And Henwood underlines how, from the very beginning, the New Economy rested on a flight from the physical world. He quotes Reagan: "In the new eocnomy human invention increasingly makes natural resources obsolete." While the Bush admnistration's environmental policy could be read as an attempt to fulfill Reagan's dream, world markets are now telling us that natural resources are far from out of vogue. Copper, gold, silver, oil, wheat--today, this is where wealth resides. Demand for these resources is rising in parts of the world where higher productivity actually means higher standards of living for a significant number of people. By contrast, Henwood shows how, in the West,the productivity revolution of the Nineties produced more, always more, of things that, in many cases, we don't need and couldn't afford.The miracle? They were doing it with fewer people. Jobs vanish (though Henwood shows, low-wage jobs are growing at nice clip), debt mounts, the dollar declines. And, he notes, in some cases what we produce may even lower the standard of living: "The contribution of the brokerage industry to productivity was mainly web-based trading; how much it contributes to human welfare is debatable. The more people trade, the worse they do (though it makes their brokers happier.)" Henwood deconstructs GDP, and productivity numbers emphasizing the "statistical fetishism" surrounding both, asking important questions about the quality rather than just the quantity of what is produced (does it offer a gain for human possibilities or a loss?) and offering perhaps the clearest explanation I have seen of the fuzzy math involved in guesstimating both GDP and productivity growth. Finally, in just a few pages he offers a fine analysis of how "so much of the last twenty years comes together in the Enron story . . . Lay's assetless trading model was right in line with the celebration of postmateriality. The pension system was right in line with New Era pension thinking. And relying on the stock market to judget he company and pay senior managers was right in line with all of the trendy talk from professors and consultants. And it all went badly wrong." Here, Henwood makes what may be his most important point: "But instead of being read as a judgment on the idiocy of all these fashions, it's being read as a case of personal corruption . . . " Our obsessive focus on crime--and putting the perps in jail--may be emotionally satisfying for some, but it too-neatly dodges the heart of the problem. The real problem was not that individuals corrupted the system--the real problem was that the ideology of the new paradigm was, itself, bankrupt. Yet that ideology is still driving the U.S. economy. Just take a look at stock market valuations--or, better yet, the President's Economic Report. But first read this book.
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