The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

The Fifth Risk Reviews

• 
  Darwin8u

  It's the places in our government where the cameras never roll that you have to worry about the most Michael Lewis The Fifth Risk I've read several books about President Trump and his administration in the last couple years They all depress me a bit I feel like I'm reading some real time version of Gibbons' 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' But none of the other Trump books scared me like this one did Lewis isn't interested in the FoxMSNBC politics or the Twitter level anxiety of the Trump administration He is interested in this book in the systematic and bureaucratic failures of the Trump administration and what risks this administration's lack of professionalism this is beyond politics thisis about competency of governance might mean to our country and our people Lewis does this using his usual approach which is a bit similar to John McPhee's new nonfiction approach He finds interesting people who become narrative heros and guides to an area and ties them together into a compelling story or narrative The areas Lewis explores? Presidential Transitions guide Max Stier; I Department of EnergyTail Risk guides Tarak Shah John MacWilliams II USDAPeople Risk guides Ali Zaidi Kevin Concannon Cathie Woteki III Department of CommerceAll the President's Data Guides Kathy Sullivan DJ Patil David FriedbergThis is a short book It is relevant but still not top shelf Lewis I enjoyed it but just wished it was bit longer and a bit deeper It I get the irony This books scared the shit out of me It made me sad Therefore I wish it were longer
• 
  Diane S ☔

  What are the conseuences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works?This is the opening sentence in the book summary and also the first sentence inside the book jacket Lewis takes us inside a few Departments of our federal government talking to those who work there in the past and present Showing us what these Departments do what they are responsible for programs and oversights Have to admit I didn't know all the things they did but then again I doubt many people do including our current governmentThe Dept of Energy the Dept of Agriculture touching on the Dept Of commerce in all these Departments after the election they waited for the new administration to come in and find out what they were doing transitioning to new people They waited for months and finally one person showed up took one day with the Depts and basically disappeared again I'm not going to go into details about what eventually happened would take too long but one thing of note I will mention From the Dept Of Agriculture 220 billion was removed to another fund a fund from where it was easier to spend easier to not account for This money was from a program that provided low cost loans to our rural areas a program that has now been effectively shut down Of all the books I have read about our current political situation this is the one that scared me the most
• 
  Sam Quixote

  Didja know the US gov’mint is a complicated beast? Trump didn’t And now we’s all gonna DIIIIEEEE But not really Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk is the latest in a long line of Trumperature hurriedly bundled together and booted out the door to cater to the surprisingly large audience who can’t read enough Trump bashing Except Lewis’ effort is a bit nuanced in its critiue of the Trump administration focusing instead on what its lackadaisical attitude to the country’s major institutions could mean to the average Joe Unlike previous incoming administrations Trump and his peeps didn’t bother to learn how the government operates They took their sweet ass time filling the reuired posts for heads of massive departments – many which remained empty for months post inauguration – and when they did the appointees were dangerously unualified uninformed corrupt and actively working to undermine the effectiveness of what their departments did to line their own pockets instead It’s less Trump focused than that for the most part though The Fifth Risk is essentially a love letter to government as Lewis highlights exactly what the Department of Energy the Department of Commerce and the Department of Agriculture does – and it ain’t what you think These departments’ remits basically extend far beyond what their misnomers suggest revelations which are uite remarkable in themselves But they’re run by eually extraordinary people with sparkling careers skills and characters who Lewis diligently profiles The book is reliably well written by Lewis and thoroughly informative I get the impression he’s anti Trump but he largely keeps his tone neutral and non partisan which is laudable Some of the profiles are fascinating and the entire episode on the current state of the American weather service was stunning – to whit the American taxpayer bankrolls how the weather data is collected and the guy now in charge owns a private weather company and wants to change it so that weather forecasts no longer remain free and charge the taxpayer for data they’ve already paid for On the other hand despite being a relatively short book it feels overlong The profiles become repetitive and the subject matter feels increasingly shallow as the book progresses largely as the premise – that the guys in charge are going to prove so inept this is the “fifth risk” by the way project management that they will irreparably damage the country – probably won’t be proven for some time yet And it does feel somewhat melodramatic – I mean could one administration really be so disastrous? It’s not like there haven’t been terrible presidents before and America has prevailed And there is hope in that the vast majority of the public sector seems to be led by truly good people – skilled knowledgeable folk who are in it for the mission rather than the money a veritable phalanx of hyper competent Leslie Knopes – and with them around how bad could a corrupt bossman be especially as they don’t seem to last with Trump in charge? The Fifth Risk isn’t saying anything groundbreaking or profoundly insightful “whuh oh rough seas ahead” seems to be the rather inane and vague message from Michael “Auditioning for the Real Life Captain Hindsight” Lewis but it does highlight a few worthwhile things like giving credit to civil servants who do amazing work despite none of it being sexy enough to be reported on in the mainstream media as well as not taking the general peaceable harmony of society for granted as it could be so much worse without the public sector Most importantly it teaches anyone who thinks “government sucks” sadly the majority of people are exactly this uninformed just why it’s the opposite And I think that’s how I felt reading The Fifth Risk it’s competent and well researched with a fine purpose but ultimately far from compelling and a bit dull to read It also doesn’t feel very substantial not least as the impression was like a trio of loosely connected articles got slapped together but because it made its point almost immediately and spent the rest of the book repeating itself Not the best work Michael Lewis has done but not bad either I wouldn’t say it’s a must read for anyone
• 
  Bill Kerwin

