Has anyone here read "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein?

[MarshalltheIrish]

I'm currently not book-buying, as I've got a few to finish (almost done with "The Trial of Henry Kissinger"!). However, with my burgeoning interest in economics and my determination to unravel the clusterfuck of financial failures of the last few decades, Klein's book seems like an ideal choice. The Frank Factor highlighted it in one of his videos and it sounds awesome, not to mention audacious in its historical references (Pinochet and Chile, Falklands War, etc.). What say you?

[RoyGBiv]

1. Yes ...

I'm going to offer what is a *very* unpopular opinion on DU. You'll find that pretty much everyone will recommend the book, as would I, just not for the same reasons.

If you have an interest in *economics*, you will not find any coherent information in that book on economics. Ms. Klein is an excellent journalist, but she is not an economist by any stretch of the imagination and even falters in her journalism in her treatment of Friedman's economic theories. That is, she doesn't appear to understand them. She condemns, just as many people who do understand his theories do, but her reasoning for doing so isn't sound on *economic* grounds.

Other than that, it's a fine book. It's one of those books I place in the category of "comes to the correct conclusion for all the wrong reasons." Not all of her reasoning is wrong, understand, but where she focuses on economics, she fails miserably.

[MarshalltheIrish]

3. Duly noted

And descriptions of the book that I've read would indicate something along those lines.

[skeptical cynic]

4. I would agree

I think Klein is right on track regarding U.S. imperialism and the economic forces behind the imperialism, and Friedman was certainly involved in some of the Chile stuff.

Someone did me the favor of recommending that I read Friedman's book equating capitalism and democracy before reading "The Shock Doctrine," and it helped me understand the references to Friedman better without taking away from Klein's book.

It could be argued that it wasn't Friedman's theories about market forces that were the problem, anymore than Darwinism is a problem, but what people used Friedman's principles to justify.

Also good by Klein: "No Logo."

A book is like a painting: Part what the artist puts in, part what the reader puts in.

[RoyGBiv]

5. Precisely ...

"It could be argued that it wasn't Friedman's theories about market forces that were the problem, anymore than Darwinism is a problem, but what people used Friedman's principles to justify."

I could not have expressed it better. Friedman's theories were an attempt to explain things. One can agree or disagree rationally. The problem is the purposes to which these theories have been put. I would be remiss in not mentioning that Friedman played no small part in those purposes (his arrogance was legendary), although he was in fact appalled by what took place in Chile.

I also agree with the _No Logo_ recommendation. I like it better than _Shock Doctrine_ actually.

[Lint Head]

6. The imperical fact is that Milton Friedman is a co conspirator

in murder. In 1975, two years after the coup, he met with Pinochet and laid out the concept of totally destroying the economy to rebuild it anew. This caused starvation and killing.

[RoyGBiv]

7. No, that is not an "imperical fact"

... whatever that is.

[patrice]

2. I read it last year and appreciated the facts and insight.

Jeff Sharlet's The Family is also quite a hair-raiser, describes the domestic religious tool for those Shock Doctors in Klein's book that gave them political backing at home.

[JDPriestly]

8. Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine is a fascinating book.

It surveys a historical pattern. It is more about how an economic theory was used to justify excessive greed and nearly destroy a number of societies than it is about economic theory. So if you are looking for a book on economic theory, Shock Doctrine is not your book. But if you are looking for a book that analyzes and connects the dots between certain of the most important economic developments in the past 50 years, Shock Doctrine is great.

[JitterbugPerfume]

9. I read it a while back--

IT was really well written


and scary as hell considering what is happening to US

[jtuck004]

10. It Takes A Pillage, by Nomi Prins - how Goldman Sachs (and others)

got our tax money, and continue to take the money, and continue to do the things that could lead to yet another financial crisis.

I thought you should know about it because of your "burgeoning interest in economics". Unlike Shock Doctrine it is not happening to people in a distant land. It is our tax money and it is happening right now. To us.

Amazing history of how a piece of the 13 Trillion dollar mortgage market was packed into derivatives which, using leverage, created over 140 Trillion dollars worth of debt. The vaporizing of that debt was what caused the financial crisis, btw - the people who could not pay the mortgages were just the first, and very small, domino of many. That 14 Trillion dollars could have purchased all the mortgages and reworked the ones that had potential and the "crisis" would have been averted, yet Goldman Sachs managers and previous employees who now work in the Government (Treasury) and quasi-government (Federal Reserve) worked together to shovel money into their coffers, leaving the mortgage market to tank.

One interesting fact is that even though the book ends, the money is still being shuffled into their coffers even as we speak.

But Shock Doctrine is very good as well.