Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics


William Bonner - 2007
    Understanding these differences, says William (Bill) Bonner-a longtime maverick observer of the financial world and the vagaries of the investing public-is vital to preserving your wealth and personal dignity. From the witch-hunts of the early modern world to the war on terror, from dot-com mania to the real estate bubble, people have always been caught up in frauds, conceits, and wild guesses-often with devastating results. In Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets, Bonner and coauthor Lila Rajiva show groupthink at work in an improbable array of instances throughout history and reveal why swimming against the current pays.Shares the deeper secrets of investing and pushes you to question what this means for your financial well-being Explains why people so often abandon good sense and good behavior to follow the crowd Offers concrete advice on how you can avoid the public spectacle of modern finance The authors' cautionary tale of bubble economies reveals how the gush of credit let loose by Alan Greenspan has wreaked havoc on our lives-but their thoughtful and always entertaining approach also offers some sound investing principles for avoiding the pitfalls of the public spectacle, thinking for yourself, and protecting your money, your sanity, and your soul.

The Value of Debt in Building Wealth: Creating Your Glide Path to a Healthy Financial L.I.F.E.


Thomas J. Anderson - 2016
    In The Value of Debt in Building Wealth, bestselling author Thomas J. Anderson encourages you to rethink that. You'll walk away from this book with an understanding of how you can use debt wisely to secure the financial future you envision for yourself and your family. Student loans, mortgages, lines of credit, and other forms of debt are all discussed in detail, with a focus on smart planning for those who are accumulating assets--and debt--now.Should you rent or buy? How important is liquidity? What is good versus bad debt? How much debt should you have? What debt-to-income and debt-to-asset ratios should you aim for? Fixed debt or floating debt? What's the best way of saving for college and retirement? These are big questions that deserve thorough answers because the choices you make now could influence the course of your life. This thought-provoking book will open your eyes to savvy financial strategies for achieving your goals faster and with healthier bank accounts.Explore strategies for smart debt management, explained by one of the nation's top financial advisors Gain an understanding of investment basics and key financial concepts you'll need to achieve your long-term goals Understand the risks of having debt and the potential risks of being debt-free Make financial decisions now that will maximize your wealth, freedom, and opportunity later This book is not about buying things you cannot afford. It is about liquidity, flexibility and optimizing your personal balance sheet. The Value of Debt in Building Wealth is full of ideas you can apply to your own situation--no matter what your current asset level. Read this book today and thank yourself later.

Minimalist Budget: Simple Strategies On How To Save More, Spend Less, And Curb Spending Temptation (Without Living On Ramen)


Zoe McKey - 2017
    Minimalist Budget will help you to turn your bloated expenses into a well-toned budget, spending on exactly what you need and nothing else. This book presents solutions for two major problems in our consumer society: (1) how to downsize your cravings without having to sacrifice the fun stuff, and (2) how to whip your finances into shape and follow a personalized budget. This is not a get rich quick book. But I can promise day-by-day, month-by-month, you’ll budget better and become richer as a consequence. Regardless of how much your income is we’ll find a way to budget, save, and increase your net worth. Since my youth, I’ve had to live on a budget that ranged from $100 to $200 a month if I was lucky. Even though I never knew how much I would have the next month, I was always able to have enough for my essential expenses, personal pleasures, and savings. If you’re tired of the false and impossible-to-follow promises of “finance gurus,” try out my simple, straightforward, easy-to-stick-to methods. Improve your spending habits: • Incorporate minimalism into your finances • How to avoid becoming a minimalist consumerist • Learn the psychological traps that make you overspend • Control your compulsive spending habits Feel financially secure every day: • Learn about two A-Z budgeting methods and how to make them work for you • Learn ratio-based budgeting and fixed-amount budgeting • Discover the best budgeting software programs • Design a bulletproof savings strategy to get out of debt, be prepared for emergencies, and set yourself up for retirement Stop hating your financial life: • Learn how to set SMART financial goals • Increase your self-confidence with budgeting • 50 small budgeting tips Financial education is not part of our educational system. It is normal that we don’t know how to budget when we step into the craziness we call adulthood. But it is not normal to stay ignorant about a field of life that (like it or not) guarantees our material survival. Money management is an essential skill for everybody who earns, shops or consumes. If you follow the budgeting tips in this book, you’ll be able to keep track of your finances. You’ll clearly know where your money goes, where it comes from and where can you save. You won’t feel stressed of running out of money unexpectedly, you’ll clear yourself out of debts and have savings for bigger expenses like a vacation, new car or unexpected events. Leave money struggles for yesterday. Grab a copy of Minimalist Budget by hitting buy now in the top right corner of this page.

Angelica Died


Jill Rowan - 2014
    Convinced that her Aunt Grace is fully aware but locked inside a helpless body, Angelica tries to discover what really happened to her. While visiting the hospital where Grace once worked as a nurse, Angelica has one of the strange hallucinations she's been experiencing since her mother's funeral. Only when she opens her eyes afterwards it's not 2013, it's 1965. She's not Angelica any more; she's Grace. And the journey is just beginning.

