25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Remarkable Tour de Force, August 12, 2008
This review is from: Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America (Hardcover)
Americans of a certain age know that something is wrong. Their nation is not what it used to be. But what exactly is the matter? Pat Choate provides a thoroughly researched and authoritative answer: the recent fashion for radical globalism has driven American society off a cliff. Of course, other writers have already taken shots at globalism but few if any have come to the subject with a greater depth of experience or a more acute intellect than Choate. Add in the fact that Choate is a born writer with powers of explication that other policy analysts can only dream of and the result is a remarkable tour de force that is must reading for any American concerned about his or her nation's future.
Again and again Choate, an economist and best selling author who was Ross Perot's vice presidential running mate in 1996, comes up with devastating facts that give the lie to the globalist chop logic that has driven American policy-making in recent years.
As he points out, a fundamental issue is the extent to which Washington has come to be run by lobbyists -- and particularly lobbyists acting in various guises for foreign governments and industries. The activities of the K Street lobbying system have not only greatly speeded up the acceptance of globalism by America's largely economically illiterate elite but, in a pernicious self-feeding process, have been facilitated by such acceptance.
His analysis ranges widely over such issues as the farcically counterproductive U.S. effort to create the World Trade Organization; America's vulnerability to illness spread via imports of contaminated food; the U.S. Defense Department's inability to keep track of its dependency on foreign suppliers for vital high-tech components; and perhaps most alarmingly the possibility that a foreign adversary could hide deadly Trojan Horse computer "viruses" in such components.
Choate is undoubtedly right in naming the American media as a key factor in the historic debacle radical globalism has wrought. America's most prestigious newspapers in particular have been colonized by a self-perpetuating oligarchy of smart aleck editors whose understanding of economics does not go beyond chanting that "the market is always right" -- a mantra that any first-year economics student knows is more honored in the breach than in the observance. Hailed as geniuses by the Davos crowd, such editors affect a "let them eat cake" attitude towards the millions of Americans who have had their livelihoods destroyed by unfair trade. No wonder Ben H. Bagdikian, a prominent Berkeley journalism professor quoted by Choate, observes that, "trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew's Passion' on a ukulele."
That may be so but -- at least for a while longer -- books will continue to be published that hold nothing back. No book has done a better job of explaining the problems of radical globalism than Dangerous Business.
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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why Trade, August 14, 2008
This review is from: Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America (Hardcover)
A good book, though most business people will disagree, but most working people will cheer. Over the last 30 plus years things have gotten so bad that our biggest exports, are jobs. And our leaders say this is good for America. You think? We have trade deficits with just about every trading partner, if they can be so described. But no one in power thinks we need to do anything to change things.
Trade, something of value, in exchange for something of equal value. What do we manufacturer in this nation anymore worth trading? This in turn has contributed to the credit crisis, over burdening credit card dept, (another story) our cities and states cannot meet their obligations in part because revenues are down.
Then there is that nasty word "Globalization," where this nation has become the dumping ground for it seems any and all goods other nations produce. Where we now look the other way because goods are cheap, because they are produced by prisoners, or worse children. No enviromental precautions, no minimum wage, cheap labor, better defined as "SLAVE" labor. Then there is that nasty thing we do called deficit spending, where we spend more than we take in. Living on credit so to speak.
The next President to take office had better have the balls to set this monster straight, or this economic quicksand America now faces will overshadow the great depression of the 1930s. We are pulling up every third world nation, at the expense of American jobs. The jobs an advisor of John McCain says we as Americans are not truly entitled to. Jobs that built this Nation after the depression, and aided in the winning of WW II.
Suggestions are made by the author as to how we can begin to dig ourselves out of this mess, but it will take a great deal of heart. Heart enough to renegoiate our one way trade deals. Pay our way out of dept, and not try to borrow our way out.
This is basic good economics, something like being left with a surplus, instead of dept. This is a major reason we can no longer properly supply our military, too much of what is now needed is produced by other Nations, and how bad is that? Well imangine if before World War 2 this were the case, think we would have won? The Pentagon has little choice but to look to overseas producers, because most of our heavy industry has been exported.
This all relates to our educational system where most high school grad cannot read a simple rule. Not nearly enough revenues to properly educate our children, and a Communist Nation holds a great deal of our dept, as well as Middle Eastern Nations. I thought we were anti Communist. Where do we go from here?
Well too many of us do not vote, and of those who do believe it when they the politicians say globalization is good for America. I hope we read this book, and start to pull our heads out of the sand.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent and Informative, August 14, 2008
This review is from: Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America (Hardcover)
Dangerous Business is an excellent resource for anyone with an interest in globalization, trade or economics. Mr. Choate succeeds where other notable academics have failed by presenting a readable, informative work that examines the often overlooked problems created by globalization. This is a great read.
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