Dr. Kaufman's guide for the perplexed.

Henry Kaufman, chief economist at Salomon Brothers, is known on Wall Street as Dr. Doom, a title he justifies in "Interest Rates, the Markets, and the New Financial World." Surveying the mauled landscape of the credit markets, he finds nothing good to say about the financial practices of the last decade. He condemns public and private debtors for their massive borrowing sprees, and he points out worrisome fault lines in our pyramids of debt. In the process, he also provides a useful guide to the new rules of investing. Dr. Kaufman ascribes his own most strongly held views, like his wariness of inflation, to his childhood in Weimar Germany. In this review--essay, Sim Johnston shows how Dr. Kaufman's political leanings also color his apocalyptic views. Johnston commends the book to investors and economists alike, recommends it as an antidote to cant, and places it among the best writing on and about Wall Street. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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