From Freedom To Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America


Gerry Spence - 1993
    In this underground bestseller, which has come to define Spence's political philosophy, he speaks out against the destructive forces in America today-forces of government and corporate tyranny that are robbing us of our freedom-and he warns us that time is running out.In a dramatic new chapter, presented for the first time in a trade paperback edition, Spence recounts in astonishing detail the government shoot-out at Ruby Ridge and the resulting trial of separatist Randy Weaver, revealing the important lessons we must learn from this tragic case.Finally, Spence makes the eloquent case that we, as Americans, have delivered our freedoms to new masters: corporate and governmental conglomerates, our biased court system, and the censored media. From Freedom to Slavery is an urgent work that urges us to resist this tyranny, a book that must be read and discussed by all concerned citizens of our troubled land.

alchemy of Money: THINK RICH INITIATIVES


Anand S - 2016
    It is important for every person to save for one’s retirement as one can expect to live for twenty years after one retires as life expectancy of an Indian is going up steadily due to lower infant mortality and better medical care. There is a complete absence of social security safety net for most Indians today, even for those working in Government sector, there is no inflation adjusted pension available anymore. I have tried to simplify the advantages and disadvantages involved in investing your savings in various asset classes. I have deliberately left out two of the most popular forms of investment among middle class Indians 1) Life insurance 2) Real estate Let us consider life insurance first most of us confuse insurance as an instrument of savings, it is not. We have this wrong view because of the tax breaks given to income tax assesses by the Central Government. Insurance is a product that mitigates risk and is sold by the rich to the middle class and is always skewed in the favour of the insurer rather than the insured. A substantial portion of the total money invested by you goes towards paying agent’s commission and premium for insuring you for the risk of mortality. The balance left out is invested in government securities and other securities. Hence the amount of money invested out of the total premium paid is less than half paid by the insurer. The return on money invested by the policy holder is less than half of the money he would have earned either in bonds or fixed deposits. A person who needs insurance is a person whose family will need support in the event of his untimely death. Alternately insurance is required for a person who has debt in form of mortgage and does not want to burden his family in the event of his passing. The product which covers these risks is called term insurance. One should not buy insurance to avoid taxes as there is better tax saving tools available. Real estate is also considered as a good investment by several retail investors but nothing can be further from the truth. Nobody makes money by buying plots in the middle of nowhere. The easy availability of mortgages from the nineties and the tax breaks given by the Central Government on housing loans has created an unparalleled boom in the residential market. There is now a painful correction process under way in that sector. The price of land is reflexively connected to availability of money. The lower the cost of money, greater the returns in real estate. Buying plots in the middle of nowhere is similar to buying lottery tickets as investment. Land cannot be liquidated immediately into cash at a short notice to meet urgent requirements. Cost of maintenance and protection of real estate from illegal occupation is prohibitive and time consuming. Verification of title deeds to the property is a complex process and needs sound legal advice. You should have a house to live and another to collect rent as rent is equivalent of inflation adjusted pension. The return on investment generated in the three different asset classes over 25 years would be in the following order 1) Equities 2) Gold and finally 3) Debt instruments. I enjoyed writing this book as a companion volume to my first book. It is my fond hope that you enjoy reading this book.

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.

Every Landlord's Tax Deduction Guide


Stephen Fishman - 2005
    This edition covers updates on the laws, numbers, and planning strategies. Illustrations.

End the Fed


Ron Paul - 2009
    But in END THE FED, Ron Paul draws on American history, economics, and fascinating stories from his own long political life to argue that the Fed is both corrupt and unconstitutional. It is inflating currency today at nearly a Weimar or Zimbabwe level, a practice that threatens to put us into an inflationary depression where $100 bills are worthless. What most people don't realize is that the Fed -- created by the Morgans and Rockefellers at a private club off the coast of Georgia -- is actually working against their own personal interests. Congressman Paul's urgent appeal to all citizens and officials tells us where we went wrong and what we need to do fix America's economic policy for future generations.

Dumb Money


Daniel Gross - 2009
    Companies are shutting down and laying off workers, 401ks are melting away, and the government is spending $700 billion dollars to bail out banks and financial institutions -- and that's only the beginning. The financial services industry, and the many industries that depend on it -- from housing to cars -- is in intensive care. So what happened? How did we get to this point of financial disaster? Is the economy just a huge, Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme? It is a complicated and confusing story -- but Daniel Gross of Newsweek has a special gift for making complicated matters easy to understand and even entertaining. In Dumb Money, he offers a guide to the debacle and to what the future may hold. This is not so much a book about who did what, though that's part of the story. Rather, it pieces together the building blocks of the debt-fueled economy, and distills the theory and personalities behind our late, lamented easy money culture. Dumb Money is a book that finally lays it all out in an engaging way, and might just help people invest their money smartly until the gloom passes.

