The American Phoenix: And Why China and Europe Will Struggle after the Coming Slump (repost)

Charles Dumas, “The American Phoenix: And Why China and Europe Will Struggle after the Coming Slump”
2011 | ISBN 10: 1846685648 | PDF | 224 pages | 3 MB

2012 will bring another global economic crisis. It could have been avoided if America and other deficit countries had embarked on currency devaluation and tighter domestic policy to sustain recovery and growth, boost exports and savings, while cutting excessive debts built up in the pre-crisis ‘gilded age’. But they didn’t. Instead they continued to run large government deficits, effectively transferring debt from private to public hands, rather than reducing it through rising national savings rates.

Savings-rich countries, notably China, have not helped. To get the global economy in better balance they needed to reduce exports by revaluing their currencies and encouraging domestic demand. Instead,the second, third and fourth largest economies in the world have continued to increase their net exports, thwarting recovery in the United States, Britain and southern Europe. This economic imbalance, say Dumas and Choyleva, is going to cause another global economic crunch.

And afterwards? Perhaps surprisingly, but with impeccable reasoning, Dumas and Choyleva go on to argue that America will emerge from the slump in the strongest shape, China will struggle unless it takes steps to tackle its structural problems, Eurozone countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece are in for a depressing decade, while Britain, because of its labour market and exchange rate flexibility, will be in better shape to emulate America’s recovery. These are precarious times. To understand and prepare for them, this book will be invaluable

Norman G. Finkelstein - Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End [Repost]

Norman G. Finkelstein – Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End
2012 | ISBN: 1935928775 | English | 472 pages | EPUB | 0.7 MB

Traditionally, American Jews have been broadly liberal in their political outlook; indeed African-Americans are the only ethnic group more likely to vote Democratic in US elections. Over the past half century, however, attitudes on one topic have stood in sharp contrast to this group’s generally progressive stance: support for Israel. Despite Israel’s record of militarism, illegal settlements and human rights violations, American Jews have, stretching back to the 1960s, remained largely steadfast supporters of the Jewish “homeland.” But, as Norman Finkelstein explains in an elegantly-argued and richly-textured new book, this is now beginning to change. Reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the United Nations, and books by commentators as prominent as President Jimmy Carter and as well-respected in the scholarly community as Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer and Peter Beinart, have increasingly pinpointed the fundamental illiberalism of the Israeli state. In the light of these exposes, the support of America Jews for Israel has begun to fray. This erosion has been particularly marked among younger members of the community. A 2010 Brandeis University poll found that only about one quarter of Jews aged under 40 today feel “very much” connected to Israel. In successive chapters that combine Finkelstein’s customary meticulous research with polemical brio, Knowing Too Much sets the work of defenders of Israel such as Jeffrey Goldberg, Michael Oren, Dennis Ross and Benny Morris against the historical record, showing their claims to be increasingly tendentious. As growing numbers of American Jews come to see the speciousness of the arguments behind such apologias and recognize Israel’s record as simply indefensible, Finkelstein points to the opening of new possibilities for political advancement in a region that for decades has been stuck fast in a gridlock of injustice and suffering.