The Devil's Derivatives: The Untold Story of the Slick Traders and Hapless Regulators Who Almost Blew Up Wall Street . . . and Are Ready to Do It Again


Nicholas Dunbar - 2011
    He explains how bankers worldwide created a secret trillion-dollar machine that delivered cheap mortgages to the masses and riches beyond dreams to the financial innovators.Fundamental to this saga is how “the people who hated to lose” were persuaded to accept risk by “the people who loved to win.” Why did people come to trust and respect arcane financial tools? Who were the bankers competing to assemble the basic components into increasingly intricate machines? How did this process achieve its own unstoppable momentum—ending in collapse, bailouts, and a public outcry against the giants of finance?Provocative and intriguing, The Devil’s Derivatives sheds much-needed light on the forces that fueled the most brutal economic downturn since the Great Depression.

How to Achieve Financial Independence and Retire Early


J.D. Roth - 2021
    Reading every money book he could, and putting that knowledge into practice, he dug himself out of debt and built enough wealth to retire early. He is now, at the age of 51, financially independent—and on a mission to help others achieve financial freedom, too. No gimmicks, no games. Just proven methods that work.In Financial Independence, Roth takes you inside the trending world of financial independence and early retirement, giving you the tools both to achieve financial independence and to improve the quality of your everyday life. You’ll explore the ins and outs of the “FIRE movement,” a collection of ideas and habits that allow people to manage their money so they can quit working while they’re young. You’ll consider the shockingly simple math behind financial freedom. You’ll also examine the philosophy and psychology of how—and why—we spend, save, and invest.Financial freedom is possible. And no matter what your goals are, these 10 lessons will bring you closer than ever to achieving what that freedom means: happiness, fulfillment, and a rich life.

Thieves of Bay Street: How Banks, Brokerages and the Wealthy Steal Billions from Canadians


Bruce Livesey - 2012
    Though no large financial institution has recently gone bust in this country, white-collar criminals, scam artists, Ponzi schemers and organized crime, from the Hells Angels to the Russian mafia, know that Canada is the place in the Western world to rip off investors. And the fraudsters do so with little fear of being caught and punished. Thieves of Bay Street investigates Canada's biggest financial scandals of recent years. Readers will learn what banks do with investors' money and what happens when they lose it. They will meet the bogus investment gurus, the brokers who lose money with both reckless abandon and impunity, the bankers who squander money in toxic investments, the lawyers who protect them and the regulators who do nothing to keep them from doing it again. And most importantly, they'll meet the victims who are demanding that our vaunted banking sector finally come clean on its dirtiest secret.

The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters


Gregory Zuckerman - 2013
    Everyone, that is, except a few reckless wildcatters - who risked their careers to prove the world wrong. Things looked grim for American energy in 2006. Oil production was in steep decline and natural gas was hard to find. The Iraq War threatened the nation’s already tenuous relations with the Middle East. China was rapidly industrializing and competing for resources. Major oil companies had just about given up on new discoveries on U.S. soil, and a new energy crisis seemed likely.But a handful of men believed everything was about to change. Far from the limelight, Aubrey McClendon, Harold Hamm, Mark Papa, and other wildcatters were determined to tap massive deposits of oil and gas that Exxon, Chevron, and other giants had dismissed as a waste of time. By experimenting with hydraulic fracturing through extremely dense shale—a process now known as fracking—the wildcatters started a revolution. In just a few years, they solved America’s dependence on imported energy, triggered a global environmental controversy—and made and lost astonishing fortunes.No one understands these men—their ambitions, personalities, methods, and foibles—better than the award-winning Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman. His exclusive access enabled him to get close to the frackers and chronicle the untold story of how they transformed the nation and the world. The result is a dramatic narrative tracking a brutal competition among headstrong drillers. It stretches from the barren fields of North Dakota and the rolling hills of northeastern Pennsylvania to cluttered pickup trucks in Texas and tense Wall Street boardrooms.Activists argue that the same methods that are creating so much new energy are also harming our water supply and threatening environmental chaos. The Frackers tells the story of the angry opposition unleashed by this revolution and explores just how dangerous fracking really is.The frackers have already transformed the economic, environmental, and geopolitical course of history. Now, like the Rockefellers and the Gettys before them, they’re using their wealth and power to influence politics, education, entertainment, sports, and many other fields. Their story is one of the most important of our time.MEET THE FRACKERSGEORGE MITCHELL, the son of a Greek goatherd, who tried to tap rock that experts deemed worthless but faced an unexpected obstacle in his quest to change history.AUBREY McCLENDON, the charismatic scion of an Oklahoma energy family, who scored billions leading a historic land grab. He wasn’t prepared for the shocking fallout of his discoveries.TOM WARD, who overcame a troubled childhood to become one of the nation’s wealthiest men. He could handle natural-gas fields but had more trouble with a Wall Street power broker.HAROLD HAMM, the son of poor sharecroppers, who believed America had more oil than anyone imagined. Hamm was determined to find the crude before others caught on.CHARIF SOUKI, the dashing Lebanese immigrant who saw his career crumble and his fortune disintegrate, leaving one last, unlikely chance for success.MARK PAPA, the Enron castoff who panicked when he realized a resurgence of American natural gas was at hand, one that his company wasn’t prepared for.