Compassion Versus Guilt, and Other Essays: And Other Essays


Thomas Sowell - 1987
    A columnist for the Scripps-Howard News Service has compiled several of his short essays written for the common reader into a collection, covering such topics as affirmative action, media hype, and homosexual politics.

Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy


Matt Stoller - 2019
    A concentration of power, whether in the hands of a military dictator or a JP Morgan, was understood as autocratic and dangerous to individual liberty and democracy. This idea stretched back to the country’s founding. In the 1930s, people observed that the Great Depression was caused by financial concentration in the hands of a few whose misuse of their power induced a financial collapse. They drew on this tradition to craft the New Deal. In Goliath, Matt Stoller explains how authoritarianism and populism have returned to American politics for the first time in eighty years, as the outcome of the 2016 election shook our faith in democratic institutions. It has brought to the fore dangerous forces that many modern Americans never even knew existed. Today’s bitter recriminations and panic represent more than just fear of the future, they reflect a basic confusion about what is happening and the historical backstory that brought us to this moment. The true effects of populism, a shrinking middle class, and concentrated financial wealth are only just beginning to manifest themselves under the current administrations. The lessons of Stoller’s study will only grow more relevant as time passes. Building upon his viral article in The Atlantic, “How the Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul,” Stoller illustrates in rich detail how we arrived at this tenuous moment, and the steps we must take to create a new democracy.

Don't Give Your Work Away For Free


Thaddeus Cooper - 2014
    In this linear construct, you go to work for a week and at week’s end you are compensated for that work. The next week you do more work and are compensated for that work, and so on. This is a common agreement between employers and employees in many countries, including the United States. The purpose of this book is to challenge that construct. It is the author's intent to suggest a more profitable arrangement for the creator of the product — the worker. The notion is that one could work on a project for a certain amount of time but the product of that project could pay dividends for a longer term. One might work for a week and be paid for the product of that work every week for many years. Imagine how this construct would compound income week after week, project after project. At some point, with numerous streams of income from a growing number of completed projects, one would be able to discontinue taking on new projects if he or she desired, living off the residuals of the projects he or she created to that point. Indeed, one could take a vacation, still earning income from work he or she completed long ago. With the help of Dr. Frederick Von Greensburg, Thaddeus Cooper breaks down the concept of passive income and outlines a strategy for creating streams of this revenue to supplement or replace traditional income. A self-help book for the masses and a manifesto for the most creative among us, Don't Give Your Work Away For Free: A free ebook by Thaddeus Cooper is a MUST READ!

White Water Red Hot Lead: On Board U.S. Navy Swift Boats in Vietnam


Dan Daly - 2015
    The boats patrolled the coast and rivers of South Vietnam, with the average age of the crew being twenty-four. Their days consisted of deadly combat, intense lightning firefights, storms and many hidden dangers.This action-packed story of combat written by Dan Daly, a Vietnam combat veteran who was the Officer in Charge of PCF 76 makes you part of the Swift Boat crew. The six man crew of PCF 76 were volunteers from all over the United States, eager to serve their country in a highly unique type of duty not seen since the PT boats of WWII. This inexperienced and disparate group of men would meld into a combat team - a team that formed an unbreakable, lifelong bond.After training they were plunged into a 12 month tour of duty. Combat took place in the closest confines imaginable, where the enemy were hidden behind a passing sand dune or a single sniper could be concealed in an onshore bunker, mines might be submerged at every fork in the river. The enemy was all around you, hiding, waiting, while your fifty-foot Swift Boat works its way upriver. In many cases the rivers became so narrow there was barely room to maneuver or turn around. The only way out might be into a deadly ambush. Humor and a touch of romance relieve the tension in this thrilling ride with America's finest.

Bye Bye Banks?: How Retail Banks are Being Displaced, Diminished and Disintermediated by Tech Startups - and What They Can Do to Survive.


James Haycock - 2015
    Now the retail banking business model looks set to be transformed too. In Bye Bye Banks? James Haycock and Shane Richmond describe these startups, and to which areas of the banking industry they are laying siege. It shows that this assault is already well underway and that many incumbents are poised to be displaced, diminished and disintermediated. It draws on extensive research and on-and-off the record interviews with senior executives in some of the biggest banks. Haycock and Richmond conclude with the recommendation that traditional banks need to reinvent themselves by launching a ‘Beta Bank’: a lean, stand-alone organisation fit for the future for which they provide a ten-point operating model. This short book is a bold, urgent and timely analysis of the forces shaping the future of financial services. Its message to industry leaders in the sector could not be more simple: adapt or prepare to be disrupted. “This work accurately and concisely captures the effects of the disruption brought to the banking industry by the digital revolution. The comments by other banking and innovation professionals about their own experiences are particularly intriguing.” - Alessandro Hatami, former Innovation Executive at Lloyds Banking Group “James Haycock is a key voice for how the banking industry should and will change.” - Tom Hopkins, Product Innovation Director, Experian Consumer Services “If you are an incumbent retail bank, read it, get on with it, make it happen.” - Lee Sankey, former Group Design Director, Barclays