Books

By Nevil Gibson

Friday 1st February 2002

Boo Hoo
Ernst Malmsten with Erik Portanger and Charles Drazin
Random House; $49.95

Dot.Bomb
J David Kuo
Little, Brown; $34.95

After the dot-com bust comes the dot-com book boom. Boo Hoo is the story of Swedish entrepreneur Malmsten, who burned through $US100 million in less than six months on a fashion retail website (boo.com) that had no show of making money. Malmsten parlayed tens of millions from investment bankers, who redefine the word "greed" to include stupid. The book has two significant features: it is about the first major dot-com failure, and co-author Erik Portanger is a New Zealander working for The Wall Street Journal Europe.

Dot-Bomb, in contrast, focuses on the US phenomenon where real greed is better understood - even if the punters are just as stupid. ValueAmerica.com also had no show of making money, gobbling up $US200 million before it failed. Kuo was at the coalface as a PR man and his story is far less disingenuous and self-serving than Malmsten's.

What the two stories have in common is the lack of self-control these ventures had when it came to spending money or making a profit. Run away fast if these types want your money to get into business.

The Chastening
Paul Blustein
Perseus; $89.95

This behind-the-scenes story defines the big financial bailouts by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during the 1990s: Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea, Russia and Thailand. Written by a journalist from the Washington Post, it is as exhausting as it is exhaustive in its detail and meticulous background. It reveals what many suspect: the IMF's brainy economists, though well inten-tioned and honest, didn't have a clue about how to deal with these countries and their dodgy practices. There are plenty of fights among the top brass and the US Treasury (its financial backers) about what to do, as well as evidence the IMF is often a tool of Wall Street. Mostly it depicts an institution out of its depth in the panic-prone and freewheeling global financial market. The author dismisses most proposals for reforming or controlling the system. Instead, he pragmatically suggests the IMF work on improving its successes and learn from its mistakes.

Prescription Games
Jeffrey Robinson
Simon & Schuster; $54.95

Robinson's over-wrought writing and hyperbole had me wondering whether this attack on the pharmaceutical industry is truth or fiction. The drug business is undoubtedly powerful, has made plenty of enemies and is open to criticism as well as improvement. But this one-sided view fails to confront the alternative to the capitalist model, which is held to be at fault on all sides. If such an industry should be government-run, as is implied, how would new drugs be invented and brought to market? The Soviet model of healthcare doesn't bear thinking about.

Nevil Gibson

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