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News & Reviews
Now accepting reviews for "The Age of Entitlement!"
Please send your review to Doug@AgeofEntitlement.com.
"The Age of Entitlement" has been named on the South Shore's Bestseller list!
Doug will be speaking and signing books at the Truro Public Library on Wednesday January 20, 2010 from 6:30-9 PM. More info | Directions
Doug was featured on WATD's morning show with Rob Hakala Listen now (mp3 | 5 min.)
Doug is featured on "The Spiritual Life" radio show program with Reverend Catherine Cullen, Sunday mornings on WATD Radio
Doug recently joined Reverend Catherine Cullen in the pulpit at First Parish Church Unitarian Universalist of Duxbury and gave this sermon on "Living in a Material World"
Feature article in Patriot Ledger, Business Section
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Duxbury builder, home designer writes book about economy
Last fall, as the economy went off the rails, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the U.S. government began bailing out financial behemoths at a dizzying rate, Doug Friesen got mad.
Like many Americans, the Duxbury-based builder and home designer was upset the gambles of Wall Street executives had brought the country and his company, Duxborough Designs, to a near standstill. Instead of simmering in anger, Friesen started to write. What began as a letter to the editor became a book called "The Age of Entitlement: How Greed and Arrogance Got Us Here." >> more
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Reader Reviews
"This interesting and easy-to-read book is packed with information for
the average hard-working American. Doug's research into what has
happened to our economy is outstanding. I think it is a very important
book on two levels: First, it is a simple "kitchen table" tutorial on
economics for those of us who have trusted others to be the experts.
Second, it reminds me of those pre-Revolution pamphleteers (although
this book is much more than a pamphlet) who spread their ideas far and
wide resulting in vast change. I like to think that Doug's book will
spur others to become active in grass-roots reform. I applaud Doug for
caring enough to wade into the economic morass. It's all too easy to
gripe about what is happening, but Doug has laid out the situation in
a largely non-political, reasoned manner. For that he deserves credit
for using his frustrations constructively and for being a good
citizen. We need many, many more to read this and then speak out."
—Joan Collins, Business Coach
Feature article in Duxbury Reporter
Book Review in Duxbury Clipper
Tough words for financial leaders
Written by By David Cutler, owner and Senior Editor at Duxbury Clipper
Warren Buffet, the billionaire from Omaha, Nebraska, once said if you take the high road on Wall Street you won't run into much traffic.
That is a sentiment one would suspect that Doug Friesen, the architect from Duxbury, would share even though Buffett's exact words don't show up in the pages of his (Friesen's) new book, "The Age of Entitlement."
Being an architect, if not a terribly busy one in our existing economic climes, Mr. Friesen does not proclaim himself to be a financial wizard. But architect or no, he can write with considerable skill and in this, his first book, he offers up an engaging explanation of how we fell into a financial abyss and what we must do to climb out.
We hear the financial terms – subprime, derivatives, credit default swaps – bandied about all the time these days, but most of us don't really know what they mean. Friesen explains them in clear, concise language. In fact he scores well in schooling us on the basics of finance and does particularly well in telling us what the Federal Reserve Bank is and why we should worry about it: Too much power vested in too few people who seem accountable to no one. "Shrouded in mystery," is how the author puts it.
Mr. Friesen has few kind words for Alan Greenspan, or for government deregulators, the "Trickle Down" theory, Wall Street leaders – most couldn't run a lemonade stand – or the big banks and the moves to bail them out while our own 401Ks crash. "Too big to fail," he suggests, "means too big to exist."
And bankers, he warns, have a stranglehold on both political parties and on all branches of government. And at the core of our financial meltdown, he says, "was a massive collective failure of morality."
"The Age of Entitlement" also worries about the future – our unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (all crises waiting to happen), our behemoth national debt, our ever increasing credit card debt and commercial retail debt, our imbalance of trade, our crumbling infrastructure and the widening gap between the rest of us and those relatively few at the top of the income pile.
Yet despite the subject matter, this isn't a book of simple doom and gloom. The problems and their solutions are serious to be sure. But they are presented in an engaging, lucid way by someone who knows how to turn a phrase. Doug Friesen writes with clarity and style. His first effort is worth a read. Pick it up at Westwinds or Amazon.com.
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