Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Author Packer believes it's uncertain when the unwinding of traditional ethics and norms, institutions, and large-scale manufacturing began, but certain it was underway soon after 1960. Lacking the security provided by these formerly reliable sources of fairness and support, Americans have had to improvise and plot their own successes. Packer primarily tells this story through the lives of several Americans - Dean Price, son of tobacco farmers who became an evangelist for a green economy in the South; Tammy Thomas, Rust Belt factory worker in decaying Youngstown, Ohio; Jeff Connaughton, thoughtful longtime Joe Biden staffer who tries to pass meaningful legislation to regulate Wall Street; and Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley venture capitalist billionaire who questions the real value of the Internet economy (technology isn't creating enough jobs or moving the needle in areas like transportation, health, or energy). Readers are also provided the story of Tampa, Florida and its recent financial problems, as well as short biographies of leading public figures (Sam Walton, Newt Gingrich, Robert Rubin, Andrew Breitbart, Colin Powell, Jay-Z, Oprah Winfrey, Alice Waters, Raymond Carver, and Elizabeth Warren) during this time-period. What has replaced them, per Packer, is financial engineering, an environment of organized money in which six of Sam Walton's heirs now have as much money as the bottom 30% (94.5 million) of Americans, and the hollowing out of the heartland because it was good for corporate bottom-lines. His principal villain is the banking industry, which he contends has preyed on Americans lacking financial astuteness and restraint. Our American ideals involving fairness and opportunity for all have become undermined by unregulated capitalism. I was particularly struck by the story of Tammy Thomas, a young black woman brought up in extremely adverse circumstances (mother repeatedly jailed for drugs, check fraud, and aggravated robbery, father AWOL), with numerous friends lacking ambition to lift themselves out of generations on welfare, and her own newborn while still in high-school. Nonetheless, she graduated on time (first in her family), acquired an associates' degree (and two more children), and got off welfare with a $7.30/hour job in a factory making wiring harnesses for G.M. Unfortunately, Tammy not only picked the wrong parents, but also the wrong location and timing of her birth, as well as her brothers (on the front lines of a gang turf war over selling crack). When she was 11, Youngstown's largest steel mill shut down (9/23/77) with four days advance notice. From the 1920s until 1977, 25 uninterrupted miles of steel mils ran along the Mahoning River. Smaller factories had been closing throughout the 1970s, and a Harvard study found that even a billion in renovations wouldn't be enough to make the mills competitive. Over the next five years, every other major steel plant shut down. Between 1975 and 1985, 50,000 jobs left town, and probably the U.S. as well. The population fell by one-third, and in the late 1980s and 1990s, Youngstown became 'Murdertown.' (At least half her high-school classmates ended up dead, in jail, or on drugs.) Before getting laid off herself (jobs being shipped to Juarez), Tammy developed asthma from repeatedly dipping copper wires into molten lead) that sometimes required hospitalization, got carpal tunnel syndrome ('Packard hands') that prevented working sometimes for over a month) also became a layoff statistic after 19 years. However, rather than simply stay home and 'rot,' Tammy became a community organizer battling blight, while her daughters did not get pregnant, her son stayed out of the gangs, and they all graduated from high school and went on to college. Tammy went back to college as well, at age 40 she obtained a BA in sociology, with a minor in non-profit management. After paying taxes on her buyout money in 2007 (the one-third remaining would take a 40% cut - to $13.50/hour in Tammy's case), Tammy had $82,000 left (and no pension), spending part to help he mother and children and the rest into a CD paying 3%. A relative by marriage who had helped Tammy and her husband finance their house offered to invest her money in real estate, promising 10% annual return - Tammy gave him her last $48,000. By 2009 the housing market was sliding and the payments stopped coming. Tammy is currently running a statewide campaign to broaden health care for seniors, children, and the disabled in Ohio. Then there's Oprah, Tammy's counterpart who also grew up with the odds against her. Her 40 million viewers have things she doesn't - children, debts, and spare time, they consume the products she advertises but would never buy (Maybelline, Jenny Craig, IKEA), and she would thrill them by sometimes selecting one and wiping out her debts or buying her a house. But Oprah's magical thinking (vaccinations cause autism; positive thoughts lead to wealth, love and success) could be hard to swallow. And since there was no random suffering in life, Oprah left them with no excuses. Robert Rubin was Wall Street's 'wise man' for the Clinton administration, preaching the gospel of deregulation. He then garnered $126 million between 1999 and 2009 for his advice to Citigroup (Chairman of its Executive Committee), and when both Citigroup (lost $65billion) and the economy collapsed due to the lack of regulation he fomented, he makes no apology to anyone. Bottom-Line: 'The Unwinding' is not a fun read - nobody enjoys learning how hard-working, honest people became frustrated by the actions of others far above them in the economic strata; just as bad, is reading about how formerly vibrant communities became economic disaster zones. Nonetheless, Packer's work highlights a thesis we need to reconsider - that what's good for Wall Street must also be good for Main Street.