On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Biju Chacko <biju.cha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I rather enjoyed reading "The Ascent of Money" -- as a layman I found > it informative. I'd be interested to know which bits he got wrong. > Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a lot of material in this area > aimed at the general reader. > > I read the book a few months back enjoyed it as well. It was written in an easy language and at just the right level of detail I was willing to tolerate. However I was disappointed by how little of India featured in the book. Not a passing mention of coinage from the Indus Valley Civilization, either. But the guy has to leave out stuff and play to the american readership. So this can be overlooked. More recently I picked up another book - The Confessions of An Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins - a book cited by Ferguson when he talks about the idea of an American Economic Empire. A central theme of Perkins' book is a claim that American interests were served by targeting resource rich, or otherwise strategic, developing countries and luring the leaders into deals which would burden the countries with un-repayable debt. Two leaders who stood up to this pressure Omar Torrijos of Panama and Jamie Roldos of Ecuador; both died violent deaths, and Perkins claims was the handiwork of american agents. Now, what is relevant to this thread is not the actual case of Torrijos or whether the EHM theory is fact or conspiracy. What really irked me is how Ferguson dismissed Perkins by reeling off debt figures and US exports to these countries in 1990, and concluding that these figure are 'hardly worth killing for'. He completely misses Perkins point of how strategic the canal was in the larger scheme of things in Torrijos time, how Torrijos was cozying up with the Japanese with plans of a larger canal - touted to be the largest engineering work ever undertaken, and how Torrijos posed the threat of becoming an example for others around the world - all strategic reasons that Perkins talks about in his book, but are not captured in the 2 numbers Ferguson cites to reach his conclusion. Yes, this is only one small example, but for me, having read the source material cited here, the manner in which Ferguson has researched Perkins' thesis and presented to his readers does not inspire any confidence.
