David M. Smick

With The World Is Curved, author David M. Smick explores the strange and terrifying interconnectedness of the modern day Globalized Economy and Financial System. As was indicated by the Subprime Mortgage Crisis, we can see that an event focused on the United States can cause ripples that effectively cripple the world economy. The title of the book comes from the idea that we can’t see over the horizon, we can’t effectively predict the future.

After the Great Recession, it was somewhat easy to say that it was stupid to pick up all of that bad debt, and then subsequently spread it all over the globe. The problem is that the future is difficult to predict. The biggest thing I can think of is Back to the Future Part II, the movie where Marty McFly goes to the future to 2015 and must deal with his kids being stupid. In the meantime, his boss is Japanese and everything is weird and 1980s futuristic. I mean, to its credit, the Cubs did eventually win the World Series again, but seventeen installments in the Jaws franchise? Please. Mr. Fusion would be amazing, but cold fusion created by the same company that made Mr. Coffee? I dunno.

So this book is a fascinating crash course in Macroeconomics. It discusses things that I hadn’t considered at all since I don’t really have money in other governments or large amounts of money at all for that matter. So it was interesting to see how the strengths and weaknesses of economies are measured by their imports and exports, their transparency in terms of information and so on.

This book was printed back in 2008 so the information is a bit dated, but on the other hand, it was really interesting to see where this was going with the whole crisis and loss of jobs and all of that. David M. Smick is a person that I have never heard of before, but he seems to know some things. I guess being on the job for so long will do that for you. I mean, he was in the business back in the 1987 Market Crash. This isn't to say that he isn't biased, but that hardly matters.… (more)