Getting rich slowly:the traps to avoid

Text books, especially those in economics, are not supposed to read like Dan Brown thrillers.

They certainly didn’t, anyway, in your correspondent’s student days.

But Ross Garnaut’s new book, The Great Crash of 2008, breaks that rule.

The most chilling thing, though, about the tale it tells is that, unlike Dan Brown’s work, it’ story is all true.

And, unlike other text books, in the arcane subject of economics, it is all quite accessible to the ordinary reader.

(Although Professor Garnaut could well have had a small glossary of essential acronyms, like CDO -collateralised debt obligations-somewhere in the book).

He does, though, mostly keep these mysterious letters close to his, quite clear, explanation of their meaning, in his text.

We all know, by now, that Australia’s banks largely escaped the grim fates that excessive greed brought to their US cousins.

But why?

Professor Garnaut’s explanation offers little comfort.

He says they were just four years behind their American counterparts, in the development of the greed fuelled shadow banking instruments, like CDO’s, that brought the American banking system to grief.

In the best traditions of terrifying narratives through the ages, Ross Garnaut tells a strong moral tale, in his new book.

This is a story that can highly recommended to all Australians who want to keep their personal finances in order.

West Australians, in particular, should read it.  Their newspaper, the dear old West Australian, for which your correspondent wrote, for many years, is already enthusiastically reporting the new boom, before the old crisis has passed.

Reality checks, though, are necessary everywhere in times like these.

And Ross Garnaut is offering some excellent ones, right now.

His book was published by Melbourne University Press.  It is selling for $24.99.