5 comments about Wages Of Crime: Black Markets, Illegal Finance, And The Underworld Economy.

1. R.T. Naylor has a better understanding of illicit markets, than most regulators have. He has obviously done extensive research, on the mechanics of money laundering for example, and knows the legitimate banking system, as well as the underground financial system. I suspect his thesis that organized crime is a myth, may be quite controversial. Nonetheless, he backs up his statements with convincing arguments. The only reason, I did not rate this book 5 stars, is that he slips in his political viewpoints, that are decidedly left of center. As an example, when speaking of Republican congressman Henry Hyde's attempt to reform how banks report questionable transactions to the government, he states, "And for a time, Representative Hyde shifted his energies to more pressing matters, leading the abortive move to impeach Bill Clinton-not because Clinton had gutted the social welfare system, capitulated to the medical establishment on health care, or committed mass murder in Iraq but because of his idiosyncratic taste in custom flavored cigars". (pp.277)These types of gratuitous statements, while rare in this book, take away some of the force of the dilemma most Western countries face in dealing with an underground economy. Still, this is an excellent book, that reads like a college textbook, with priceless insights on offshore banking, money laundering, the underworld gold economy, crime control, and other topics. I strongly suggest this book, as a social commentary of the black market and undergorund economy.



2. I really think this book gives a great inside in to the economics of ilegal activities.



3. This book on the black market makes a case for going back to views popular in the 1960s. In the 1960s, the black market was populated with cold-war spies and gun running free-booters. Since then, the popular press has painted the black market as a drug running paradise. Naylor tries to convince us this image is a lie. The real black market criminals are capitalist executives in the military-industrial complex. Defined in this manner, 'Wages of Crime' becomes a traditional left wing vehicle for brow beating those unwilling to genuflect before Marxist-Leninist dogma. This critique is not limited to attacks on the US political establishment. At one point Naylor laments that Gorbachev's generation 'forgot its ideological roots'. On another page, Naylor describes the proletarian interests in South East Asia.
   
   The reader won't find the standard pulp crime stories here, which is a blessing. Unfortunately, the book relies on rhetorical flourish rather than statistics. Thus, it simply substitutes one stereotype with a second.
   
   The text was pulled from independent articles, so the flow is sometimes uneven. For example, a chapter seeking to debunk the political might of heroin/cocaine dealers tries to convince the reader that drugs are of marginal economic importance. He complains that the published estimates of drug dealer wealth are too high by perhaps a factor of 100. In another chapter, rich drug dealers engage in crimes with military-industrial complex.



4. When I picked up Wages of Crime, I was hoping to find an objective presentation and debate on the the value of anti-money laundering policies and law enforcement trends. Instead, Naylor, without providing any evidence, reaches conclusions that suit only his own political agenda, which he pretty much makes clear throughout the book. His tone is wholly one sided and dismissive. It's perhaps a good thing that the author reverts to childlike plays on names and other amateurish techniques to support his arguments, for by doing so, he allows the reader to easily dismiss most of what he has to say. Examples of name calling include this sentence: "Hence, advised by neo-con artists crafting its foreign policy...". Neo-con artists. How clever. Or in this passage where he describes the many wonderful things he thinks Hizbullah has done, he includes: "rebuilding houses gratuitously destroyed by Israeli bombs and shells". This book is anything but a serious, unbiased study of the issues.
   
   If you do a Google on Naylor, the first link brings you to an interview where Naylor gets right down to business in the very first question. His answer tells you all you need to know about what you might read from Wages of Crime: "Al Queda itself does not exist, except in the fevered imaginations of neo-cons and Likudniks, some of whom, I suspect, also know it is a myth, but find it extremely useful as a bogeyman to spook the public and the politicians to acquiesce in otherwise unacceptable policy initiatives at home and abroad."



5. 
   
