Steven Poole in the Grauniad Likes "The End of Influence"
This is nice to see. We are flattered. "Terse" and "chewy" are good--alas, "slightly repetitive" is not (sniff):
Et cetera: Steven Poole's non-fiction choice: The End of Influence, by Stephen S Cohen & J Bradford Delong (Basic Books, £12.99). After the end of the second world war, America had "all the money", and became the global hegemon. Now the money is slipping away, and will take with it the country's political and cultural "soft power". So argues this terse, chewy, and slightly repetitive book by two economists, who discuss the uncomfortable symbiosis entailed by China's vast dollar holdings (Americans bought houses "with money borrowed, ultimately, from China"), the growth in "sovereign wealth funds" (governments will be obliged to "exercise due control over management" in foreign companies), and the contradictions that were always inherent in "the neoliberal dream". Lucid explanations are offered of trade deficits, currency fluctuations, and the like, and the cause of the current crisis located in the ballooning of finance as a proportion of the US economy. There is an occasional enjoyably sardonic aside (neoliberals wanted to reward people for their "success at choosing the right parents"), and a bracing conclusion for the home audience: the US "will remain a world power and, perhaps, the leading nation; it just will no longer be able to be the boss".
