ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism Review

This book gives broad historical detail of the economic, judicial, and political cultural mindset that led to the latest economic crisis. Centuries ago Adam Smith observed that individual self interests "often" were identical to social interest, while also observing that individuals rarely met except to "fix prices" and "monopolize". Yves Smith makes a careful, well documented case naming professional trends and individual actors that cherry picked Adam Smith to enable the predation that Adam Smith warned against. It requires perhaps a bit more understanding of what is taught as "economics" in our universities than say Simon Johnson's "Thirteen Bankers" or Joe Stiglitz " Freefall", but it builds a much more documented and detailed case for how individuals and corporations have "captured" the regulatory process, and subverted the political process to essentially legalize theft from the general public, and makes an especially good case about how mathematics brought not only rigor to economics, but mortis. That two of the top economists from the half that have not succumbed to pretentiousness and self importance- Nouriel Roubini and Lord Skildelsky tag it as "must" and "required" reading gives a sense of how well written and important this book is.Get more detail about ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism.