Autumn 1992
American Finance
In Essence
Reviews of articles from periodicals and specialized journals here and abroad
. -Reading the LA. Riot
A Survey of Recent Articles
The fires were still smoldering in South-Central Los Angeles last May when the debate about the riot's underlying causes commenced. At the root of the burning and killing and looting of April 29-May 3, 1992, the Bush administration maintained, were the failed Great Society pro- grams of the 1960s. On the contrary, asserts writer Mike Davis in the Nation (June...
Theodore J. Lowi, in The New York Times Magazine (Aug. 23, 1992), 229 W. 43rd St., New York,
N.Y. 10036.
When Ross Perot suddenly called off his ex- traordinary independent presidential campaign last July, his many followers were angry and disappointed. Yet the feisty Texas billionaire, asserts Lowi, a Cornell political scientist, still performed a great national service: His cam- paign (which at this writing may yet be revived) "removed all doubt about the viability of a broad-based third...
Theodore J. Lowi, in The New York Times Magazine (Aug. 23, 1992), 229 W. 43rd St., New York,
N.Y. 10036.
When Ross Perot suddenly called off his ex- traordinary independent presidential campaign last July, his many followers were angry and disappointed. Yet the feisty Texas billionaire, asserts Lowi, a Cornell political scientist, still performed a great national service: His cam- paign (which at this writing may yet be revived) "removed all doubt about the viability of a broad-based third...
IODICALS
political scientist.
Johnson was at times "a difficult boss," Bar- rett acknowledges. Indeed, according to for- mer White House Press Secretary George Reedy, LBJ was a "miserable" human being- "a bully,-sadist, lout, and egotist." Nevertheless, Barrett- says, Johnson eagerly sought out "an impressive array of advisers" who were not overly deferential. And he cloaked the advisory process in secrecy not just to satisfy the desires of his own psyche...
Charles R. Shrader, in Parameters (Autumn 1992), U.S. Army War College, Carlisle 'Friendly Fire' Barracks, Carlisle, Pa. 17013-5050.
Ofa total of 467 U.S. battle casualties in the Persian Gulf War, nearly one-fourth were caused "friendly fire." Thirty-five U.S. sol- diers were killed by U.S. weapons, and 72 were wounded. While there have been "friendly fire" casualties in all wars, modern weapons have made such losses more likely, according to Shrader, a military historian and...
William Pfaff, in The
Ethnic Nations
New Yorker (Aug. 10, 1992), 20 West 43rd St., New York, N.Y. 10036.
The brutal Serbian exercise in "ethnic cleans- rope and the former Soviet Union since the col- ing" in what was Yugoslavia is only the most lapse of communism. At the root of these con- extreme manifestation of the ethnic conflicts flicts, historian-journalist Pfaff argues, is a that have broken out throughout Eastern Eu- concept of nationality radically different from
WQ AUTUMN 1...
definition from the Western nation. But in eastern-central and Balkan Europe, Pfaff observes, nationality is based on ethnic or religious background; it cannot be acquired immigrants or other "outsiders." People who belong to "other" eth- nic groups cannot be deemed fully equal. Since "the frontiers between national groups are of- ten indistinct or arbitrary, with groups of differ- ent ethnic nationality intermingled," the result has been discrimination against minorities...
spe- cial interests rather than strategic intent." Which'special interests and favored constituen- cies are in the driver's seat will depend on which party is in power.
Any Republican industrial policy, Phillips maintains, "is likely to be 'half-baked1-grudg- ing, halfhearted, flawed by huge gaps, and bi- ased toward investors and financial markets." Any Democratic policy is bound to be "'over- done'-bureaucratic, out of touch with the dy- namics of business in a global economy,...
lowering wages." sion making, and stepping up training What they should be doing instead, Hoerr as- programs." With the permanent-replacement serts, is "improving productivity reorganiz- strategy, Hoerr maintains, U.S. business may ing work, giving workers more voice in deci- well be shooting itself in the foot.
Discount "Sam Walton and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.: A Study in Modem Southern Entrepreneurship" by Sandra S. Vance and Roy V.Destruction? Scott, in The Journal of Southern...
lowering wages." sion making, and stepping up training What they should be doing instead, Hoerr as- programs." With the permanent-replacement serts, is "improving productivity reorganiz- strategy, Hoerr maintains, U.S. business may ing work, giving workers more voice in deci- well be shooting itself in the foot.
Discount "Sam Walton and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.: A Study in Modem Southern Entrepreneurship" by Sandra S. Vance and Roy V.Destruction? Scott, in The Journal of Southern...
Elliott J. Gom, in Media Studies Journal (Win-Trash Jouma~ism ter 19921, Columbia Univ., 2950 Broadway, New York, N.Y.
10027.
Before the National Enquirer and tabloid televi- sion, before the New York Post and other scan- dal sheets, there was a lurid and extremely pop- ular publication the name of the National Police Gazette. "Murder and Suicide: A Gush of Gore and Shattering Brains All Around the Ho- rizon" was just one of its regular columns. Un- der the direction of Richard Kyle...
the 1890s, many of
them were packaging the news
"as a series of melodramas and
atrocities, of titillating events
covered as spectacles, com-
plete with illustrations."
