Review: The World Is Curved By David Smick
Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy. Mortgage Crisis was Beginning
Dec 11, 2008
David Smick has an engaging style and has written an insightful series of anecdotes covering key events and players in the new global economy. As a recognised financial market strategist those anecdotes relate to world figures for example:
- Central bankers such as Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke
- Top executives and investors such as George Soros and Stanley Druckenmiller
- Political figures such as Bill Clinton, Bill Bradley and Larry Summers
Those anecdotes bring a clarity to events that Jean-Claude Trichet, president, European Central Bank described as “…makes transparent a number of factors behind booms and busts of today’s global finance”.
The World is Flat
The author starts by considering Thomas Friedman’s bestseller The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, which is considered by many as the seminal work on globalisation, in particular the global supply chain for goods and services. And then diverges by noting that in the financial world it is not flat but curved because nothing happens in a straight line, instead there is a continual series of discontinuities. These discontinuities create a cloud of uncertainty, which is a defining feature of the global financial world.
Anecdotes on the World Stage
The author has structured the book into nine chapters or anecdotes that relate to his perspective of some significant event or set of players. George Soros, Soros Fund Management, noted “David Smick’s probing insights in The World Is Curved stem from an extraordinary vantage point few observers can match”:
- The End of the World - great credit crisis of 2007-2008
- A Dangerous Ocean of Money – increased capital flows
- Entrepreneurs in a World of Private Equity – private equity and hedge funds, 1998 Long Term Capital Management crisis
- Tony Soprano Rides the Chinese Dragon – China
- Japanese Housewives Take the Commanding Heights – Japan, largest pool of private investable savings
- Noting Stays the Same: The 1992 Sterling Crisis – European Monetary crisis in 1992 and Sterling forced out of ERM [Exchange Rate Mechanism]
- The Incredible Shrinking Central Banks – Federal Reserve and policy making
- Class Warfare and the Politics of Globalisation – theory about politics of globalisation
- Surviving and Prospering in This Age of Volatility – reform today’s flawed financial architecture and revisiting the great credit crisis
About the Author
David M Smick advises some of the world’s most successful money managers through his investment and strategic consulting firm – Johnson Smick International Inc. He is also the founder and editor of The International Economy. He has advised both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates and has written for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy. The Mortgage Crisis Was Only the Beginning… by David M Smick. Marshall Cavendish 2008. ISBN: 978-0-462-09935-4
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