The Chastening: Inside the Crisis That Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the Imf
Author: Paul Blustein
List Price: $18.00
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ISBN: 1586481819
Publisher: PublicAffairs (13 May, 2003)
Sales Rank: 84,116
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Economics Doesn't Get More Exciting Than This
This is a highly readable account about a serious economic crisis that most Americans missed. But Blustein makes you care--and makes you understand why the so-called Committee to Save the World (Greenspan, Rubin and Summers) made some poor choices and only through sheer luck managed to escape with their reputations enhanced. Blustein's description of the International Monetary Fund is eye-opening, and he will make you think twice the next time you read a story buried in the business section about another IMF loan to a struggling country. Blustein knows his stuff and has done his homework. This is a rare book that teaches you something new--and makes you think.
Rating: 5 out of 5
An excellent book
As an economics professor, I'm always skeptical of books about economics written by journalists. Economics can be quite complicated, and far too often journalists without serious (graduate-level) training in economics show a remarkable lack of understanding of even basic economic issues. They pose as "experts" but they don't really know what they're talking about...So I was very pleasantly surprised when I picked up this book. Blustein does a really impressive job of examining in detail the crisis of 1997-1998 and the role of the IMF. The economics is impeccable and he explains it clearly. And he's tremendously effective at bringing to life the "drama" of the crisis and the very difficult decisions that policy-makers face during a crisis like this one.
I also appreciated the fact that, while being quite critical of the IMF, Blustein is also balanced in his assessment, and careful about avoiding gratuitous "IMF bashing" and about making it clear that there are a lot of very smart people at the IMF who work very hard to do their job well.
This is a great book for anybody who wants to gain a greater understanding of the international financial system and of the role of the IMF. Lively, accurate, never boring, it's one of the best non-technical books about an economic event that I've ever read.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Excellent Read on a Dry topic
Here's an amazingly well written book on an obtuse subject (the IMF and the economics of currencies) that tells a compelling story of the attempts to deal with the contagion crises in the late 90's. The book is very non-idelogical as it demonstrates the best efforts made by the IMF, World Bank, US Treasury & Fed, as well as the Central Banks of Europe and Japan to deal with the appearence of currency runs as they struck various developing nations.While the book is not hawking a political slant, it is very honest about the fact that the IMF's solutions were at best partly successful. It addresses the very real concern that attempts to bail out countries in crises is really bailing Wall Street investors who took foolish risks with taxpayer money.
For a subject that has little coverage outside of technical studies this is a very good book.
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