Fox had sensed the enor-
mous potential audience
among the wage earners of the
Gilded Age. To workers seek-
ing escape from dull jobs-or
just relief from the Victorian
ethos-his G...
Steven
The Limits
Forde, in The Journal of Politics (May 1992), Dept. of Political Of Realism Science, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, La. 70803.
~urin~
the last half-century, through the work of Hans J. Morgenthau, George F. Kennan, Reinhold Niebuhr, and others, realism-i.e. skepticism about the applicability of ethical standards to international politics-has be-come a leading school of thought on interna- tional relations. Today, the realist mantle is claimed both "neoisolationist" liber...
Steven
The Limits
Forde, in The Journal of Politics (May 1992), Dept. of Political Of Realism Science, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, La. 70803.
~urin~
the last half-century, through the work of Hans J. Morgenthau, George F. Kennan, Reinhold Niebuhr, and others, realism-i.e. skepticism about the applicability of ethical standards to international politics-has be-come a leading school of thought on interna- tional relations. Today, the realist mantle is claimed both "neoisolationist" liber...
Rome, blacks in some parishes cele- brate mass with gospel choirs and practice bap- tism immersion.
Yet, discontent simmers. Some black Catho- lics favor a new canonical rite for themselves, a separate denomination within the Catholic Church with its own liturgy, canon law, and clergy. The rite, if approved by Rome, would make the African-American denomination the second-largest black church in the United States, after the Baptists.
But many black Catholics are wary. There is concern, says Elie,...
yield "a conclu-sion based on a much larger sample than any single study." In this way, he contends, the weaknesses of individual stud- ies often will be exposed, and patterns sometimes will appear that were invisible to the origi- nal investigators. "Virtually all studies have flaws or biases," Olkin says, "and it may well be that the only way to ascertain the truth is to search for pat- terns in an aggregate of stud- ies." Call it the Oat Bran Rule.
Global Warming-Just...
the scientific evidence." It will take years, perhaps a decade or more, before a definite climatic trend can be established with satellite data.
In the view of many scientists and most agri- cultural specialists, greenhouse warming may well be beneficial if it occurs, since crops need both warmth and carbon dioxide to flourish. Global warming would be especially welcome if, as some scientists expect, the current inter- glacial period, which began about 11,000 years ago, comes to an end relatively...
the scientific evidence." It will take years, perhaps a decade or more, before a definite climatic trend can be established with satellite data.
In the view of many scientists and most agri- cultural specialists, greenhouse warming may well be beneficial if it occurs, since crops need both warmth and carbon dioxide to flourish. Global warming would be especially welcome if, as some scientists expect, the current inter- glacial period, which began about 11,000 years ago, comes to an end relatively...
only 1.5 per- cent annually in 1985-90, compared with al- most seven percent in 1975-85.
Companies now confront a changed eco-nomic environment. "Tax policies, demands for quick financial returns and takeover threats have discouraged long-term strategies based on investing in research," Corcoran explains.
But if corporate R&D has fallen on hard times, it is partly because of its own past (eco- nomic) performance. Fewer than half the com- panies that gave birth to an important inven-...
stand-up singers [who played no instruments]. Most of the big bands of the 1930s and '40s had folded, and instru- mental jazz,which achieved a cer- tain amount of general popularity during the swing era, lost much of its commercial appeal with the rise of bebop." Cole, Teachout says, chose to move with the times. In the fall of 1951, he quit playing jazz altogether and became a full-time singer. With songs like "Unforgettable," "Mona Lisa," and "Too Young," he...
IODICALS
academic career. He was, Rubin writes, "a man in full emotional recoil from democracy, the middle class, religious latitudinarianism, and the cramp of the flesh. His adopted English identity became a badge of virtue to signify his emaricipation from vulgarity." And his poetry was a way for him to assert "an intensely per- sonal appetite for suffering, an agonizing fear of sexual appetite, and a shrinking from carnality, along with a desperate need for religious cer- tainty...
Giuseppe Sacco, in The Wasking-
The End of the
ton Quarterly (Summer 1992), Ctr. for Strategic and Interna-
Italian Republic tional Studies, 1800 K St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006; "A Second Italian Republic?" Angelo Codevilla, in Foreign Af-fairs (Summer 1992), 58 East 68th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
In Italy, which has had 51 governments since entist Giuseppe Sacco and Hoover Institution the end of World War 11, talk of a governmental Senior Research Fellow Angelo Codevilla &qu...
party bosses. For nearly a half-century, Codevilla observes, "cabinets have risen and fallen, policy has lurched left or right, careers and fortunes have been made and lost, strictly deals made among factional potentates. The voters have been spectators." Now, however, that seems to be changing.
On May 9, 1991, then-President Francesco Cossiga, a Christian Democrat who urged peo- ple not to fear the term second republic, de-clared that the government had become a "cosa nostra"...
the increased re- luctance of the International Monetary Fund and other foreign creditors to keep bailing out the economically troubled government.
