- ISBN13: 9781935071181
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
In this sophisticated yet readable book, Vox Day – one of the few economics writers to predict the current worldwide financial crisis – explains why it is likely to continue. Vox shows that the policies being pursued in Europe, Asia, and the United States are very similar to Japan’s failed policies of the past 20 years and, therefore, doomed to similar results. According to Vox, the economic theories behind those policies are flawed and account for why most economists were unable to anticipate the recession or see that their expectations of an imminent recovery are incorrect. Vox applies a different theory, the one he used to predict the current crisis, to show that the world is in the early stages of a massive economic contraction. Then he turns to the six scenarios presently envisioned by the world’s leading economists and assesses which is most likely to unfold. As the title suggests, Vox concludes that the most probable scenario is a Great Depression 2.0 that will be larger in scale and scope than that of the 1930s.
The Return of the Great Depression
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I will be brief. The book lost all credibility when the author starts preaching libertarian views and Austrian economics. He clearly has an agenda.
What made things worse for the author was when he stated the lie that Schiff, Faber and Shedlock were the only ones who predicted this. That is a complete lie. First, Schiff had no real detail in his predictions, that is why so many of his clients lost big.
Faber is more of an extremist than schiff.
And Shedlock isn’t even in this class of jugheads. He is a blogger who reads what experts write and calls the views his own.
America’s Financial Apocalypse: How to Profit from the Next Great DepressionThe man who really predicted the depression was Mike Stathis. he is neither an extremist, seller of securities or gold or a perpetual doomer so he has no agendas, unlike the others mentioned. And his book America’s Financial Apocalypse blows away Schiff’s hands down no comparison whatsoever. And his book was released before Schiffs. How can this author not know about Stathis? He did not do his research because he is too stuck on promoting his political beliefs.
check avaresearch . com You will learn much more there than anywhere else
Rating: 2 / 5
Vox Day believes that the worst of the 2008 recession is not over – it has just begun. In the Great Depression it was 1941 before the economy again reached its 1929 GDP, and 1954 before the stock market returned to prior levels. Day, however, primarily is drawn to analogies between Japan’s ‘lost decade (or two),’ and today. Prior to the beginning of that period Bank of Japan rates had been cut to levels about half those in the U.S. and U.K., and then were cut even more. The purpose was to counteract the doubling of the yen’s value from 1985 to 1988 per the Plaza Accord agreement with the U.S. (This might explain China’s reluctance to increase the value of its currency today, per U.S. urging.) Then, in 1990, the Japanese government limited real-estate loans and the Bank of Japan raised interest rates to pop their real estate bubble. The land price index for Japan’s six major urban centers was 351 in 1985, 105.1 in 1990, and back to 34.6 in 2000. In 2008, Japanese government debt was 2X its GDP, and nearly 25% of government spending went to debt service, and it ran a trade deficit in 2009 – the first since 1980. I included this material because it did seem relevant to the U.S. today, and does not suffer from major logic error.
Day continues, noting that the required bank reserve ratio in 12-2008 was 0.75%, and then blunders. “The reserve ratio means that for every dollar deposited in a bank . . . (the bank can) create as much as $133.33 in new loan money.” (pg. 40) “Therefore, the bank can expect to make $6.60 in profit for every dollar deposited.” Not even close – the ‘reserve ratio’ actually means that for every $1 deposited in a bank (assuming no other relevant regulations), it can create as much as $0.9925 in new loans, and at 6% interest, earn $0.0599 in annual interest at 6%. Oops! (His calculations on mortgage interest profits also appear to be substantially in error – will recheck early next week. A brief scan of Vox Day’s blog reveals the likely reason for accuracy problems – he tries to cover just about every topic under the sun.)
Then, despite making an error that even a proofreader should have caught, Day uses his flyleaf advertised Mensa mind to criticize a Nobel-winning economist (Paul Krugman) at length. while discoursing on the Austrian school of economics and whatever else suits Day’s purpose. On the other hand, I did like his quotation of Canadian economist Nouriel Roubini – that ‘the most unproductive form of capital is housing,’ an important point that I hadn’t recognized.
Then its back to Day’s thinking – this time serving up reasons this recession will become our second Great Depression. Day contends that ‘labor inefficiency’ (workers employed for less than 40 hours were preventing wages from readjusting and going down. This is a strange use of the concept of efficiency, is offered without documentation, and makes no obvious sense. Then Day notes we have a ‘shortage of war’ (a reference to WWII vs. the end of the Great Depression), and later also recommends removing our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. (?) Next he bemoans the ‘Waxman-Markey’ America Clean Energy and Security Act (2009) for its inclusion of wording that would ban imports under the Act from nations not undertaking comparable environment steps – alleging this is akin to the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of the 1930s prolonging the Great Depression. Seems like Day doesn’t realize either that the Waxman-Markey act has not been enacted, or that imports were such a small proportion of GDP during the onset of the Great Depression (0.8%) that their loss couldn’t possibly have had much impact; regardless, with a merchandise trade deficit averaging nearly $500 billion/year, a trade war might be just what the doctor ordered. Finally, he goes on to recommend cutting state and federal income taxes in half (alleging a 89.6% decline in corporate federal taxes in 2009 – extremely unlikely), and curtailing SEC regulatory powers because they failed to prevent the 2008 Great Recession. (Actually, they made it worse by increasing the leverage that banks could use; regardless, Day’s logic is not impressive.)
Mostly non-stop nonsense.
Rating: 1 / 5
Overall, Mr Day’s book is too detailed, verbose, and essentially reads too much like an
academic level text. Good points made at the end of his book could have been arrived at
in fewer pages. This book would do well in a graduate level econ. class.
Rating: 2 / 5
The author makes a good case for an upcoming depression of great magnitude. He spends a lot of time building the background for it and making it understandable. While that is well and good, the book does very little to help you plan for a depression or profit from it. While Harry Dent’s predictions have been delayed largely due to the unprecedented amount of government stimulus which skews everything, if you are looking for some ideas as to what you should actually do if the worst comes to pass, check out The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History [GRT DEPRESSION AHEAD -OS]
Rating: 3 / 5
The reviews already written for this book say exactly what needs to be said about the content. I just want to add that the Kindle version is currently $1.59, which is about the price of a 20oz soda. Needless to say, this was the best $1.59 I have spent since gas was less than a dollar a gallon.
Rating: 5 / 5