  Once again Michael Lewis author of Moneyball and The Big Short chooses as his protagonists a few ingenious manipulators of data but this time he does so with a difference the self effacing statistical warriors he singles out for praise are bureaucrats of the United States federal government a class generally overlooked and often despised These bureaucrats however are people not only familiar with the resources of their agencies but also committed to using them to make lives better for the American citizens who pay their salariesMuch of The Fifth Risk is heartening optimistic as we watch people who genuinely care about there jobs do what they know how to do but there is a dark cloud looming over every bureaucratic success story the Trump administration is now in charge of their government agencies an administration which holds such bureaucracies in contempt vassals good for nothing but to plunder and destroyThe book begins with a superb prologue in which—believe it or not—Chris Christie turns out to be the hero doing his best to organize a Trump transition team so that the various agencies can be staffed by people actually capable of carrying out their mission But Trump who cares neither for competence nor mission dissolves the transition team and then tells Christie “You and I are so smart we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves” The Fifth Risk introduces us to the people who are on a mission NOAA’s Kathy Sullivan geologist and ex astronaut responsible for weather forecasting data; mathematician DJ Patil Obama’s chief data scientist; USDA’s Kevin Concannon in charge of food stamps and related programs; Energy’s chief “risk officer” John McWilliams; and others and shows us what happens when they—and others like them—meet up with people care about nothing butmoney that is the Trump administrationIt is McWilliams who gives Lewis the title for his book After outlining four important risks faced by the Department of Energy nuclear accidents North Korea Iran the electrical grid McWilliams tells us what is the fifth and greatest risk “project management” The fifth risk incorporates all those unlikely and unforeseen long shot and long term disasters that only a vigilant committed agency has a chance of forecasting and forestalling In other words the sort of government Trump and his greedy grifters are constitutionally incapable of providingNo grifter sums things up uite as well as Barry Myers the AccuWeather CEO chosen to helm NOAA and oversee its comprehensive weather data collection efforts and its essential weather forecasts One of the first things he did was to make this valuable date unavailable to the public DJ Patil became concerned ”The NOAA webpage used to have a link to weather forecasts” he said “it was highly highly popular I saw it had been buried And I asked Now why would they bury that?” Then he realized the man Trump nominated to run MOAA thought that people who wanted a weather forecast should have to pay him for it There was a rift in American life that was now coursing through American government It wasn’t between Democrat and Republicans It was between the people who were in it for the mission and the people who were in it for the money
• 
  Melki

