Hartcher, Peter

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Hartcher, Peter

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Sydney, Australia.

CAREER:

Australian Financial Review, Washington, DC, bureau chief, 2000-03; Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia, political editor and international editor, 2004—. Visiting fellow, Lowy Institute for International Policy, Sydney, Australia, 2003-04.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Gold Walkley Award, 1996; Citibank award.

WRITINGS:

The Ministry: How Japan's Most Powerful Institution Endangers World Markets (originally published in Japanese, 1997), Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 1998.

Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing 7 Trillion Dollars, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Peter Hartcher's The Ministry: How Japan's Most Powerful Institution Endangers World Markets attracted considerable attention. An analysis of the policies that contributed to monumental failures in the Japanese economy during the 1990s, the book argues that the country's powerful and secretive Ministry of Finance was mostly to blame. Its practices, in the words of a Time International reviewer, "bred corruption and mismanagement" that caused rampant speculation in the late 1980s and resulted in an economic crash that, according to a writer for the Economist, "cost Japan more wealth both in absolute and relative terms than it lost during the second world war." While critics hailed The Ministry as the first book in English to reveal the inner workings of the Japanese economy, some reviewers found Hartcher's emphasis on the role of the ministry to be exaggerated. A contributor to the Economist observed that it is "surely wrong" to assume that the ministry was exclusively responsible for Japan's economic woes, and in the New York Times Book Review, Richard J. Samuels noted that Hartcher "never seems quite sure where power resides in Japan." Arguing that Hartcher exaggerates the faults of the finance ministers, Samuels concluded that those in power are "more resourceful than they are corrupt." The Time International reviewer, on the other hand, found The Ministry an "excellent primer" on Japan's economic situation, while Contemporary Review contributor Raymond Lamont-Brown observed that the book "offers a fine background guide to the main players in Japan's financial future and its international consequences."

The 7.8 trillion dollar collapse of the U.S. stock market in 2000 provided Hartcher with the subject of his second book, Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing 7 Trillion Dollars. Though Hartcher acknowledges the various roles of corporations, the government, the media, and big business, he lays most of the blame for the collapse on the then-chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. Steven Mufson, in a Washington Monthly review, observed that Hartcher "gives Greenspan credit for having more power than he actually possessed" but appreciated his aggressive argument in support of his thesis. By contrast, Booklist reviewer David Siefgried felt that Hartcher is "never too hard" on Greenspan. Library Journal contributor Richard Drezen considered the book "often confusing," but concluded that it "makes a convincing argument that Greenspan's role merits further scrutiny."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Academy of Management Executive, May 1, 1998, Joseph W. Leonard, review of The Ministry: How Japan's Most Powerful Institution Endangers World Markets, p. 105.

American Enterprise, May 1, 1999, Martin Morse Wooster, "Will Japan Recover?," p. 89.

Booklist, March 1, 1998, David Rouse, review of The Ministry, p. 1076; April 15, 2006, David Siegfried, review of Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing 7 Trillion Dollars, p. 12.

Contemporary Review, August 1, 1998, Raymond Lamont-Brown, review of The Ministry, p. 103.

Economist, April 18, 1998, review of The Ministry, p. 9.

Foreign Affairs, July 1, 1998, Donald Zagoria, review of The Ministry, p. 137.

Industry Week, April 20, 1998, Vivian Pospisil, review of The Ministry, p. 11.

Library Journal, April 1, 2006, Richard Drezen, review of Bubble Man, p. 106.

New York Times Book Review, April 5, 1998, Richard J. Samuels, "Red Ink and the Rising Sun," review of The Ministry.

Publishers Weekly, February 23, 1998, review of The Ministry, p. 61; March 27, 2006, review of Bubble Man, p. 74.

Reference & Research Book News, August 1, 2006, review of Bubble Man.

Report on Business Magazine, March 1, 1998, review of The Ministry, p. 17.

Time International, March 30, 1998, "Rotting from the Inside," review of The Ministry, p. 30.

Times Higher Education Supplement, January 15, 1999, Ronald Dore, review of The Ministry, p. 26.

Washington Monthly, June 1, 2006, Steven Mufson, "Irrational Annoyance: There Are Many Things to Blame Alan Greenspan For. The '90s Stock Bubble Isn't One of Them," review of Bubble Man, p. 39.

Washington Post Book World, August 13, 2006, Daniel W. Drezner, "Bearish on Greenspan," review of Bubble Man, p. 6.