   Multi faceted and objective look at the underworld economy.
   Many statitistics and and overwhelming amount of detailed historical
   information. Some sources not sited in what could appear to be
   biased editorializations, but these observations are few and far in
   between. All in all a great overview.

No comments about Health Economics in Development (Health, Nutrition and Population Series).

2 comments about Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality.

1. The arguement that the past thirty years have resulted in a closing of the gap between whites and blacks seems untenable after reading this book. Using wealth instead of income as a measure of success and progress, Oliver and Shapiro argue that glaring inequalities still exist and may actually be growing. Moreover, since creating wealth is far more difficult when one has none to begin, the authors argue that such inequalities are sure to continue unless significant changes are made to the social safety net. These premises certainly call into question the notion of a vibrant black middle class.

   Overall, I found the book to be scholarly, yet accessible to those who don't hold a Ph.D. in research methodology. The information was nicely balanced; the interviews complemented the extensive survey data and everything was clearly presented. My only complaint is that the statistical information was not presented in the appendix with the tables. This would have been useful and meaningful to academics reading the book. That being said, the thesis is a profound one, and for all those with an interest in social equity and social policy this is a must-read.




2. This was very well written and had an abundant series of examples to support the authors' main point--with references to government documents, tables, graphs. Oliver and Shapiro can be extremely repetitive in restating their thesis, but, overall, the book was very eye-opening and perhaps a little depressing.
   
   You'd make it a point not invest the majority of your wealth in the home and car after reading this book.

1 comments about Laid Off, Laid Low: Political and Economic Consequences of Employment Insecurity (A Columbia / SSRC Book (Privatization of Risk)).

1. With the increasing focus on job [in]security as the economic crisis we're in worsens, this is a must-read book for all those interested and/or concerned. Professor Newman is an expert in the field and provides a tremendous amount of insight - all of it understandable for non-experts - into just what it means to have an insecure job and the implications it results in.

2 comments about The Oxford Picture Dictionary: English-Russian Edition (Oxford Picture Dictionary Program).

1. There are 168 pages of different scenarios pictured. Each item in the picture is tagged with a number. The numbers are listed on the bottom of the page with the English and Russian spelling. So, it helps if you already understand how to read Cyrillic letters.
   
   The only thing I'm not 100% sure about is the Geography listing on page 124 has an incorrect Russian Translation for South America. They listed it as Þæíàÿ Àôðèêà - South Africa. So I don't know if there are any other small mistakes like this since I haven't gone through the whole thing yet.
   
   Other than that, this is a good choice.



2. I'm an ESL teacher, and I've had two Russian-speaking students request this book. It's well laid out, and the illustrations are clear and colorful. I don't read Cyrillic, but the other reviewer mentioned a mis-translation; hopefully such errors are few. The book is very well made. In some cases, I felt that the English words were more European than American, but still understandable. Overall, a great tool for learning tons of English words on your own.

1 comments about Latin America and the World Economy since 1800 (David Rockefeller Center Series on Latin American Studies).

1. Coatsworth and Tayler have added a significant contribution to a field that have known, up to now, only individual monographies about the development of national economies in Latin America, not disregarding the excellent Victor Bulmer-Thomas "The Economic History of LA" or the more recent volume organized by Rosemary Thorp. The history of economic international relations of the Latin American countries and the region's insertion in the world economy is, of course, a chapter in the history of world capitalism, but we were still missing a comprehensive approach about the specific path of the economic modernization of the entire region, despite some general contributions, like Bradford Burns'"The Poverty of Progress" or the old books by Rippy and Platt. Now, the quest is (almost) over, at least from the point of view of "centric" economies. Coatsworth and Tayler add a new powerful academic tool for researchers and other people interested in better know how Latin America managed to become what Prebisch called "a periphery to the center". Perhaps the next significant evolution in this field would be to have a history of the economic insertion of Latin American countries in the world economy from the point of view of those countries. But, that is another story...

3 comments about The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality.