"The message of the Zambian transition that has come through most loudly and clearly," Jo- seph writes, "is that Africa is ready for multi- party democracy." If Zambia's experiment in democracy is successful, many other African nations may be induced to follow its example.
Japan's Elusive "The Economic Sources of Japan's Foreign...
Book Reviews
BRITONS: Forging the Nation 1707-1837
By Linda Colley.
Yale. 375 pp. $35
FUNDAMENTALISMS OBSERVED
Edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby.
Univ.of Chicago. 872 pp. $40
DISMANTLING THE COLD WAR ECONOMY
By Ann Markusen and Joel Yudken.
Basic.314 pp. $25
By Mickey Kaus.
Basic. 271 pp. $25
By Kwame Anthony Appiah.
Oxford. 225 pp. $29.95
By David F. Noble.
Knopf. 330 pp. $25
By Paul Boyer.
Harvard. 468 pp. $29.95
By Sudhir Kakar.
Univ. of Chicago. 83 pp. $15.95
By Didier Eribon. Trans. by Betsy Wing.
Harvard. 374 pp. $27.95
By Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly, Jr.
Basic. 376 pp. $24
By Edward 0. Wilson.
Harvard. 424 pp. $29.95
Essays
extension to manage, American business. That search, J. Bradford De Long argues, has been a hap- less departure from sound beginnings; Roy C. Smith, however, con- tends that it has helped to create a more competitive U.S. economy.
J. Bradford De Long
hey control the people
through the people's own
money," thundered future
Supreme Court Justice
Louis Brandeis in 1913.
Brandeis, then a Boston corporate lawyer and an adviser to Presi- dent Woodrow Wilson, was trying through a series of a...
arning ignored: This 1921 cartoon showed Wall Street operators fishing for suckers.
WQ AUTUMN 1992 16
A ican Finance
Michael Milken, the erstwhile junk-bond king who is now serving time in a federal prison, will likely go down in history as a symbol of the sins of the 1980sÃ?â??greed excess, and worse. Yet he also was the most significant figure in American corporate finance since J. P. Morgan. From Morgan's time to Milken's, financiers have sought the best way to finance, and b...
Roy C. Smith
he event will be long re-membered in the history of financial delirium. On the weekend of March 16, 1985, some 2,000 well- heeled "players" began de- scending on the Beverly Hills Hilton for the sixth annual Predators' Ball, sponsored by 38-year-old junk-bond impresario Michael Milken of Drexel Burnham Lambert. The assembled guests included oilman T. Boone Pickens and a growing list of other corporate "raiders," individual investors such as Saul Steinberg, and money...
agreeing to locate the new national capital far from the perfidious money men of New York City, on the banks of the "Potoumac." And there in the national capital, two centuries later, the thread might end in today's recrimina- tions over the treatment of the "moneyed inter- ests" in the savings-and-loan crisis and other af- fairs. Between these two points the narrative would wind through the battles over the first and second national banks, the memorable as- sault on the "cross...
. On the comer of La Huerta Road was a miniature Rhine castle with tarpaper turrets pierced for archers. Next to it was a highly colored shack with domes and minarets out of the Arabian Nights. Again he was charitable. Both houses were comic, but he didn't laugh. Their desire to startle was so eager and guileless. It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that are. But it is easy to sigh. Few things are sadder than the truly...
Despite being born under the banner of liberalism, the nations of Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina, have been plagued by authoritarian rulers, corruption, and economies dominated by privilege. If this is liberalism, it would have been unrecognizable to John Locke, Adam Smith, or James Madison. Today, as a resurgent faith in constitutional democracy and free markets sweeps the world, many Latin American leaders and intellectuals are trying to make their nations liberal in fact as well as in name. Tina Rosenberg argues that success is anything but assured.
Although G. K. Chesterton is among his compatriots. He would have one of the most quoted of been gratified by the remark of an ordinary early-20th-century English policeman who turned up at his funeral: writers, he has yet to find his "We'd all have been here if we could have fair share of late-20th-cen- got off duty. He was a grand man." tury English readers. During Since then, devoted Chestertonians his lifetime he was immensely popular, have continued reading him furiously. more popular...
Many a writer on technol- ogy has been struck in a
moment of pause be-
tween sentences or an
hour of distraction be-
tween paragraphs by the extraordinariness of ordinary things. The push-button telephone, the electronic cal- culator, and the very computer on which these words are being processed are among the more sophisticated things we use, and they awe into silence those of us who are not electrical engineers. By contrast, low- tech objects such as pins, thumb tacks, and paper clips a...
he study of history assumes
time and place, without
which a past event cannot be
understood. Both are neces-
sary, but are they sufficient?
The question arises because there are often inquiries that are clearly not couched, as the physical sciences are, in terms of timeless causes and effects but that we do not consider to be history-inquiries relating to geology, botany, and zoology, in which it is necessary to specify time and place. Such inquiries have indeed been sometimes described as...
