Leverage MP3 CD – MP3 Audio, July 26, 2016

Karl Denninger, the profane and eloquent author of the Market Ticker blog, has distilled his high-quality Internet ranting into a simple, intelligible diagnosis of the state of our economy and, to some extent, our polity. For those familiar with Denninger's blog, you will notice a concerted effort to make an argument that is as inoffensive as possible. It is mostly free of the global warming skepticism and religiosity that likely would dismay the typical American leftist; those on the right will enjoys his condemnations of class warfare and illegal immigration.The book itself is an indictment of the abusive borrowing and lending by banks, governments, corporations, and consumers over the last three decades; while this borrowing has driven an illusory prosperity, it will be the eventual cause of a moderately or horribly painful reckoning. The first half of the book discusses key concepts of compound interest and the debt circle, which you probably should have learned in school, and then explained how these basic principles have been intentionally or unintentionally ignored. The most cogent argument Denninger makes is that lending must always be backed with tangible assets equivalent to the value of the loan or else charge interest rates sufficient to compensate the risk bondholders and stockholders take when they provide necessary additional capital to back the loan. The message is clear: lenders keep trying to sell money they don't have.The second half of the book takes an important turn. Noting that most books of this type advise how to avoid the catastrophe, Denninger makes a clear and haunting point. There are no shelters. There are no safe havens. The best shelter against catastrophe is to restore honest lending and a sustainable economy and polity in the United States (or wherever your native land may be). The rest of the book discusses a variety of solutions (some borrowed from others with attribution) to make the United States into that kind of nation, touching on tax policy, trade policy, and energy, among other topics.The work's weakness lies in Denninger's frequent claim that there is a need for "national conversation and debate" on issue X or Y. The debates Denninger mandates are incredibly difficult, ranging from overhauls of all state and Federal laws, potential Constitutional changes to give Congress additional enumerated powers, to decisions of how indigent people in need of critical care are going to receive or pay for it. Is the civil society that has proven capable of ignoring three decades of gross mismanagement in Congress and boardroom capable of implementing prudent reform in a time of catastrophic economic crisis? Denninger provides no reason to think so, unless he and his enthusiastic forum denizens start running for office. Some readers also might question Denninger's Whiggishness about technology.

There are some outstanding viewpoints in this book, and, unfortunately, some very bad economics. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on corporate leveraging. There are multiple books about the national debt, but very few authors deal with corporate debt. I found the graphs to be interesting, but I was unable to recreate any of the data from the sources listed. He drifted over into a "anti-bank" rant when discussing the subprime mortgage meltdown and recession in 2008-2009. There was little mention of the Federal banking regulations that almost forced banks to approve subprime mortgages, and the worst actors were the 3 major bond rating companies. What ever happened to personal responsibility for bad choices? The author also advocates protectionism, which no economist, conservative or liberal, thinks is sound policy. All in all, this book puts forth the major problem of debt, which is overlooked to our detriment.

Regular readers of Karl Denninger's "Market-Ticker" blog will not be surprised to discover that the proper functioning of a fiat-money system, it's abuse by well-connected financial "wizards", and the collusion of regulators, elected representatives, and banking executives could all be described and understood in a clear and concise manner. Mr Denninger has a long and colorful history of reducing complex financial concepts to their skeletal system, and using charts, graphs, and apt analogies to make them understandable by even the most naive of readers.As a significant percentage of humanity is now waking up to the reality that great gobs of the public purse have been snatched away, "Leverage" arrives at a perfect time to help understand how, why, and by whom it was made to happen.What MAY surprise some of the more cynical among us, however, is the clear prescription the book lays out for pulling the world economic system back from the precipice, and putting into place economic policies that would return society to healthy financial growth. Whether we have the collective courage and wisdom to follow through on the suggestions certainly remains to be seen.I recommend this book very highly to anyone seeking to understand the basic operations of our financial system, and how and why it was manipulated to create the current, alarming, state of affairs.

Excellent and clear understanding of our fiat currency

Karl Denninger shows us how the abuse of leverage has created unsustainable ponzi financed booms & busts. From health care costs, housing, student loans, government spending, and more, leverage has been abused to make everything more expensive than the market would otherwise bear. Leverage is concise and to the point. Enough examples to make strong, factual arguments without getting bogged down in too much detail. It's an engaging read. Karl does have solutions to our economic and energy problems. They are not pretty. They don't involve magical thinking. Economic contraction will occur. It's just a matter of when and on what terms. On the other side of economic contraction is a vision of affordable housing, college, health care, and more. The political will to require one dollar of capital for all unsecured lending, constraining government spending to the amount of money taken in via taxation, building LFTR power plants, and fixing tax & trade policies is no where on sight. However, the first step in fixing our problems is knowing what they are, how they came into being, and what to do about them. Leverage delivers brilliantly on all these fronts.

This book is extremely well written in that it is easy to understand and makes sense when viewed from a normal persons perspective.It highlights the total lack of knowledge expressed by current news reports which continually are proved incorrect.Politicians should perhaps raise their IQ by reading a book like this.

A 'must read' for any who wish to understand how our financial systems work.Easy to digest - an excellent read.