1. I bought this book for my Social Stratification class and found the information very compelling. However, the subject is presented in a very dry manner which makes the reading a bit difficult.



2. This book has a WEALTH of information on poverty and class structure in America. Any statistic you were looking for on the subject is probably in here. Additionally, the author addresses many of those 'tough' issues related to class: race, school inequality, welfare reform, etc.
   
   However, in the end, this book contains a lot of facts and figures, but not a lot of perspective. After reading this book, I was left asking myself: So what does it all mean? Where do we go from here? For me, the big picture was completely lost in all the little details.
   
   In conclusion, I think The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality can be a good reference book for compelling statistics related to poverty and inequality, but I don't suggest attempting to read it cover-to-cover.



3. This book is not one I would recommend reading cover to cover. The conclusion that ends each chapter is sufficient if you need to skim the book quickly.
   
   However, it is an excellent source of raw data on issues of social class and stratification. An excellent book for anyone interested in or who needs to write on issues of social class.
   
   For a less scholarly but easier and quite visceral read, I recommend Class Matters, a collection of New York Times articles on social class.

5 comments about Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants.

1. Chen and Wu are a voice for millions of farmers throughout China. Great insights into what life is like for the peasants and farmers in the countryside of China. It is hard to find many stories and reports about the hardships and persecutions which the farmers in China face and the political and economic system that they have to deal with. These are the people who make up the majority of China's population and yet you normally only hear about the urban areas and economic progress in China. As an American many of these incidents were hard for me to imagine happening within the last ten to fifteen years. I read this book while studying in China and when traveling in the countryside it gave me a better understanding of the places and people I encountered.



2. 
   John Pomfret writes in his introduction to this book that when he was in college in the late 1970s, professors taught that the Chinese Communist Party "truly represented the wishes of China's dispossessed" and one quoted Mao's saying that "A revolution is not a dinner party." Chinese reporters Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao document the plight of the peasants in their country, showing Pomfret and anyone else who dares to read their expose how corruption, excessive taxation, miscarriages of justice, too many layers of bureaucracy, and unchecked industrial pollution oppress and threaten the very existence of China's poorest.
   
   China is no worker's paradise. The rural population is basically an unprivileged underclass -- a class of serfs -- that the government squeezes mercilessly. Despite declarations from the top Chinese Communist rulers that peasants should not be pay more than 5% of their annual income in taxes, 19% is closer to the truth. For a subsistence population, such heavy taxation (often in the form of ill-defined, sometimes illegal, fees and fines) is more than they can bear. Yet, their appeals for relief to various levels of their government generally result only in the status quo retained.
   
   A sizable portion of the book relates journalistic investigations into specific several cases of murder of peasants by village or township officials. The petty officials became enraged to the point of doing or ordering bodily violence against peasants because the fed-up farmers were taking public steps to expose their (the officials') corruption.
   
   Then, the authors cite some of the recent policies of the Chinese central government that have increased the sufferings of the peasants. Examples include increasing the layers of local governance, commanding villages to invest in industrial enterprises that are not sustainable and that force them into mountains of debt, and permitting giant gobs of industrial pollutants to turn black rivers peasants must use for bathing and drinking water.
   
   "Will the Boat Sink the Water? The Life of China's Peasants" does feature portraits of good, conscientious officials who put the welfare of their villages or regions ahead of their own advancement. But the Chinese Communist system does not ordinarily promote such people. The Party is more interested in keeping the peasants in their place, and it promotes those officials who inflate the agricultural yields and other economic "successes" of their locality and who deliver their assessed taxes in full.
   
   This revealing look at China at the grassroots level should be read by everyone who has read glowing reports of the progressive, sweeping economic and social strides allegedly remaking the most populous nation on earth. There *is* a dinner party going on: the Chinese peasants are being feasted upon by their cadres, village heads, and Party watchdogs.
   
   This English translation of the book now banned in China is very highly recommended.