The Lies About Money: Achieving Financial Security and True Wealth by Avoiding the Lies Others Tell Us-- And the Lies We Tell Ourselves


Ric Edelman - 2007
    Now, Ric reveals the deceptive and manipulative business practices occurring in your retail mutual funds—practices that are causing you to suffer higher fees, greater risks, and lower returns than you realize. In The Lies About Money, he offers you a detailed yet easy-to-follow plan that lets you take back control of your investments—and your financial future. Here, Ric shares his most valuable lessons gained through two decades of working directly with individuals and families. He reveals the lies that have infiltrated your retail mutual funds and retirement accounts and teaches you how to invest your money in your employer retirement plan; how to save for college; and for those who are retired, how to generate more income without sacrificing security. He shows you that proper money management has nothing to do with “hot tips” and everything to do with scientific analysis, bolstered by solid academic research and historical data. Along the way, Ric shows you the secrets to investment success—a long-term focus, the importance of diversification, and the crucial need for (and methods of) portfolio rebalancing. With insight and strategies that will change people's lives, The Lies About Money offers the truth that everyone is looking for.

Why Your World Is about to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization


Jeff Rubin - 2009
    Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller is a powerful and provocative book that explores what the new global economy will look like and what it will mean for all of us. In a compelling and accessible style, Jeff Rubin reveals that despite the recent recessionary dip, oil prices will skyrocket again once the economy recovers. The fact is, worldwide oil reserves are disappearing for good. Consequently, the amount of food and other goods we get from abroad will be curtailed; long-distance driving will become a luxury and international travel rare. Globalization as we know it will reverse. The near future will be a time that, in its physical limits, may resemble the distant past. But Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller is a hopeful work about how we can benefit-personally, politically, and economically-from this new reality. American industries such as steel and agriculture, for instance, will be revitalized. As well, Rubin prescribes priorities for President Obama and other leaders, from imposing carbon tariffs that will increase competition and productivity, to investing in mass transit instead of car-clogged highways, to forging "green" alliances between labor and management that will be good for both business and the air we breathe. Most passionately, Rubin recommends ways every citizen can secure this better life for himself, actions that will end our enslavement to chain-store taste and strengthen our communities and timeless human values.

Trade and Grow Rich : Adventurous Journey to Successful trading


Indrazith Shantharaj - 2018
    For over a decade,the authors have studied the world’s successful traders. Based on their learnings, they started practicing it and are now part of the 5%. Trade and Grow Rich teaches not just concepts but also methods with the help of anecdotes. This book has to be read one chapter at a time, rather than just being a one-time read. If you want to enjoy an adventurous journey to become a successful trader, then this is the book you are looking for!

Den of Thieves


James B. Stewart - 1991
    Stewart shows for the first time how four of the eighties’ biggest names on Wall Street—Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine —created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions, until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America’s most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice. Based on secret grand jury transcripts, interviews, and actual trading records, and containing explosive new revelations about Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky written especially for this paperback edition, Den of Thieves weaves all the facts into an unforgettable narrative—a portrait of human nature, big business, and crime of unparalleled proportions.

How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes


Peter D. Schiff - 2010
    In it, economic expert and bestselling author of Crash Proof, Peter Schiff teams up with his brother Andrew to apply their signature "take no prisoners" logic to expose the glaring fallacies that have become so ingrained in our country’s economic conversation.Inspired by How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn’t—a previously published book by the Schiffs’ father Irwin, a widely published economist and activist—How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes incorporates the spirit of the original while tackling the latest economic issues.With wit and humor, the Schiffs explain the roots of economic growth, the uses of capital, the destructive nature of consumer credit, the source of inflation, the importance of trade, savings, and risk, and many other topical principles of economics.The tales told here may appear simple of the surface, but they will leave you with a powerful understanding of How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes.

