The Great Deformation

The Corruption of Capitalism in America

A coruscating, brilliantly insightful exegesis of where capitalism went wrong, how it was corrupted, and how it might be restored, by outspoken former Reagan budget director and best-selling author David Stockman.

David Stockman was the architect of the Reagan Revolution that was meant to restore sound money principles to the United States government. It failed, derailed by politics, special interests, welfare, and warfare. In The Great Deformation, Stockman describes how the working of free markets and democracy has long been under threat in America and provides a surprising, nonpartisan catalog of the corrupters and defenders. His analysis overturns the assumptions of Keynesians and monetarists alike, showing how both liberal and neoconservative interference in markets has proved damaging and often dangerous. Over time, crony capitalism has made fools of us all, transforming Republican treasury secretaries into big-government interventionists and populist Democrat presidents into industry-wrecking internationalists. Today’s national debt stands at nearly $16 trillion. Divided equally among taxpayers, each of us is $52,000 in debt. This book explains how we got here—and why this warped crony capitalism has betrayed so many of our hopes and dreams.

©2013 David A. Stockman (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Stockman performs a real service when he debunks the myths that have been associated with Reagan’s conservatism and promotes Eisenhower’s fiscal and military conservatism…Stockman forcefully conveys enormous amounts of knowledge." ( Kirkus Reviews)

Loads of Information but problematic writing

This is an excellently supported book that goes into extraordinary detail of the US economy from the period leading up to the great depression to the present. This is not a quick or easy listen. The author may be an expert in economics but he is not an expert writer. The book is very long and filled with annoying mixed metaphors (that are sometimes so bad they are funny), cliches repeated ad nauseam, and jumps wildly between temporally distant causes and effects and from one subject to another. Thus I can’t say this was a pleasure of a listen. Nevertheless the author makes quite a few really excellent points. The author shows extreme political independence casting blame and praise regardless of party. The book is also quite a downer, filled with doom and gloom with almost no way out. This book is filled with facts and statistics that are key to understanding our economic past and future. I did not agree with everything the author proposes (the gold standard), but I was surprised by how much I found quite convincing. Clearly this tomb is not for everyone. This is more than a bit dry and detailed oriented, yet I found it a very rational alternative view of modern economics,

Essential truths revealed

This book is right up there with "Human Action," "Where the Right Went Wrong" and "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" in terms of taking complex subjects and explaining them in ways that reveal their essential truths.

I majored in economics but the macro side was never explained or taught to me in a way that made as much sense as does this book. Mr. Stockman has rendered a great service to both the contemporary audience and future generations in producing this singular work.

amazing summary of how the US went wrong.

This book is a must read for anyone concerned about the national debt, and the 1%.

Important but flawed

This is a difficult book to read for 2 reasons.
First, Stockman builds a solid narrative of successive short-sighted political decisions that led to terrible repercussions for democracy and the US economy. Starting with Roosevelt on through Obama, each president made choices that deformed normal economic mechanisms. His criticisms are not really partisan, as he bashes Nixon and Bush as much as Democrats. The examples he uses are numerous, devastating, and often mind-numbing in detail. The conclusions and predictions are very pessimistic.
The second reason the book is difficult is because Stockman is a really bad writer. Seemingly everything "grows like Topsy." Thousands of things are said that are "needless to say." Things "literally explode" that are not pyrotechnic. The countless cliches and a rather tedious sentence structure make the reading unpleasant. That a businessman like Stockman is not a prose stylist is not much of a fault, but why didn't the publisher have the book edited by someone fluent in English?

Great book - difficult listen

What did you like best about this story?

The book really opens your eyes to how corrupt Wall Street is and how the government supports crony capitalism. I have listened to David Stockman on the internet and he doesn't speak the way this book was written. It is almost like an editor or someone took David Stockman's real words and "spruced up" the language to make it seem more important. The problem is they went crazy with it. The editor should be ashamed to put such a good book into print like that.