Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream

Written by Nouriel Roubini and R. Christopher Whalen

Narrated by Jake Williams

Americans as a whole view themselves as reasonably prudent and sober people when it comes to matters of money, even though the choices we make at the ballot box and in Washington seem at odds with that self image. Yet Americans as a community also seem to believe that we are entitled to a lifestyle that is well-beyond our current income, a tendency that goes back to the earliest days of the United States. Inflated examines this apparent conflict and makes the argument that such a way of life is so instilled in us that to expect the US to live in a "deflated" world is simply unrealistic. The fact of the dollars role as the means of exchange for the entire world since the middle of the 20th Century and the short-term benefits for our trading partners of deficit spending in the US have encouraged Americas tendency to demand immediate gratification of national wants and needs. No program is too large, no need too great to go unfulfilled by Americas political class and funded by the global investor community, even as the competitive position of the US in many industries has waned. The gradual result of poor decisions taken today by our national leaders must inevitably be inflation, loss of economic opportunity, and a decline in the value of the dollar.  This book seeks to tell the story of inflation and public debt as enduring (and perhaps endearing) features of the American story, rather than something we can one day overcome. If our answer throughout history, from taming the frontier in the 1800s to fighting poverty in the 1970s, has been to print more money and go deeper into debt, why on earth would we think now is any different? Or that we could consider alternatives -- going back to the gold standard -- as real options? Featuring interviews with todays top leaders, like Paul Volcker and Ben Bernanke insiders, this book will offer a glimpse into the future of the FED and the role it will play in the coming years, as well as what the future holds for the value of the US dollar.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ascent Audio
• Release date: Jul 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781469084657

Reviews for Inflated

[miro_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is yet another recent and excellent book about politics and finance, in this case focusing on the American economy since the Civil War.Whalen shows in a detailed way how the the role of the American government has changed and the forces and events that have generated the change. The basic statistic is that the US has moved from government taking about 10% of GDP pre 1933 to 50%+ of GDP today. How did this happen?Its a very interesting question, and he illustrates the way in which America has moved from what Isaiah Berlin called the negative freedom of being able to fulfill projects without coercion to the positive freedom of the New Deal with for example Franklin Delano Roosevelt's declaration in 1941 of the right to "Freedom from want" and "Freedom from fear". Whalen rightly points out that these can be taken as statements of dependency which can only be realized in the context of a paternalistic welfare state.He shows that "Freedom from want and fear " has been a vastly expensive commitment for the US government along with the growing cost of US involvement in global conflicts. In the international context he sees key moments as being the post WW1 non-repayment of US war loans to Great Britain and France and post WW2, the cost of the Marshall Plan in rebuilding Europe. Unfortunately he doesn't consider what would have happened if the US had not been involved in these two conflicts. By common consent it was US intervention in both cases that ensured Allied victory and avoided the totalitarian domination of Europe by National Socialists or Communists (surely economically worse for the US).One of the most interesting features of the book is the way in which he shows that the US "Golden Age" of the 1950's and 1960's was actually a very unusual period which was in no way the American norm. The wartime destruction of European and Asian competitors, the preeminence of the dollar, US credit and the refinement of mass production gave the US a free run in the world economy, with tremendous economic growth managing to pay for the increased scale of government.He records how this period was falsely presented by Keynesian's as proof that deficit financing generated a virtuous circle of self financing growth, and that this illusion along with the explosive post-war increase in consumer credit laid the foundations for a dangerous permanent deficit while US international economic competitors reestablished their economies from the 1970's onwards (particularly Germany and Japan, and eventually China).The book is symptomatic of a new opinion that deficit financing only works 1) in a deep economic crisis such as the US of the 1930's, 2) to support wars of national survival, 3) to rebuild in times of great economic opportunity, e.g. post war reconstruction. Whalen sees the basic error of regarding deficit financing as an economic cure all that helps avoid difficult political choices. He quotes Jerry Flum, CEO of the Credit Risk Monitor, saying, "Every dollar of debt moves a future purchase into the present. As credit grows we spend more of it now. So if you look at debt versus gross domestic product, we are already at record levels. We can also look at incremental debt versus incremental gross domestic product. In the 1950's it took $1.50 in debt to produce $1 of GDP. Today it takes more than $6 in debt to produce $1 of GDP, so we are approaching the end of the game."Finally the author is an optimistic about the outcome but it will be interesting to see how the story plays out.