Outrageous Fortunes: The Twelve Surprising Trends That Will Reshape the Global Economy [Hardcover]

Daniel Altman (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 18, 2011

A Harvard-trained economist's startling predictions reveal critical challenges in the decades ahead, helping individuals, businesses, and governments to make smarter decisions

As individuals, companies, and countries struggle to recover from the economic crisis, many are narrowly focused on forecasts for the next week, month, or quarter. Yet they should be asking what the global economy will look like in the years to come—where will the long-term risks and opportunities arise? These are the questions that Daniel Altman confronts in his provocative and indispensable book.

The fate of the global economy, Altman argues, will be determined by deeper factors than those that move markets from moment to moment. His incisive analysis brings together hidden trends, societal pressures, and policy endgames to make twelve surprising but logical predictions about the years ahead. And his forecasts for the future raise a pressing question for today: With so many challenges awaiting us, are our political and economic institutions up to the task?

Outrageous Fortunes tells which industries will grow, which economies will crumble, which investments will pay off, and where the next big crisis may occur. Altman's carefully reasoned text is an essential guide for the road ahead.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Amid all the handwringing on the downward trajectory of the global economy comes this cool, collected, and sensible view of forthcoming economic trends. Altman (Connected), professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, looks at deeper factors--geography, culture, government policies--to challenge conventional (or simply much touted) wisdom: he predicts China's economic supremacy will be short, undermined by its own central government's heavy-handedness and Confucian cultural influences. He offers an unflinching examination of the merits and flaws of capitalism and socialism and resets archaic perceptions about how to encourage or inhibit growth. In his analysis, capitalism comes out on top, but succeeds best and for a longer period of time with government intervention and redistributive policies. Altman predicts global migratory shifts that will make today's world financial centers obsolete and foresees the pitfalls of a unified European currency. Altman delivers more than mere analysis or foreshadowing: this is revelatory reading for even the most casual observer of economics, and an invaluable tool for reconsidering how the world makes money. (Jan.) (c)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Informative and accessible, penetrating and provocative, his book is a first-rate guide to global trends… Readers of Outrageous Fortunes are likely to conclude that they have learned some important things about a global economy that will have an ever-more profound impact on their lives."—NPR.org

"Bold… Interesting."—The Economist

"Amid all the handwringing on the downward trajectory of the global economy comes this cool, collected, and sensible view of forthcoming economic trends… Altman delivers more than mere analysis or foreshadowing: this is revelatory reading for even the most casual observer of economics, and an invaluable tool for reconsidering how the world makes money."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Interesting thought experiments."—Kirkus Reviews

"If the past two years have taught us anything, it is the importance of counterintuitive thinking. Daniel Altman boldly ventures into the deep drivers of global change to uncover the unintended consequences of our current policies—regarding China, global trade, American jobs, and much more. Anyone who wants to get smart on globalization’s fate must read this book."

--Parag Khanna, author of The Second World and How to Run the World

"With so many new books offering autopsies of the financial crisis and the deepest recession since World War II, it’s a blessing that Daniel Altman has his eyes firmly fixed on risks and opportunities in the road ahead. He brings together a series of compelling predictions, and though readers may not agree with every element of his forecasts, all will be better informed for having read his book."

--Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group and author of The End of the Free Market and The J Curve

"With all the attention being lavished on the short-run gyrations of the economy, it is refreshing to see a book that focuses on the long run. Daniel Altman is brave enough to make predictions about what will happen to the world economy twenty or thirty years from now. His analysis is thoughtful and compelling and should be required reading for those interested in creating a better world for our offspring."

--Hal R. Varian, chief economist at Google and professor of business, economics, and information management at the University of California, Berkeley

"Daniel Altman has something to tell you: the world may not turn out the way Thomas Friedman expects. Outrageous Fortunes is provocative, fast-moving, authoritative, and imaginative. Expect the unexpected."

--Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Times Books; First Edition edition (January 18, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805091025
• ISBN-13: 978-0805091021
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #828,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've dedicated my life to raising living standards around the world, and part of that is helping people to understand the global economy and plan for the future. For me, the most important tools in economics are also the most basic ones. I think it's important to bring the power of those tools to as wide an audience as possible.

I hope you'll enjoy my books and feel free to interact with me via my Twitter feed (@altmandaniel), Facebook page, and personal web page (danielaltman.com). I find that what I learn from my readers can take my own thinking and research in unexpected directions, which is often the most exciting part of what I do. Best regards, and thanks for reading!

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, Well-Written, and Thought-Provoking April 26, 2011

By Frank A. Pasquale III

Format:Hardcover

Daniel Altman's book Outrageous Fortunes is a consistently smart, engaging, and surprising read. It is one of very few books to address the larger forces shaping global economies. But unlike the usual macro predictive fare of a "Megatrends" or "Bold New World," it is grounded in a deep understanding of actual economic circumstances on the ground level.

Outrageous Fortunes works on two levels. First, for the self-interested investor, it's good to be aware of the long-run influences on productivity and power that Altman outlines. His discussion of the new colonialism demonstrates both the short term profits and incredible long-term risks that arise when countries like China and Saudi Arabia start buying rights to agricultural land and other resources in poorer places. He also challenges conventional wisdom on disintermediation, making a compelling case that certain middlemen and arbitrageurs can only gain from market integration.

