Customer Reviews

Surviving the Second Great Depression: How to Take Advantage of the Government That Is Trying to Take Advantage of You

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

3-stars for length (it is only 6 bucks after all), but 5-stars for the concept, the writing and the techniques. I've taken a couple of the suggestions and started investing in TIPS and gold. I'm not ready to get laid off to get unemployment (pretty funny section though), but I'm looking in to starting a 5013c to get a grant to do what I want. Brilliant. It's our money, why shouldn't we be taking advantage of it?!

THe history will make you mad and the techniques will give you something to do about it. Government's encroaching on our liberties but you CAN do something about it- get this book- you won't be sorry!

Here are the chapter headings for the book to give you an idea of what to expect:

Fight the Fed's Whoopee Cushion

Refinance Or Don't

Downsize Your Life

Invest in Your Future (Investment techniques to fight inflation)

Grab a Grant

Capitalize on Unemployment Insurance (That's Why We Have It!)

Avoid It Like the Plague (It being taxes)

Itemize

Start a Business

Move to Greener Pastures

Take it Off Shore

Find a Lasting Solution

-Fin

"Surviving" is along the lines of a number of books recently released (Meltdown, Gimme My Money Back, Liberty and Tyranny) that give an explanation of how the US got into this current financial "crisis". Morse does put a unique twist with a history going back to the late 1800s showing that we had economic depressions since banks started dominating finance. But government didn't have to put up massive bailouts or stimulus plans back then and we still got out of the mess. Now, however, we have all these government inventions (like the Fed and income tax) to prevent economic depressions and it looks like not only did the government prevent downturns, it made them worse!

After the history, Morse goes into ways to capitalize on the current system- including taking advantage of stimulus, getting grants, going on unemployment, and taking your business offshore if all else fails. This is a clever book and one that you should get soon before the recovery is in your rear view mirror!

Other than the chapter on gold, I found it to be of no use to me. I felt that the part about trying to get unemployment by otherwise normal ways did not impress me.It's not that I disagree with everything he says in his book,but I could not put into practical use all of his suggestions. As an average joe I was looking for ways to stay financialy secure in the coming months and years. Others may find the book interesting or helpful, but I cannot reccomend this book.

This book had some interesting suggestions in it. Very practical and down to earth and not the absurd which I was half-expecting. Before I go on, I have to say this book is worth reading and I liked most of it. Unfortunately, for all the great knowledge on personal finance in here, I am writing this review mostly because of the first 15-20 pages (15-20% of the book). It was infuriating and dead-wrong and very simplistic. For all the things JSB Morse got right on personal finances, he was wrong on with the economy and the role of government within it. I just can't in good conscience let all these errors slide without providing counter-arguments.

To start off, in JSB Morse's history of the role of government in the economy, he takes the position of almost complete liaise-faire and says that everything the government gets involved in turns to disaster. He says the government should be completely hands-off in the economy. It is a common argument and I personally agree with some of its points (heavy spending is destructive and do not trust politicians any further than you can throw them)... but the logic of it is extremely misleading. Government involvement in the economy has failed because politicians, due to the very structure of our government, are corrupt. Campaigns are so expensive that almost all politicians must accept political contributions and once elected they bow down to whoever provided them money and ignore the electorate. The reason these government programs are a waste of money and not very effective is not that it can't be done... but that our corrupt politicians (mostly democrat) apparently spend every waking moment deciding how to make government programs bleed as much tax-payer money as possible into the pockets of campaign contributors. This argument that government can't be involved in the economy because it screws everything up is the republican justification for doing the same thing. Instead of spending all our money on wasteful programs, republicans get the government out of the economy by repealing all the regulations that keep your job in the US and protect your wage, benefits and work conditions. Executive pay has skyrocketed in the last twenty years specifically because of this. Whatever they're arguments about the need to cut back because of globalization and the internet and a more competitive economy, the end result is a wealth re-distribution to the rich and a move toward a robber-baron/sweatshop world economy which is not healthy at all. Regulations are exactly what prevented this from happening since the previous round of robber-barons and its exactly what is needed now. Total free-market is not going to take care of this.

Another thing JSB Morse gets wrong is the recent economic crash. He says it doesn't have very much to do with "poor banking decisions" and everything to do with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. But that is wrong too. The disaster with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac was compounded many-fold specifically because of these poor banking decisions. And what's more it was poor banking decisions made possible by republicans repealing all the regulations that were put into place by FDR specifically to prevent another Great Depression. The crash of 2008-2009 and the crash of 1929 were remarkably similar. They were made possible by something called leveraging, which allows Wall Street and investors to get very rich quickly and initially looks like it creates spectacular economic growth (which is why republicans were lobbied to support it). But the whole concept basically creates money out of thin air. It is a house of cards and extremely unstable. I have a hard time explaining how this works (its quite complex) so I'll refer you to the book I read about it... Nomi Prins "It Takes A Pillage". The money involved in these screw-ups were not in the hundreds of billions range (as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were) but tens of trillions because the investment banks were leveraging these mortgages many times over and multiplying their value. When the housing market tanked, so did all these investments based on mortgages. This affected all the companies that invested in this and so the entire economy tanked. President Obama received tons of campaign contributions from these investment banks so his response to the housing crisis was to shovel somewhere around a trillion dollars from the federal government and many more trillions from the Federal Reserve to investment banks to ensure their survival and say it was "helping homeowners" which was a total lie. He did this with no strings attached and so they're doing the exact same thing now as they were before the crisis.

I hate our government. I'm happy there's books out to take advantage of it.

Unless you live a sheltered existence, this book will not enlighten you to anything useful that you did not know. The advice on your home mortgage is useless, it basically says it may or may not be a good idea to get or keep a mortgage. The one piece of information that could possibly be of value is the idea to form your own non-profit and apply for a government grant. Otherwise, he provides a pretty good overview of how and why our government has failed us and the resulting downturn that is about to be upon us.