3. Forget the title, this is an interesting expose on the Chinese peasant. These 900 million people toil in the backwaters of rural China, and were instrumental in getting their country industrialized. They also helped the country sustain itself following the Great Leap Forward (or backward in reality) and the Cultural Revolution. These people spend countless hours in backbreaking labor only to have party cadres unfairly tax them beyond their means. This book by a husband and wife team examines stories about their home province and show the corruption of village and party administration. China may be a coming superpower, but it better solve these problems before the people throw the rascals out.
   
   I found this a very informative read. It starts out slow, but this is an intensely interesting book about the unfair lives led by millions of Chinese peasants and the people that are supposed to protect them-the party and village government hacks.



4. This is not a fun book to read, it is bloody, sad, lawless, power vs non power, poor is poor. most of people think China is developing so fast in recent years, but people don't realize that they are still about 800 million people live in rural area in China, they are still struggle with their daily life, and voiceless.



5. Will the Boat Sink the Water? is a series of stories that show the problems of peasant life in the villages and farming counties. The farmers are held down by unchecked greed among the village leaders, heavy taxes demanded by the layers of government, barriers between them and those who could help them in the National Government. The book gives you a vivid picture about how helpless the 900 million people are under the crushing weight of Communist China. They live the same as they did before the Revolution and, in some way, their life is worse. Millions are out of work, millions pour into the cities but don't have the proper papers or the contacts needed to get good jobs.
   The rural poor make up most of China and yet rarely do they have a voice in either the government or in the press.
   Has a time line of important events, with a focus on those important to the peasants, and an introduction by John Pomfret, author of Chinese Lessons. A must for anybody interested in Asia or in China.

1 comments about States, Ideologies, and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of Iran, Nicaragua, and the Philippines.

1. Parsa, with whom I studied at Dartmouth, being in the first courses on Revolutions using his book, presents a compelling analysis of the three revolutions. The failure of his book is to properly engage, aside from a brief note in his introduction, the history of revolution theory.

   And the further failure is that he only showed videos in the classroom, vaguely, if ever, "teaching."

5 comments about The Ancient Economy (Sather Classical Lectures , No 43).

1. Finlay is a good translator and editor (see Penguin's "Greek Historians"). The function of sensibly abbreviating long and important works down to a readable volume is an honorable and extemely useful function in its own right (see also Saunder's abridgement of Gibbon's first volume and Gaster's abridgement of "The New Golden Bough"). Such abridgements give both to students and to those of us who have little time to spare for reading unfiltered through "The World's Great Books" a taste of such books and hence of the minds of the great authors who wrote them.

   However, Finlay's as author is not as satisfying.

   The foreword to Finlay's book is good. It puts Finlay's contribution into a larger context and, in particular, pointing out Max Weber's influence on Finlay.

   Max Weber noticed that most people are mainly interested in social prestige, not the means thereto, and, more specifically, that the modern means to prestige is not the traditional (ie., ancient) means thereto.

   As a result of the foreward, I immediately ordered Weber's ostensible masterwork "Die Protestantische Ethik und der 'Geist des Kapitalismus'" (written 1904 with revision 1920).

   Finlay himself does not explicity appear to recognise his debt to Weber. He refers to Weber's contemporaries (Rostovtzeff & co.).

   As the author points out, very little was probably ever written in ancient times - and much less has been delivered down to us through the passage of time - regarding "economic" matters, the writing and reading public being consituted essentially by well-born persons with private incomes, who were generally interested in the (for them) more appropriate topics of poetry, rhetoric, religion, philosophy and heroic military exploits.

   Hence research on this subject is difficult.

   Also, the book is rather tedious and the amount of repitition and ampflication on essentially obvious points gets a bit monotonous.

   Having said that, the whole subject matter was interesting, and the pointers to other authors useful.

   The economic model which is developed is typical social sciences stuff: simplest ideas expressed cryptically as pseudo-mathematical charts. One can overlook this.