  We don't really celebrate the accomplishments of government employees They exist in our society to take the blame Our recent government shutdown the yugest most tremendous and longest shutdown in history served if nothing else to demonstrate just how nice it is to have someone helping our aircraft land and someone picking up the trash in our national parks We need ualified people taking care of our nuclear waste and protecting us against the next pandemic As a famous Canadian singer once warbled Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til its gone We don't teach people what government actually does Lewis attempts to do just that with his latest book He takes the reader on a tour of various departments explaining their functions using a friendly conversational tone and occasionally scaring the crap out of you One of his main points is that we have genuine heroes working these jobs people who have dedicated their lives to public service and their positions should not be subject to the whims of any particular presidential administration His other main point? You can't just slash a department's budget without knowing exactly what that department does There really aren't enough exclamation points in the world for that sentence And when the person who has been placed IN CHARGE of an organization can't be bothered to learn we've got a problem Yes all of us It is OUR problem But then again it's been made clear time and again by the current administration that profit NOT public well being is the real concern There was a rift in American life that was now coursing through American government It wasn't between Democrats and Republicans It was between people who were in it for the mission and the people who were in it for the money I read a lot of crime fiction and thrillers but this is the single most nail bitingest book I've read in a long long time I'm going to echo many other reviewers and say that you REALLY SHOULD read this book If nothing else you'll be better euipped to argue with that obnoxious coworker or family member who always insists We need the gubmint to stay out of our bidness
• 
  Athan Tolis

  Was reading The Fifth Risk in the tube A well dressed man got in noticed the American flag Jenga on the cover and immediately exclaimed “The Fifth Risk what do you think?” Before I had a chance to respond he added in a polite American accent “I love the guy I devour his books” perhaps to allow me to temper my answerI’m a Michael Lewis fan I’ve read enough of him to think I know him So I wasn’t shy about my assessment“Tell you what” I answered “You know how half his books are about some uirky discovery and the people who made it and the other half are a bunch of articles he wrote before? Well this is the second type It’s three chapters one each about a very important function of the government that is totally underappreciated by the public and about how Trump is about to gut it ““And yeah I buy it” I went on “he’s right but it lacks balance So all these 177 dangerous nuclear waste sites that Trump will let fester who built them? The government did And how about our side’s enlightened approach? Fine Trump wants to gut the USDA and did not bother to send anybody for the handover But tell me what Obama was doing sending a 2008 Harvard graduate to effectively supervise its budget Why does Michael Lewis not call out our side for fostering an army of Robert McNamaras? If you ask me we’re no better than the other guys Our meritocracy stuff sending some Harvard kid in diapers into such a huge job is precisely the kind of sin we’re paying for”And then I went for the kill “Our side treats government like training ground for the best and the brightest theirs wants to gut it We’ve lost the high moral ground as far as I’m concerned”I proceeded to lament that my favorite part of the book so far had been when on election day with Pennsylvania called el Sisi – the Egyptian dictator one of “our SOBs” who could be a perfect judge of how to get through to a man not much unlike him in mentality got through to Trump by calling the switchboard of the Trump Tower only for the President elect to exclaim “I love the Bangles”“You know” my new American friend smiled “my Zen master would say he was doing his best when he said that”uiteI even had advice for the poor fellow who was starting to regret asking me “I finish books so I’ll read the whole thing but on balance skip this one”Turns out I was flat wrongThis is a third type of Michael Lewis book It’s a 219 page anecdote that leads to a single punchlineAnd so it was that Michael Lewis knocked me out in three rounds
• 
  Henk

