Economic Puppetmasters: Lessons from the Halls of Power

By Lawrence B. Lindsey

Book Overview

An insider's perspective on the bureaucratic structure of governmental institutions that shape economic policy, and the incentives and limitations of the individuals who head them. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0844740810
• ISBN13: 9780844740812
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
• Length: 215 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Larry Lindsey Looks at the Limits of Policymakers' Power

This is a book about four movers and shakers in today's global economy: Alan Greenspan, Eisuke Sakakibara, Helmut Kohl, and George Soros. Lindsey does a very good job of describing what they do--what their jobs are--who they are, and how they think. His capsule descriptions of how they view the world are broad-brush descriptions, lacking details and subtlety, but are amazingly accurate for all that. Alan Greenspan is the contrarian, Eisuke Sakakibara is the mandarin, Helmut Kohl is the historian, and George Soros is the speculator.But the book is more than just about these four individuals. It is a book about the institutions that they boss and serve: America's Federal Reserve (that Alan Greenspan heads), Japan's Ministry of Finance (where Sakakibara is the senior civil servant), the West German government (that Helmut Kohl stood at the top of for more than two decades), and the world of the speculative hedge funds (of which George Soros with his Quantum Fund is the most visible and public example). And this is where the value-added in the book truly lies. For no single individual, no matter how talented, can function without a staff. And no single individual whose mindset is out of sympathy with that of the staff or the environment can get much of anything done.Lindsey's summaries of the institutional histories and of the typical patterns of thought of the Federal Reserve, the Japanese Ministry of Finance, and the other institutional locations are--I think--the best part of the book. These are matters that are almost never covered in the press. Journalists would much rather discuss the personalities of Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright than the cultures and orientations of the people who staff the bureaucracies they head--the Treasury believing that it is engaged in a positive-sum game of maximizing international economic integration, while State believes that it is in a zero-sum negotiation of exchanging favor for favor. And these cultures are very important.Moreover, to the extent that it is not culture but individuals that matter, it is groups of individuals: groups of people who think more-or-less alike and work together. Journalists like to speak of the "Rubin Treasury." But it would be much more accurate to speak of the "Rubin-Summers-Froman-Lipton-Geitner-Wilcox-Truman-Sandberg-and a bunch of others" Treasury. Arcs of policy grow and shrink gradually over time, as the consensus least common denominator of agreement among senior policymakers armed with arguments by their staffs gradually shifts. So tracking the thoughts of the institutions rather than the off-the-cuff thoughts of individuals is very important.The heads of such organizations are in positions in which action is much easier if taken along than across the grain because of the orientations and beliefs of those who surround them. Neverthless, they are not the puppets of their institutions. And