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Why the West Rules-- for Now

the Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
Jul 07, 2018StarGladiator rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
Sorry, not too impressed with this - - although I was forewarned by the blurbs on the back from two individuals I consider farces, Jared Diamond and Niall Ferguson. This author/historian reminds me of Michio Kaku, who sounded like a complete and utter ignoramus during an interview when Kaku volunteered his opinion [which he believed to be entirely factual] that the global economic meltdown of 2007 - 2009 was a typical business cycle. The common fallacy of an academic who might know something in one field, believing that limited knowledge - - if even that - - to be easily transferable to each and every other field! This guy does know some history of several countries, but perhaps not enough to make such sweeping statements as he does, and he does get some stuff wrong. His belief that China held US debt for a long period is again factually incorrect - - firstly, China was NEVER the single largest holder of US debt, instead, but for a limited period, China WAS the foreign country holder of the single block of US debt [today it is Japan, who is also the number two foreign investor in America, after the UK], and his conclusions he arrives at in the final chapter therefore aren't based upon solid data. Reminds me of the other night, when that pervy-voiced dude on NPR's Marketplace, Kyle Ryssdal, suggested that China is important to the USA because Chinese foreign national students spend billions in America [like to see the data to support that] - - whether true or not, trillions of dollars worth of intellectual property theft is also the responsibility of China - - and a trillion is a far greater number than a billion! The author's understanding of finance, financial history and economics is too sorely lacking for such pronouncements he makes. [And I sincerely wish all those supposed scholars and pseudo-scholars to stop mentioning Kurzweil as if he's some sort of genius - - and ditto for C. Wright Mills, who NEVER, EVER mentions the most important study of his time, the TNEC Committee study, and never covers the important stuff which a real scholar, Ferdinand Lundberg, covered!] If these so-called historians [or fake newsies] ever related real history and news, they would mention that along with Nixon and Kissinger, aboard Air Force One to China on those trips, went banker David Rockefeller, who within the year would establish banking operations in Beijing. I don't know whether the thick-headed Nixon was being played by Rockefeller, or he was aware of his agenda, but the Rockefellers have manipulated quite an array of presidents, including Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, the Bushes, and Clinton --- they failed miserably with President Kennedy, and we saw what happened to him in Dallas!