  An insightful investigation of what good government can do if handled properly And how the Trump administration does not care for this in the slightest To which Trump replied Fuck the law I don’t give a fuck about the law I want my fucking moneyGeneral We are meant to serve our elected masters however odious they might beDespite The Fifth Risk Undoing Democracy being a relatively short book it tackles a lot of concerns one can have about administration and how this is mishandled by the current government Michael Lewis uses four departments within the US as a basis to what can go wrong the fifth risk of the title being project management when a government does not take serving the public good seriousIn general two million US government employees are led by 4000 political appointees from which 1200 are vetted through senate hearings This sound rather boring and trivial but the institutions these appointees lead are massively importantThe unhandy naming of departments of agriculture energy and commerce is not helping in a proper appreciation of what the departments do for the public goodThe department of energy for instance has apparently 115000 employees and a 30 billion budget a year and no CFO at the inauguration date of Trump Even the head of the nuclear arsenal was only called a day before the president entered office with the reuest to continue his service and only due to pressure from senators that such a vacancy would be unwantedHalf of the budget of this department is just reuired to keep the nuclear arsenal safe 25% of the budget is meant on an annual basis for clean up of plutonium enrichment facilitiesOne former employee notes the following on why a report on the risk of nuclear accident occurring in a facility where two third of plutonium was produced was never commissioned If your ambition is to maximize short term gains without regard to the long term cost you are better of knowing the costThat in 2018 no head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention was appointed also feels very cynical with the knowledge of an upcoming Covid 19 pandemicThen we learn that the US Department of Agriculture apparently has a budget of 164 billion a year and 100000 employees and how the food stamp programme accounts for 70 billion a year in support with only around 5% of fraud which is still a whopping 35 billion while private food banks distribute only around 8 billionContinued examples that build to a broader narrative how the concept of good government is systemically eroded There is an upside on ignorance and a downside to knowledgeLater in the book someone muses on how grant receiving districts overwhelming voted for Trump and his small government rhetorics despite how they were held afloat by state handouts we don’t teach people what the government actually does This is off course very similar to the sentiment from Brexit with regions receiving the most aid from the EU voting overwhelmingly for the Brexit that will no doubt hurt their own interest most In general state governments try the federal government similarly to national governments portray the EU here like a foreign unaccountable and money spending entity while a lot of economic community support is coming from these vilified institutionsThe tale continues with the incredible late capitalist cynicism of AccuWeather CEO and nominee from Trump to head the agency wanting to make the public benefit of the National Weather Service forecasting of tornados private to profit his company An aside here is in place it is in general fascinating how through big data and computing power increases the five day weather forecast of 2016 is as accurate as the one day forecast of 2005The general narrative that is being heralded is that government and government employees are wasteful dumb and inefficient according to the very government elected to govern This while the delivery of certain public goods including kickstarting innovation helping the poorest safeguarding security and rural support is undoubtedly needed for a proper functioning of society; like even absorbable baby diapers are just a side product of the space programme for instanceBasically government done right is the counterbalance to both individual irrationality and to the instincts of the mighty from animal abusers to big business and calls for a smaller government from the Trump administration as noted in this book in the end just always seem to end up aiding the mighty A terrifying tale of populism hollowing out truly essential services to the public good
• 
  HBalikov

  Lewis is not a fan of the Trump Administration If it is politics that initially shaped that determination and I am not sure it was it is facts about our government and how it has evolved to provide us with safety security and information that are the genesis of this book I found this one of the scariest books I have read about the immediate future in the USA It haunts my dreams It makes every day a little bit difficult to get through Why? Because Lewis is a master at articulating the reasons why I cannot should not take for granted many of the things that I have taken for granted It's the reason I can only read a little of this book at a timeI have selected some uotes from the book some are his direct observations and some are Lewis uoting others Let me know how comfortable you are after reading them Some of the things any incoming president should worry about are fast moving pandemics hurricanes terrorist attacks But most are not Most are like bombs with very long fuses that in the distant future when the fuse reaches the bomb might or might not explode It is delaying repairs to a tunnel filled with lethal waste until one day it collapses It is the aging workforce of the DOE—which is no longer attracting young people as it once did—that one day loses track of a nuclear bomb It is the ceding of technical and scientific leadership to China It is the innovation that never occurs and the knowledge that is never created because you have ceased to lay the groundwork for it It is what you never learned that might have saved youAsked to list them he Presidential candidate and ex Governor of Texas Rick Perry named Commerce Education and then hit a wall “The third agency of government I would do away with Education the ahhhh ahhh Commerce and let’s see” As his eyes bored a hole in his lectern his mind drew a blank “I can’t the third one I can’t Sorry Oops” The third department Perry wanted to get rid of he later recalled was the Department of Energy In his confirmation hearings to run the department Perry confessed that when he called for its elimination he hadn’t actually known what the Department of Energy did—and he now regretted having said that it didn’t do anything worth doing The uestion on the minds of the people who currently work at the department Does he know what it does now? In his hearings Perry made a show of having educated himself He said how useful it was to be briefed by former secretary Ernest Moniz But when I asked someone familiar with those briefings how many hours Perry had spent with Moniz he laughed and said “That’s the wrong unit of account” With the nuclear physicist who understood the DOE perhaps better than anyone else on earth Perry had spent minutes not hours “He has no personal interest in understanding what we do and effecting change” a DOE staffer told me in June 2017 “He’s never been briefed on a program—not a single one which to me is shocking” Since Perry was confirmed his role has been ceremonial and bizarre He pops up in distant lands and tweets in praise of this or that DOE program while his masters inside the White House create budgets to eliminate those very programs“We had tried desperately to prepare them” said Tarak Shah chief of staff for the DOE’s 6 billion basic science program “But that reuired them to show up And bring ualified people But they didn’t They didn’t ask for even an introductory briefingThere is another way to think of John MacWilliams’s fifth risk the risk a society runs when it falls into the habit of responding to long term risks with short term solutionsHis general point was that managing risks was an act of the imagination And the human imagination is a poor tool for judging risk People are really good at responding to the crisis that just happened as they naturally imagine that whatever just happened is most likely to happen again They are less good at imagining a crisis before it happens—and taking action to prevent it“People don’t understand that a bungled transition becomes a bungled presidency” The new people taking over the job of running the government were at best only partially informed and often deeply suspicious of whatever happened to be going on before they arrivedHe’d explain that the federal government provided services that the private sector couldn’t or wouldn’t medical care for veterans air traffic control national highways food safety guidelines He’d explain that the federal government was an engine of opportunity millions of American children for instance would have found it even harder than they did to make the most of their lives without the basic nutrition supplied by the federal government When all else failed he’d explain the many places the US government stood between Americans and the things that might kill them “The basic role of government is to keep us safe” he’d sayLewis noted that this current government is missing so many of the people who canmust run the agencies that are responsible for protecting our food keeping us safe from disease and doing the intelligence work that is absolutely essential No USA government has had so many “acting” heads of agencies two years into an administration nor has this Administration found replacements for the career workers and managers tasked with doing the day to day work that actually makes all the difference in the lives of over 300 million citizens
• 
  David

