tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6928750119483134165.post-67934287175771159352007-08-28T16:02:00.000-05:002007-08-28T16:45:12.830-05:00Bill Bonner has long been a maverick observer of the financial and political world. In Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets, Bonner and freelance Journalist Lila Rajiva use literary economics to offer broader insights into mass behavior and its devastating effects on society.<br />Why is it, they ask, that perfectly sane and responsible individuals turn into an irrational mob? What makes them trust charlatans and demagogues who manipulate their worse instincts? Why do they abandon good sense, good behavior and good taste? Why is the road to hell paved with so many sterling intentions? Why is there a fool on every corner and knave in every public office?<br />Yale University assistant professor of Psychiatry, Bandy Xenobia Lee, says its time to apply narcissistic behavior not only to people but to nations. It is obvious that, in the world of economics, Americans' delusions of grandeur threaten to ruin them. And in politics, it's worse. Americans are risking their very souls with murderous wars. Lee notes that few nations could have afforded to live in the style to which Americans have become accustomed -- not even Americans themselves. Their paper money is backed by nothing; the economy doomed to slow down, stocks bound to fall and, victims of an excess of enthusiasm and shortage of capital investment.<br />Yet, most Americans do not doubt themselves. They cannot save a dime themselves, but they offer to save the entire planet based on the way they view the world.<br />Success has transformed a modest people whose greatest virtue was once minding their own business into a vainglorious race who mind everyone's business but their own. Discounted is the hard work of their fathers and grandfathers who went ahead of them. Dismissed are the virtues of thrift, sound money, limited government and collective modesty.<br />One day, historians will look back at our era and marvel at how George bush and Tony Blair determined to convert the Iraqis to democracy. To our descendants, it will look like a mad caprice; an act of remarkable faith or delusion, like missionaries showing the heathan the correct posture for copulation.<br />(see full review: The Daily Reckoning, Weekend Edition, 8/25-26/07)<br />--This book is currently available at Amazon.com--In Our Own Wayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828447794396962595noreply@blogger.com