False Economy - Alan Beattie [0]
A Surprising Economic History of the World
Alan Beattie
Riverhead Books
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
New York 2009
Riverhead Books
Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Egiinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Center, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2009 by Alan Beattie All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada The lines from Tony Harrison's The Blasphemers' Banquet are quoted from Collected Film Poetry (Faber & Faber, 2007).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beattie, Alan.
False economy / Alan Beattie.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59448-866-5 1.
Economic history. 2. Economics. I. Title.
HC51.B377 2009 2009005885
330.9—dc22
Book design by Meighan Cavanaugh
Reformatted for Kindle/Epub by Sayurjengkol (April 2011)
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Synopsis
Why do some economies and societies crash and burn, while others ore buffeted by storms and yet still recover?
Can we analyze the fates of countries in a way that will help us analyze the fault lines and successes that can make or break a civilization, a city, or a culture? In False Economy, Alan Reattie weaves together elements of economics, history, politics, and human stories, revealing that governments and countries make concrete choices that determine their destinies. He opens larger questions about the choices countries make, why they make them or are driven to make them, and what these choices can mean for the future of our global economy as we go forward into uncharted territory.
Economic historv involves forcing together disciplines that fall naturally in different directions, the universal explanation versus the individual narrative. But Beattie has written a lively and lucid book that engagingly and thought-provokingly marries the two disciplines and reveals their interdependence. Along the way, you'll discover why Africa doesn't grow cocaine, why our asparagus comes from Peru, why your keyboard spells QWERTY, and why giant pandas are living on borrowed time…
Beattie uses extraordinary stories of economic triumph and disaster to explain how some countries have gone wrong while others have gone right, and why it's so difficult to change course once you're on the path to ruin.
About the Author
Alan Beattie graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in history. After taking a master's degree in economics at Cambridge, he worked as an economist at the Bank of England and then joined the Financial Times in 1998. Currently the paper's world trade editor, he writes about economics, globalization, and development.