   At the end of the day, the most worthwhile knowledge which I gained from Finlay's work was the knowledge that there was a Roman writer called Vitruvius who wrote a work on Architecture at around the time of Christ which remained the standard work on that subject for at least 1,500 years.

   In the meantime I have read Vitruvius and found him to be both useful and entertaining.

   Now I'll read Max Weber.




2. Finley in "The Ancient Economy," presents an informed argument against the notion that ancient civilizations exhibited "modern" market behavior in the style described by Erich Roll as "an enormous conglomeration of interdependent markets." M. Rostovtzeff's notion that trade of manufactured goods was active and important in classical economies is successfully challenged, and the reader is given an interesting peek into the process by which free, landed peoples gradually replaced slave labor in the hinterlands laying the foundation for medieval serfdom. This is an excellent (and concise!!!) introduction to the economic structure of the classical world both describing the various class structures and how each class in general viewed the economic notions of land, capital, trade, and accumulation. I definitely recommend this book to any student of economic history.



3. The author of this book, M.I. Finley, is a giant in the field of ancient history. The introduction paints a pretty impressive picture of the man. He graduated from college with an M.A. at the age of 17, an amazing feat for us wannabe intellectuals. His M.A. was in public law, not exactly the usual prerequisite for an amazing career in history. Finley's positions on the ancient world were based on the works of Max Weber; the sociologist who posited that status played a big role in society. In this book, Finley tries to prove that the ancient economy was largely a byproduct of status. In other words, economic systems were not interdependent; they were embedded in status positions.

   Finley first examines status and statistics. What constituted status in the ancient world? For one thing, class and status were independent. A person could be of low class, but very high status. Pallas and Narcissus, the freedmen that served the emperor Claudius, come to mind here. Both were extremely high placed in society. They were rich beyond the dreams of avarice, but their class was lower than that of a senator. Finley's examination of statistics in ancient Rome is telling. In our world, it is inconceivable that the economy could be discussed without using stats. In Rome, this was not the case. Certainly, there were receipts of expenditures and interest rates on loans, but numbers just didn't hold the allure in Rome that they do today. The absence of guilds and interdependent markets, according to Finley, certainly has something to do with this. Most merchandise was locally made and consumed locally, or shipped directly to Rome. There was no need for corporations or massive transportation of goods (except grain shipments to Rome) between regions.

   Finley's discussions on slavery are certainly enlightening. Finley believes slavery was necessary to the Roman world because it reinforced status. The highest strata of society disdained work, so having a dependent class of workers was essential to watch over estates and manage businesses. One of the surprising insights Finley provides is in exploding the myth that slavery is inefficient. Finley shows that the large landowners had money to burn due to the labor of slaves, as did the plantation owners in the American South. I'm not so sure I agree with this argument. To the extent that slaves were profitable in Rome, it would seem that this had much to do with the Roman system of slavery. The Romans had a process called "Peculium" in which slaves were given seed money by their masters to start businesses. Slaves could keep some of the profits from this system and eventually buy their freedom, as well as learn a trade. This is an excellent incentive to work hard, thereby increasing profits to their owners. I don't think slaves in the Americas had the same incentives.

   Although the book is much more complex than the poor description I've given above, this review should provide ample initiative to read Finley. Even a beginner to Roman history could get much out of this book. Finley, despite some early hiccups, has a smooth writing style that is sympathetic to the newbie. Many a professional scholar has received inspiration from Finley. Highly Recommended.




4. Finley may be a great classical scholar, but his application of economic theory is flawed. Somebody should have taught him about money supply and velocity. Finley's major thesis is just wrong.



5. In regard to the view that Finley needs to pay more attentio to money supply and velocity i would suggest that the economies of ancient times were not as susceptible to changes in currency as our modern economy is. It seems strange that someone would give such a frugal review without further explanation. Having said that, I have only read what I could of hte book from this site but I'm sure that there are some valuable points to be taken from this authors views on the subject.