The Rise of America: Remaking the World Order


Marin Katusa
    It has become widely accepted within the investment, political, and media sectors that America is on the decline and that China will drive the global agenda in the 21st century.To which I say, not so fast. This book carefully examines the trends and actual hard data from the economic, geopolitical, financial, and demographic spheres and comes to an inescapable conclusion: America’s future has never been brighter.Forged in the 20th century, America’s leadership role will expand in the 21st century, resulting in a substantial rise in the standard of living, not just for Americans but also across the world.

The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History


David Enrich - 2017
    Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled mathematician, became the lynchpin of a wild alliance that included a prickly French trader nicknamed “Gollum”; the broker “Abbo,” who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a nervous Kazakh chicken farmer known as “Derka Derka”; a broker known as “Village” (short for “Village Idiot”) who racked up huge expense account bills; an executive called “Clumpy” because of his patchwork hair loss; and a broker uncreatively nicknamed “Big Nose” who had once been a semi-professional boxer. This group generated incredible riches —until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion.With exclusive access to key characters and evidence, The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam, but also a provocative examination of a financial system that was crooked throughout.

The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe


Josh Mitchell - 2021
    “You’ve got to be shitting me,” he later told the company’s CEO. “This place is a gold mine.” Over the next four decades, the student loan industry that Sallie Mae and Congress created blew up into a crisis that would submerge a generation of Americans into $1.5 trillion in student debt. In The Debt Trap, Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell tells the “vivid and compelling” (Chicago Tribune) untold story of the scandals, scams, predatory actors, and government malpractice that have created the behemoth that one of its original architects called a “monster.” As he charts the “jaw-dropping” (Jeffrey Selingo, New York Times bestselling author of Who Gets in and Why) seventy-year history of student debt in America, Mitchell never loses sight of the countless student victims ensnared by an exploitative system that depends on their debt. Mitchell also draws alarming parallels to the housing crisis in the late 2000s, showing the catastrophic consequences student debt has had on families and the nation’s future. Mitchell’s character-driven narrative is “necessary reading” (The New York Times) for anyone wanting to understand the central economic issue of our day.

Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America


Kurt Andersen - 2009
    “But it isn’t the end of the world.” In this smart and refreshingly hopeful book, Andersen–a brilliant analyst and synthesizer of historical and cultural trends, as well as a bestselling novelist and host of public radio’s Studio 360–shows us why the current economic crisis is actually a moment of great opportunity to get ourselves and our nation back on track.Historically, America has always shifted between wild, exuberant speculation and steady, sober hard work, as well as back and forth between economic booms and busts, and between right and left politically. This is one of the rare moments when all these cycles shift dramatically and simultaneously–a moment when complacency ends, ossified structures loosen up, and enormous positive change is possible. The shock to the system can enable each of us to rethink certain habits and focus more on the things that make us authentically happy. The present flux can enable us as a society to consolidate the enormous gains of the last several decades in areas such as technology, crime prevention, women’s and civil rights, and the democratization of the planet. We can reap the fruits of a revival of realism and pragmatism at home and abroad. As we enter a new era of post-party-line common sense, we can start to reinvent hopelessly broken systems–in health care, education, climate change, and more–and rediscover some of the old-fashioned American values of which we’ve lost sight.In Reset, Andersen explains how we’ve done it before and why we are about to do it again–and better than ever.

Wealth Exposed: This Short Argument I Overheard Made Me A Fortune... Can It Do The Same For You?


M.J. DeMarco - 2020
     And it can do the same for you. Go back to 1996 and eavesdrop on the tense 18-minute argument I unwittingly heard. An altercation between two friends. One living a dream. The other faking it. Listen in on the powerful conversation that changed the trajectory of my life and ultimately made me a millionaire— many times over. Delivered in a raw narrative form, step into my shoes as a depressed limousine driver and five-time failed entrepreneur. Witness the argument as I did, an argument that exposed wealth’s guiding first-principles. An transcendent story of sacrifice, immutable regret, and life-changing insight... a poignant tale relevant in an year, any economy, or any country. Discover the right questions and you’ll discover the right answers— answers that will set you free. Based on a true story.

Fundamental Analysis for Investors


Raghu Palat - 2010