Customer Reviews

Just What I Said: Bloomberg Economics Columnist Takes on Bonds, Banks, Budgets, and Bubbles

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By Caroline Baum, the Emily Dickenson of markets.

Every now and then you read a book like this that makes you want to stand up and cheer, and tell all your friends that this is the real McCoy, that Emerson or Emily Dickinson or Samuel Johnson is alive. That's the feeling I have while reading "Just What I Said" again. To see what I mean, consider this. The middle-of-the-road, mediocre, eponymous tennis player and economist Robert Samuelson says in a sap-filled sendup to his kids: "You've got to care more about the election, because it goes to the heart of who we are as a nation. The greatness of the United States is not McDonald's or Microsoft. It's our basic beliefs how how we should govern ourselves."

From long experience reading her columns I shudder when she quotes someone like this, especially the fake Dr. and poseur at the head of the Fed. She never lets them off easy and writes, " The greatness of the US, Mr. Samuelson is precisely
McDonald's and Microsoft. They are the product of how we govern ourselves They are symbols of liberty and democracy. If you tell that to your kids, they actually might come around. These companies identify a consumer need, conceive a product or service to satisfy it, and compete with other producers to deliver the best qualtiy at the lowest price."

My goodness, she sounds like ... one of my favorite personages.

The book is replete with poetic and poignant ways of looking at such important things as the yield curve, the Fed influence, the doomsdayist take on the stock market, first principles of economics, bureaucratic snafus in business and government and homely analogies of the kind that you'd expect a sagacious
all-knowing columnist to make. Some of my favorites in this regard are the lessons she learns from birds at her bird feeder about crowding and mobbing, the chapter that could have been entitled "I, Mop" about the nitty-gritty of what a mop
should do, the unhelpful help desks of the technology firms (never sell her a bad product if you dont want to be pantsed in front of the most knowing audience in the world).

One of my favorite examples of her insights is her use of the word McMuffin to hold up to ridicule "Dr." Greenspan's attempt to make Congress think he's much smarter than they are by trotting out one new indicator after another that one of his boys has developed and or researched for him recently.

The list of the great things she illuminates and the insights that you can get from this book is endless. Its a masterpiece that belongs in everyone's library. I have bought dozens of copies for my friends, and plan to buy more.

As a student of the economy and financial markets, I've long been an avid reader of Caroline Baum's columns. This book is a wonderful compilation of her best writing on the macroeconomy, bond market, interest rates, government policies, and related topics, about which only she would write.

Many of her columns are both timeless and timely. For instance, those wondering about the economic impact of Hurricane Katrina should read her column from Sep 16, 1999 on Pg. 40 titled, "Hurricane Sweeps Coast; Nonsense Sure to Follow." For those seeking a greater understanding of oil's economic impact, including why higher oil prices are really not like a tax, read her column on Pg. 80 and her chapter beginning on Pg. 201 titled, "Oil Things to Oil People."

Couple her plain speaking, common sense and didactic writing approach with her access to and relationships with many of the finest minds in economics and finance and the result is a very educational read for the economics student to the finance professional. She is the rare writer who is capable of explaining the complicated in a simple, interesting and often entertaining way.

Think you can only understand the financial markets courtesy of "analysts" at your local mega brokerage shop, non-stop talking heads on financial television or "objective" government economic spokesmen? Well, think again because Caroline Baum is here to help you. Armed with little more than clear thought and precise prose, Bloomberg's ace economics journalist will leave you wondering what all those "experts" get paid for. With tongue planted firmly in cheek and harpoon in hand, Caroline Baum demolishes inconsistent thought and popular delusions about economics and the markets. Each chapter's topic (such as how to think about the Fed or oil prices) has a brief preface and is followed by several past columns on the topic that Caroline Baum has penned for Bloomberg News. Two things stand out: it is amazing how many poor economic ideas get recycled over the years and it is impressive how Caroline Baum's columns have withstood the test of time. Economics is about the allocation of scarce resources and Caroline Baum's economic journalism reflects that - substance over volume.

