Enjoy every page of the book. Although materials had been published some time ago, info and advises are still surprisingly applicable to this day.

It is not an essay It's just a collection of papers some of them interesting some of them no so interesing that appeared before in a journal whose subscription may be very expensive for the average reader. Any way althought I found interesting quotes and insights, I think that I wouldn't buy it now, it was expensive, and some of the papers are no obsolet.

I found the essays here somewhat predictable and no great joy as to style.

But this new book led me backwards to his earlier book MONEY OF THE MIND, a wry and spunky 100-year history of debt, booms, busts, and folly, which I enjoyed a great deal and found a real page-turner.

Grant has written a very nice critique of the deregulation of the financial markets that has been going on since the late 1970's.The Federal Reserve System(Fed) and SEC(Securities and Exchange Commission)simply allowed the big commercial banks and investment banks to ignore all of their OWN creditworthiness standards on who qualifies for a loan ,as well as letting them load up on all types of highly speculative types of assets, like collateralized debt obligations(CDO's). He pinpoints the major problem that led to the current collapse of both the housing bubble and the stock market bubble.It was not the low interest rate policies of the Fed.It was the decisions made to loan money to speculators and well known house flippers(in some real estate markets, 35% -40% of the housing loans were going to house flippers)that set the stage that created the housing bubble and then lead to the total collapse of the construction sector in the vast majority of the 50 states.
I have deducted 1/2 of a star because the author is apparently unaware that Adam Smith spent 80 pages of The Wealth of Nations(1776;pp.260-340, especially pp.339-340) warning about the dangers of allowing banks to make loans to projectors,imprudent risk takers,and prodigals(These categories of borrower are equivalent to the speculators and rentiers responsible fot creating the housing bubble of the mid-to late 1920's and the stock market bubble of the late 1920's).Smith made it clear that such categories of borrower will waste and destroy the loans generated from the savings of the bank's depositors.The central bank should aim at maintaining low rates of interest while simultaneously restricting loans to the three categories of borrower mentioned above.

"The Cassandra industry is not so remunerative as the hedge fund business, so the professional investors and bankers stay in the race, taking the kind of risks that their better judgment tells them to avoid." states James Grant in his 'Mr. Market Miscalculates, The Bubble Years and Beyond,' a work comprised of pieces from his 'Grant's Interest Rate Observor.'

Grant has been charting the course of market excesses on a fortnightly basis for 25 years, and he has a remarkable record of getting it right. Most pointedly, Grant illuminates the human foibles to which we all fall prey and how these foibles precipitate the daily gyrations of stock and bond price levels. Grant's wealth of understanding is outstanding enough to recommend the book, but his ability to generously lace his writing with his sense of humor makes his writing simply priceless.

About the dismal financial crisis, Grant wryly remarks that there is more than enough blame to go around. Grant faults human nature in general for markets gone wild, yet he is particularly impressed by the level of incompetence exhibited by recent leaders who, according to Grant, "failed almost to the man."

The no-holds-barred book journeys through the missteps of the economic leaders of our times, and it does so with a breath-taking straightforwardness. Given the state of the world's economic affairs, I hope 'Mr. Market' becomes required reading for the legislators, the judiciary, and the executives charged with fixing the world's financial systems.