  This book is about three important but little understood government agencies And the book is about the willful ignorance of the Trump administration and its attempts to dismantle the agencies before even having the slightest idea what these agencies doAfter the two major political parties nominate a presidential candidate the candidates form transition teams These teams are reuired by law to formulate transitions into government that will be as smooth as possible The transition teams are given office space in Washington DC in which to meet and plan Donald Trump did not want to appoint transition teams because that would reuire setting aside some money that could be used for political ads But the law forced him to anywayThe day after a presidential election government agencies are prepared for visits by large transition teams They have prepared briefings and are ready to show the newcomers how the agencies work and are ready to smooth the transitions However many agencies were totally ignored by Donald Trump Instead of sending dozens and dozens of members of a new team Trump sent nobody at all Instead a month after election day there might be a single visitor who is unprepared to learn about anything at all The visitor to the Department of Energy did not want to learn what it is that the agency does He did not want to learn that most of the department's efforts were aimed at maintaining the stockpile of nuclear weapons and performing inspections in hostile countries Instead all he was interested in was obtaining a list of scientists who had attended climate change conferences He didn't receive such a listTrump wanted to de fund the Department of Energy which supplies ten percent of its annual budget to clean up the horrific plutonium mess in Hanford Washington He wanted to eliminate ARPA E which did the research for new energy sources Private companies are not willing to undertake such risky efforts; government research is reuired for truly innovative advancementAnd instead of installing experts into the top jobs at these critical government agencies Trump installed no nothings who were loyal to him For example he installed into the top jobs at the US Department of Agriculture; a truck driver a clerk from ATT a gas company meter reader a country club cabana attendant and the owner of a scented candle company They had absolutely no credentials or relevant skills Sonny Perdue became the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture It became obvious that he is motivated by pure politics and has zero interest in the nutritional welfare of school childrenMany people depend on the treasure troves of data collected by the government agencies and our ability to download the data from their websites The book describes many innovative uses of the data sets and the ability of researchers to uncover amazing discoveries about industry society climate and health across the country But after Trump took office the EPA and the Department of the Interior removed all sorts of data on climate from their web sites FEMA removed data about drinking water in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and the FBI removed most crime data from its web site all driven by narrow commercial motivesThis is an excellent book about the importance of government to the country's prosperity and standard of living Ignorance of what government actually does seems to be the Trump administration's primary hallmark Trump has no curiosity and no interest in learning anything His only interest is in lining his own wallet with ever bigger wads of money What a pity
• 
  Richard Derus

  view spoilerI fucking hate each and every person who voted for 45 The gigarich tech bros who enabled 4chan and Cambridge Analytica And of course all you jackass libertarians and white supremacists hide spoiler