A look at great reads from the editor of the TLS. This week: an economist takes issue with Niall Ferguson’s life of banking legend Warburg, the myths of Charles de Gaulle explored, and does Cardinal Newman deserve to be sainted?
To be thought a good man, it is always useful to cultivate a good myth. The TLS this week looks at mythmakers from the City of London to the Vatican and from General de Gaulle to Napoleon.
High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg By Niall Ferguson 576 pages. The Penguin Press. $35.
Highest Finance
How good a man, for example, was the mid-20th-century London banker Sir Siegmund Warburg, the subject of Niall Ferguson’s much-praised new biography? Tim Congdon takes issue with the virtuous reputation of a man who he sees as being “lionized” by his biographer in an attempt to highlight Warburg's ethical superiority to the City slickers and shysters of today. Congdon, a longtime monetary economist and adviser to Conservative governments, is unconvinced by the noble case, judging Ferguson naïve about the low tricks that have ever been at the heart of high finance, and too keen “to see in them a public benefit that is not and never was there.” This argument may run and run.
The General: Charles De Gaulle and the France He Saved By Jonathan Fenby 720 pages. Simon & Schuster. £30.
The Myths of Charles de Gaulle
Richard Vinen is intrigued by two new books on General de Gaulle and, in particular, the light they shed on the differing reputations of Churchill and Napoleon, too. De Gaulle, he points out, had to achieve his personal mythology before he achieved any of his own victories; Napoleon needed mythmaking when his victories were long behind him. Churchill’s memoirs are treated in Britain as a source of facts and are found wanting by historians as a result; de Gaulle’s are published in France alongside Gide and Proust as “a kind of fiction” and are venerated accordingly. The books under review are Jonathan Fenby's The General and Sudhir Hazareesingh's Le Mythe Gaullien.
Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint By John Cornwell 256 pages. Continuum. £18.99.
Saint Cardinal Newman?
As British Catholics await the pope’s visit in September, during which he will beatify the influential English cardinal, John Henry Newman, there is much discussion of whether the virtues displayed by the author of Apologia Pro Vita Sua will in time boost his own mythology still further? Is a formal declaration of sainthood the imminent next step. Anthony Kenny, reviewing a biography subtitled The Reluctant Saint, praises Newman’s prose style and intellectual power, while dismissing briskly as “absurd” the notion, popularized in the media, that he was ever homosexually active. Bernard Manzo examines the paradox of Newman as the literary man who instinctively preferred reading and writing tales of dreams to becoming a part of one himself. Newman considered Scripture to be a “record of an idea that lived in its fullness in the minds of the Apostles.” The letters of St. Paul were “literature in a real and true sense,” comparable in the cardinal’s mind to great Greek plays and the most powerful political speeches.
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Peter Stothard's latest book is On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey Through Ancient Italy. He is also the author of Thirty Days, a Downing Street diary of his time with British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the Iraq war.
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One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. /
And the one that mother give you, don't do anything at all. ~ Jefferson Airplane
I was talking to a person in the medical profession who said, "some patients are looking for a magic pill that will solve all their problems."
I said welcome to my business. The same analogy holds true in personal finance. People want one simple idea that will make them rich -- preferably while they are lying on the couch watching television.
I've tried losing weight while lying on the couch, munching on potato chips. I can tell you that it doesn't work.
If you read The Millionaire Next Door or any book that studies how people become financially independent, they all basically say the same thing. Spend less than you make. Don't get into needless debt. Make a budget. Have a long term goal and be prepared to take years to get there.
The same thing holds true in living a healthy life. Eat less than you burn up. Count your calories or measure your progress. Plan to live to an old age and stay healthy until you get there.
The key on both health and money is focusing on the long run. There is not a "magic pill."
The reason that Wall Street collapsed is that too many companies were looking for their own "magic pill." They were focused on piling up short term profits, so they could get their multi-million dollar bonuses and didn't care about the long term.
Turns out that Wall Street had a magic pill. It was called the bailout. Thanks to their friends and lobbyists in Washington, Wall Street was able to screw up and have someone else clean up the mess.
It doesn't work that way for the rest of us. With your health, to coin an old song, "if you play around you lose your life." Same thing holds true with your money. Too many people are dying old and broke because they don't have a long term plan.
All this takes me to the "Move Your Money" movement.
I've been pushing it hard and you can read more about it at http://moveyourmoney.info/
The concept is simple. Move your money from a "too big to fail" bank and deposit it in a bank or credit union in your community.
Then get the charities you support to do the same. Then get the college you graduated from to do the same.
Then get your neighbors and your friends.
Right now, the top six "too big to fail" banks control about 70% of the wealth in America. That is WAY out of whack.
They got the "financial reform" bill watered down. The next time they get in trouble, they will just call their buddies in Washington and get another bailout. Unless we dilute their strength.
If more of our money is in local banks and credit unions, the Wall Street banks won't have the same power in Washington. They might not get another bailout. Better yet, Congress might get the backbone to actually regulate Wall Street so that they don't really need a bailout again.
I wasn't for the first bailout. I'm certainly not going to be for another one. Like all good things in life, Move Your Money is not a "magic pill." But it may be the start of getting us to a healthy future.
Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC of Richmond Kentucky is an award-winning financial columnist and Huffington Post Contributor.
You can read more about Don at www.donmcnay.com
McNay founded McNay Settlement Group, a structured settlement and financial consulting firm, in 1983, and Kentucky Guardianship Administrators LLC in 2000. You can read more about both at www.mcnay.com
McNay has Master's Degrees from Vanderbilt and the American College and is in the Hall of Distinguished Alumni of Eastern Kentucky University.
McNay has written two books. Most recent is Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers and What to Do When You Win The Lottery
McNay is a lifetime member of the Million Dollar Round Table and has four professional designations in the financial services field.
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