Digital Deflation : The Productivity Revolution and How It Will Ignite the Economy
Author: Graham Y. Tanaka, Graham Tanaka
List Price: $27.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0071376178
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade (22 August, 2003)
Sales Rank: 246,696
Average Customer Rating: 2.67 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
Insightful!
Imagine that companies throughout the economy had access to new, better technology every year, and made better products without raising prices - in fact, while cutting prices. Now imagine that the regulators and policymakers used outmoded measurements and models that ignored these quality improvements and this downward price trend. Imagine that the Federal Reserve saw a risk of rising prices even when prices were falling. Imagine that the Fed kept tightening the economy unnecessarily, sending interest rates up, slowing growth, inducing stock market crashes and recessions, and doing the opposite of what it should. If you can imagine all this, you have a picture of U.S. economic reality as seen by author Graham Tanaka. It's a picture no one, especially investors, should disregard. We found his book immensely interesting - too long by half, with too many repetitious references to his previous publications (perhaps just his way of saying, "I told you so"), often tendentious and labored, but not to be ignored. Just be cautioned: this sounds somewhat like the bubble speak we heard at the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000 - other times of strong growth without inflation.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Dow 30,000
Sadly, another book like Dow 20,000 attempting to justify the excessive valuations of equities in their portfolio. You'd think one would learn that there is no "new economy" after the last bubble where these technology buffs lost more then half of their assets (perhaps that doesn't mean too much to a portfolio manager, after all it's not their money they're losing), but hope is a good thing, it's just no substitute for research.Were steel, concrete, railroads, the transatlantic telegraph, aircraft, or electricity any less revolutionary when they appeared? Certainly not. It's just that those with a myopic view of history somehow believe that the era in which they occupy is "new". It may be recent, but it's not new.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Bloody Awful!
As an educator of finance I read scores of business book per year (fortunately most of them are provided to me free of charge from the publishers), but it is a rarity that one is so bad that I feel compelled to besmirch it. However I've wasted hours reading this rubble and am irritated that this "book" could make it to publication.How does Tanaka think that lowering the Fed Funds rate beyond 1% will help? It is a pity that a somewhat educated man has not read Daniel Leigh's "Monetary Policy and the Dangers of Deflation: Lessons from Japan". Additionally, it is a poor all round read and is probably the most redundant thing I've read since Cat in the Hat.
The only deflation I foresee, is the sales price as the publisher is left with piles of unread books. For environmental sake, I hope that if Tanaka ever feels compelled to write again, he will publish his work online and save some more worthy trees.
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