Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity

Contours of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity

The economic boom of the 1990s--low unemployment and inflation, a soaring stock market, big government surpluses--was actually something of a bust, according to this incisive study. Pollin, an ... Leer comentario completo

I have something of a review/preview at my blather-site, http://www.inkywretch.com.
I recommend reading this--particularly to get straight what ridiculous labels "liberal" and "conservative" and "neoliberal" and "neoconservative" are.
Seems they're almost always misused--and are taken to mean exactly the opposite of what they're generally supposed to mean.
And, as old habits don't hardly die at all, there are typos on:
pgs:
16 minimimiizing and aquisitiveness (should be minimizing and acquisitiveness)
31 "the 1994-45 Mexico and 1997-98" should be 1994-95 Mexico...
41 "But the 3.7 percent rate..." should it be 3.6% rate? 3.7 d/n make sense
52 "models ... that ... incorporates..." Should be models that incorporate--but it's a tortured sentence and very hard to figure out whether the antecedent is "hunch" or "models," as it seems to be.
80 A prior reader caught this one--mislabeled X axis on bar-chart. 1st entry is 2001.1, 2nd, 3rd and 4th read "2000.2, 2000.3, 2000.4" for "quarterly GDp growth during 2001 (shd be 2001.2, etc.)
84 "injected some modicum of sanity amid the rampaging herds"? Waaay awkward. "some" and "modicum" are redundant. Shd be "a modicum" or "some tiny amount". As to "injecting" any single member of a "rampaging herd," hmmm. You'd likely get a bent needle for your trouble.
But there's a totally, totally great J.K. Galbraith quote on the topic of undiscovered monetary malfeasance: "At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement. This inventory -- it should perhaps be called the bezzle -- amounts at any moment to many millions of dollars. ... In good times people are relaxed, trusting and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always people who need more. Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and bezzle increases rapidly. In depression all of this is reversed." What a sardonic kicker!
88 "...expect private investors to themselves return the economy to high-growth path." Shd be either "A high-growth path" or "high-growth pathS"
108 "...both the virtues and dangers with federal deficits." I'd go with "dangers OF federal deficits". can't remember if it's a transitive/intransitive thing, or just my idiom needle twitching.
136 "The poverty figures discussed earlier for the US combines both factors." Shd be "combine"--no plural. Poverty figures...combine. Or perhaps it's "poverty figure...combines. But there are plural figures.
141 "...many of the pesticides were spurious, so much so that there were numerous cases of peasants who attempted suicide by drinking pesticide, but still survived." I'd prefer "adulterated" or maybe even counterfeit instead of "spurious." And in the phrase "pesticide, but still survived." "still" is redundant.
181 a) "left to their own devises..." Archaic, OK, but not consistent w/ author's style. I'd go with "devices" b). "Because the contemporary regulatory system has become so complex and nimble in its capacity to circumvent regulations, ..." I don't think the author means to say that the "regulatory system circumvents regulations," but, rather, that either "the financial system has become so complex that the players in the "financial sector" have become so nimble that they can circumvent regulation". Or perhaps that "the regulatory system has become so complex that even the most muscle-bound bull could nimbly step through them without leaving a hoof print. Or something that doesn't have regulations circumventing regulations. Or I just don't get it.