The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy » (Bargain)

David M. Smick is a global financial strategist who advices some of the world's most successful investors. He is one of the premier experts in identifying future economic and political trends and financial market developments. He is also the founder and editor of The International Economy, an acclaimed quarterly. He has served as an adviser to congressional leaders and presidential candidates and has written for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

David Smick keeps a low profile, but experts consider him one of the most insightful financial market strategists in the world. For more than two decades, he has conferred with central bankers and advised top Wall Street executives and investors.
The World Is Curved picks up where Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat left off, taking listeners on an insider’s tour through the private offices of central bankers, finance ministers, even prime ministers. Smick reveals how today’s risky environment came to be—and why the mortgage mess is a symptom of potentially far more devastating trouble. He wrestles with the two questions on everyone’s mind: How bad could things really get in today’s volatile economy? And what can we do about it?

The World Is Curved is the rare work that speaks simultaneously to the Wall Street, Washington, and London elite, yet its apt storytelling shows Main Street readers how to survive in these turbulent times.

“The World Is Curved is...essential...for those who wish to understand the workings, politics, and distresses of the global financial system...insightful and entertaining...” — Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board; author of The Age of Turbulence

“David Smick’s probing insights in The World Is Curved stem from an extraordinary vantage point few observers can match.”—George Soros, Soros Fund Management

Publishers Weekly

Confronting the ever-increasing challenges of globalism and the economic problems plaguing the U.S. from a downward spiraling value of the dollar to the subprime mortgage crisis, Smick argues again and again that the solution to the problem is deregulation and encouraging entrepreneurship. While he examines the U.S. in relation to other emerging and potentially powerful markets (China and India, in particular), Smick argues weakly against Thomas Friedman's more utopian or opportunistic points of view. Jim Bond delivers the book in an accessible and gentle tone. Smick's prose can be a bit inundating, but Bond balances speed with emphasis to keep listeners' attention. A Portfolio hardcover (reviewed online). (Sept.)

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1 The End of the World 9

2 A Dangerous Ocean of Money 36

3 Entrepreneurs in a World of Private Equity and Hedge Fund Troublemakers 68

4 Tony Soprano Rides the Chinese Dragon 93

5 Japanese Housewives Take the Commanding Heights 132

6 Nothing Stays the Same: The 1992 Sterling Crisis 159

7 The Incredible Shrinking Central Banks 188

8 Class Warfare and the Politics of Globalization 214

9 Surviving and Prospering in This Age of Volatility 242

Acknowledgments 277

A Word on Sources 281

Bibliography 285

Index 289