Surprised Again!: The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble Paperback

Published by Paul Dry Books.

by Alex J. Pollock and Howard B. Adler

Order here.

About every ten years, we are surprised by a financial crisis. In 2020, we were Surprised Again! by the financial panic of the spring triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not one of the more than two dozen official systemic risk studies diligently developed in 2019 had even hinted at this financial crisis as a possibility, or at the frightening economic contraction which resulted from the political responses to control the virus. In response came the unprecedented government fiscal and monetary expansions and bailouts. Later 2020 brought a second big surprise: the appearance of an amazing boom in asset prices, including stocks, houses and cryptocurrencies.

Alex Pollock and Howard Adler lived through this historic instability while managing analytical support offices for the U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Committee. Their book lays out the many elements of the panic, the massive elastic currency operations which rode to the rescue, financing the bust with unprecedented government debt, the second surprise of the boom in asset prices, including a renewed apparent bubble in house prices financed by government guarantees, as well as considering key leveraged sectors such as commercial real estate, student loans, pension funds, banks, and the government itself. It reflects philosophically on how to understand these events in retrospect and prospect.

Finance and Philosophy: Why We’re Always Surprised

Published by Paul Dry Books. Order here.

“Pollock tells us all we need to know about money and banking, risk and uncertainty, debt and temptation, and science and economics. He delights as he instructs.”―James Grant, founder and editor, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer

Finance and Philosophy provides a concise and witty account of how bankers and financial regulators think, of the alleged causes of the cycles of booms and busts, of the implicit and often un-thought-out assumptions shaping retirement finance, fiat money, corporate governance. Pollock deftly shows how poorly bankers have measured the risk their banks have been exposed to. With candor and clarity, he uncovers the persistent and unavoidable uncertainty inherent in the business of banking. We learn that a banker’s confidence in his ability to measure banking risk accurately is the lure which has repeatedly led to bank failures. Pollock has a modest and compelling suggestion: Acknowledge the unavoidability of ignorance with respect to financial risk, and, in the light of this ignorance of the future, act moderately.

“Why can’t human beings take the lessons of boom and bust, bubbles and crashes that are clearly described in history books―and learn from experience? That’s where Mr. Pollock’s wry humor and philosophic bent help understand the hubris that makes every generation believe that not only can it predict the markets, but control them . . . [Finance and Philosophy] should be required reading in economics classes, or before opening an investment account―and by every member of Congress.”―The Washington Times

“At the height of the 2008 financial panic, Queen Elizabeth plaintively asked why nobody saw it coming. In the winning pages of Finance and Philosophy, Her Majesty can find the answer. With a lightness of touch that belies the complexity of his subject, Alex Pollock shows why the financial future is now, why it has been and always must be a closed book. A successful banker and gifted writer, Pollock tells us all we need to know about money and banking, risk and uncertainty, debt and temptation, and science and economics. He delights as he instructs.”―James Grant, founder and editor, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer

“Pollock’s observations and historical examples are compelling, and his wide-ranging discussion of banking and financial crises is not only accessible, but a pleasure to read.”―Real Clear Markets

“An intellectually penetrating and thought-provoking book.”―Central Banking

“Alex Pollock shows how financial jargon obscures simple realities, how very smart people are prone to spectacular financial mistakes, and how government efforts to make finance smarter and more stable have made it much worse on both scores. Drawing on Pollock’s highly successful career in banking and scholarship, Finance and Philosophy is a fount of sharp insight and high wisdom.”―Chris DeMuth, President, American Enterprise Institute, 1986–2008

“As in all of Alex Pollock’s writings, Finance and Philosophy combines the author’s subtle but caustic wit with brilliant insights grounded in his long experience analyzing America’s financial fads and foibles. No one does a better job of pointing out the philosophical and historical fallacies underlying the portentous pronouncements by our leading economic and fiscal ‘experts’ on everything from the future of interest rates and the national debt to the tech bubble of the 1990s and the 2007–09 financial meltdown. This book needs to be read by every present and future Secretary of the Treasury and chairman of the Federal Reserve.”―Arthur Herman, author of 1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder

Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (Values and Capitalism)

Published by American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Press. Order here.

While the recent economic crisis was a painful period for many Americans, the panic surrounding the downturn was fueled by an incomplete understanding of economic history. Economic hysteria made for riveting journalism and effective political theater, but the politicians and members of the media who declared that America was in the midst of the greatest financial calamity since the Great Depression were as wrong and misguided as the expansionists of the Roosevelt era. In reality the cyclical nature of market economies is as old as the markets themselves. In a free market system, financial downturns inevitably accompany economic prosperity-but the overall trend is upward progress in living standards and national wealth. While it is helpful to understand what caused the recent crisis, the more important questions to consider are ‘What makes the ‘boom and bust’ cycle so predictable?’ and ‘What are the ethical responsibilities of the citizens of a free market economy?’ In Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity, Alex J. Pollock argues that while economic downturns can be frightening and difficult, people living in free market economies enjoy greater health, better access to basic necessities, better education, work less arduous jobs, and have more choices and wider horizons than people at any other point in history. This wonderful reality would not exist in the absence of financial cycles. This book explains why.