"Just What I Said" will appeal to anyone who wants to learn how the real economy works, in easy to understand lessons cleverly disguised as light hearted articles. The book (broken out into 19 distinct recurring themes) is a collection of the best columns that she has written for Bloomberg over the past seven years, some 1300+ columns in total. The amazing thing is her columns are as pertinent today as when she originally wrote them. I give two thumbs up to the book.

I'm saddened I wasted my money on this book. Thoroughly disappointed. I anticipated it being insightful, but it wasn't. Apparently, the author's narrow view and Econ 101 background are deemed sufficient to assert longstanding economic theories and prominent economists are "loopy". When she offers an argument at all, it is overly simplistic and uses selective examples. Perhaps the space constraints of writing a column preclude a robust discussion of complex ideas, but this threadbare treatment in book form is remarkably unsatisfying.

One example of the alleged author's insightful, common sense reasoning is her epiphany against minimum wage when her friend asked "Why raise the minimum wage to $7.50 an hour. Why not raise it to $100 an hour and make everybody rich?" Testing ideas at extremes is useful, but concluding an idea doesn't have any merit because it cannot sustain extremes is foolish. Perhaps the author also rejects the position that drinking 64 ounces of water each day is healthy on the grounds that drinking 100 gallons of water each day is unhealthy. Perhaps her ardent support of tax cuts would have been weakened if her friend had asked why cut taxes to 28%, why not cut them to 0%.

My advice is save your money. Nothing is gained from this book. If you already agree with the author's narrow view and enjoy being told what you already know, then you may enjoy the book but learn nothing. If you already disagree with the author's narrow view, you will not persuaded by the author's assertions that you are misguided. If you're interested in the material, going to the library and getting an old Economics 101 textbook and reading the chapter on supply and demand will cover everything in this book. At least read a sample of the book before purchasing, I wish had done so.

As an investment professional I have been reading Caroline Baum's articles for more than 15 years. Frequently, when one comes out I will receive a call or email from a friend telling me to read it! The reason is her insight, written in a pithy way makes you think. That is what we get paid for and how we make money for clients.
The way the book is laid out...by topic, chronologically...makes it a good reference to keep at hand when some topic comes up or just to read...if only one article.
It is particularly impressive to reread these articles years later and find they still make sense, a major accomplishment.
Think of it as economics without all those troublesome graphs.

The book is fantastic. The breadth, insight and analysis as well as the easy to read and easy to understand makes this book unique. Its like a practical application of an economic textbook. I love many of the quotes and will refer to this bok very often.

Quite often in my profession i get asked to recommend an economics book for market practitioners. Caroline Baum's book comes to plug in this whole. For those of us to have lived through the 90s bubble era (and its subsequent bursting) this is a great trip down memory lane. For the rest, this is a fantastic overview of the key issues. Caroline is a rare breed of journalists who is not afraid to voice her opinion, primarily because she has one that is based on analysis rather than sensationalism. Who else, for example, would have dared to compare Greenspan to Hitchcock? I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it to anybody interested in economics, policy and markets.

This book is informative, amusing and easy to read. I enjoyed it very much.

I started "Just What I Said" on the train on the way home from work and finished it that night. Baum has a remarkable gift for words, not to mention a gift for common sense. I was struck by several things seeing all these columns in one place, but two aspects of Baum's writing struck me in particular: 1) Her politics don't color her economics. That's evident all over, but in particular in her equal contempt for Bob Rubin and Alan Greenspan when their economic theories jumped the rails. 2) Her commentary about the Greenspan Fed was consistently, 100% on target, even when re-read with the benefit of hindsight. I don't know anyone else who can make that claim. This is a wonderful book, and a must read in particular for anyone who wants to understand Alan Greenspan's legacy.