Outrageous Fortunes also succeeds as a work for wonks, taking its place in the grand genre dubbed by David Brin the self-preventing prophecy. As Altman puts it, "a frequent goal of prediction is to alter the future - to warn of impending danger so that it can be avoided." The book describes many impending dangers, including increasing inequality driven by global warming, accelerating brain drains, and an enormous financial black market that is developing outside of traditional financial centers. Altman's description of that black market is particularly acute, and worth discussing in some detail.

Altman observes that "the last two decades witnessed the greatest expansion in financial markets the world has ever seen. At the heart of this expansion was the proliferation of derivatives. These are securities that are neither equity like shares in the company, nor debts, like government bonds. Rather, they are gambles; contingent on something the world is not yet know, like the future price of oil, whether a company will go bankrupt, or even the weather" (178). Despite the incredible proliferation of derivatives contracts, and the exponential growth of their nominal value, regulators have failed to develop even the most elementary methods of assessing the risks they pose. More ominously, the very wealthy individuals and entities who play this market threatened to decamp for less restrictive settings whenever the possibility of regulation is broached.

Mainstream legal and economic discussions of finance tend to accept this dynamic as an inevitable outcome of globalization. However, Altman traces the trends to their logical conclusion: an "offshore migration of sophisticated " toward websites that, like ships that fly under a flag of convenience, allow you to "bet on the future values of thousands of stocks, stock indexes, commodities, treasury bonds, and currencies-- all without holding any of the underlying securities" (194). As he notes, this migration could be tremendously destabilizing; unless there is a massive bailout, "a crisis in the financial black market will leave investors with virtually no protection against a total collapse."

Altman believes that there is an alternative: much more intense monitoring of the global financial system by national and international regulators. Outrageous Fortunes features other pragmatic approaches toward addressing the biggest global problem. The book is a must-read for those interested in the long-term future of their jobs, communities, and the global village as a whole.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Not "Outrageous" but Fascinating and Provocative April 27, 2011

By Cedar Riener

Format:Hardcover

In "Outrageous Fortunes" Daniel Altman offers 12 bold predictions about our world's economic future, based on a broad and sweeping set of factors. Combining the learned erudition of a Harvard-trained economist with the pithy clarity of a seasoned journalist, Altman (who is both) skillfully guides the reader through the present and future of the global economy. I am not an economist, but I read widely, and became much more interested in the economy as it seemed to crumble last summer. I had not read Altman's columns, or any of his previous books. Indeed, this was the first book that had the word "economy" in it that I had read in a very long time. Nonetheless, I found it clearly written, and incredibly interesting. I would recommend it highly to any curious reader.
While this is clearly a book about the global economy, Altman casts a wide net in describing factors that will influence the shape of different country's economies. For example, while he describes the common economic indicators that point to China's ascendance as the top economic power, he urges the reader to consider deeper factors that may inhibit China's growth. These deep factors include the hierarchical nature of China's economy, and of China's culture. Altman suggests that the Confucianism that pervades Chinese culture stands as an obstacle to entrepreneurship, and will hinder its ability to maintain its spectacular growth. Similarly, he suggests that the United States will become the world's sales force, in part because of the cultural dominance of English, and the world-wide cultural impact of the "American Dream," which has resulted in a uniquely American expertise in salesmanship.
As someone with a wide variety of interests, I found Altman's multidisciplinary approach useful and provocative, similar to Jared Diamond's Collapse (although less scholarly and comprehensive). His description in Chapter 5 of the conflict between capitalism and communism, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of each in the global economy was a fascinating and clear-eyed summary of a topic that too often gets an ideological treatment. Integrating political history, economics, and a psychological astuteness, Altman describes backlashes against capitalism in countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Moldova (as well as others in Eastern Europe). Despite offering a bold general prediction, he also differentiates each case (the way that Venezuela's oil reserves, for example, changes their economy and their political atmosphere).
In conclusion, I would say my only fault with the book is with the title. The SEO-optimized title promises a Malcolm Gladwell-like list of provocative generalizations for the future (and I feared being annoyed at the too neat explanations Gladwell offers of complex phenomena), what I found was instead a nuanced and sophisticated treatment of the impact of demographic, cultural, and technological factors on the world economy. Combining case studies of individual countries economic trajectories with unconventional economic indicators like corruption indexes and ease-of-starting-a-business rankings, demographic changes and immigration policies, Altman urges us to consider the broader context of the global economy. The value in Altman's approach is not just to argue about when and whether China will surpass the United States on some arbitrary measure of economic power, or which developing country will grow faster, but to consider the deep factors that he proposes.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and Surprising February 9, 2011

By Ayesha Khanna

Format:Hardcover

In this surprising new book, Dan Altman not only challenges conventional notions of the linearity with which economists think, but also demonstrates acute knowledge of political dynamics and social issues all over the world. Altman weaves a very interesting and compelling narrative of how the globalization of everything from finance to tourism will reshape the world economy in ways we don't yet appreciate. One of the main reasons is that while all these issues are globalizing, politics is much slower, and throws up bizarre obstacles and unintended consequences. Altman is much more than an economist, he's a very clever oracle into the new future.