Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Ramo's starting point is that ideas and institutions are failing. Our global war on terror produces more terrorists, not less, efforts to prevent the financial crisis cause it to happen, efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons cause more nations to pursue their acquisition, nobody predicted the fall of the U.S.S.R., and efforts to produce peace in the Middle East actually bring less. Other points that motivated Ramo's thinking include China's amassing $2 trillion of U.S. debt while its workers earn about $7/day, Treasury Secretary Paulson's misreading the early stages of our recent near financial collapse, and the lack of progress on global warming. Ramo contends that these situations require new, complex thinking. Actually, they are much more easily addressed. Some are factually incorrect, and the rest more easily explained without Ramo. I am unaware of any substantive pre-2008 efforts to prevent the current financial crisis, let alone a causal link between their execution and the sub-prime mess. Nor is there any evidence that efforts to bring peace to the Middle East have made things worse, or efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons has encouraged more nations to pursue them (Bush 43's preemptive invasion of Iraq to "stop Saddam's WMD program" doesn't count because it was insane). More importantly, Ramo offers no such evidence - he just makes the conclusion. Lack of progress on global warming and the war on terror are easily explained by Bush '43 ignorance and/or malfeasance; Secretary Paulson's efforts to talk up the economy are simply part of his former job description (the market has a strong psychological component). Ramo correctly asserts that the U.S.S.R.'s collapse has not yet been explained, then offers one that is patently ridiculous - that those at and near the top preferred collapse because they would come out on top again! In other words, it's then-current leaders and to-be leaders supported the risk and chaos of revolution so they could enjoy stability! (Ramo didn't even bother to ask former Premier Gorbachev for his thoughts.) And finally, how did 1.3 billion Chinese end up holding $2 trillion of U.S. debt? With hard work and a 50% savings rate, combined with the U.S. myth that becoming the world's largest debtor nation while losing millions of jobs to Free Trade was good for the U.S. Bottom Line: Ramo's book is a hodge-podge of unanswered questions, factual errors, and total ignorance of the point of Occam's razor.