In The Federal Lawyer, the
monthly FBA publication, Jane Gravelle of the Congressional Research Service
has written a critique of my recent book on the financial crisis of 2007-08, Gambling with Borrowed Chips.
Here is a link to the review
section of The
Federal Lawyer for June. Gravelle’s review begins at p. 3 of that pdf. If you are reading this after that link has lapsed, try here instead.
As you will see at either site,
Gravelle had some kind words about my book as “readable and entertaining.” She
enjoyed the historical material, and appreciated my explanations of “a lot of
concepts and practices.” So if my book is ever re-issued with a dust jacket, we
may be able with judicious editing to mine this review for blurbs.
She spends most of her review
arguing with my book though: arguing in particular that my analysis of the
cause of the crisis, and my prescriptions for avoiding its like in the future,
are thoroughly misguided. Thus, she has my gratitude for giving me a wonderful
excuse for discussing that analysis and those prescriptions further, and I will
take advantage of the same in a series of posts you’ll be able to read right
here next week.
For now, though, I’ll limit
myself to an observation about the kind
of book this is. Gravelle writes, “Gambling
with Borrowed Chips is not a scholarly work, in that it has no references or
footnotes.”
Yes, it is true that I did
not use the usual scholarly apparatus of footnotes and bibliography. This isn’t
because I am unfamiliar or disrespectful of that apparatus. I have employed it
in earlier books, and may well employ it again if I give this particular
argument the fuller work-up I believe it deserves. Still … this book was but a précis
for some later complete scholarly study, and a précis that might indeed attract
readers who are put off my small-print notes and lengthy lists of references.
The text itself does contain
references to the works on which I depend, more-or-less explicit or allusive,
it is true. Barney Frank’s great whistling-past-the-graveyard quotation, "There’s
no immediate crisis,” may be found in The
Washington Post for September 7, 2008, for example, as my book clearly
indicates.
As to scholarly works, in my
chapter “Sound Money” I allude to the work of economic-historian Robert Higgs
on the unusual length of the Great Depression and the economic consequences of
the Second World War. I also cite no less of an authority than Ludwig von Mises
on the aftermath of the Bretton Woods monetary conference.
My own credentials are not
those of an academic economist (or economic historian). They are those of a reporter whose beat it
has been for many years now to cover the world of finance, first at HedgeWorld
(2000 to 2008) and more recently at The Hedge Fund Law Report and as the
proprietor of Enfield Editorial Service. I believe this has been as valuable a
perch whence to observe and learn as any other I could have occupied through
the key period.
That will do for the kind of
book, and the kind of author, involved. Next week, we shall get to the
substantive issues between Gravelle and your humble servant.
