Global Value: How to Spot Bubbles, Avoid Market Crashes, and Earn Big Returns in the Stock Market


Mebane T. Faber - 2014
    Is it possible for investors to identify emerging bubbles and then profit from their inflation? Likewise, can investors avoid the bursting of these bubbles, and the extreme volatility and losses found in their aftermath to survive to invest another day? Over 70 years ago, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd proposed valuing stocks with earnings smoothed across multiple years. Robert Shiller later popularized this method with his version of the cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio in the late 1990s and correctly issued a timely warning of poor stock returns to follow in the coming years. We apply this valuation metric across more than 40 foreign markets and find it both practical and useful. Indeed, we witness even greater examples of bubbles and busts abroad than in the United States. We then create a trading system to build global stock portfolios, and find significant outperformance by selecting markets based on relative and absolute valuation.

Crying With Laughter: My Life Story


Bob Monkhouse - 1993
    One of Britain's most enduring and famous comedians tells us in his own inimitable style the fascinating and often hilarious story of his life. From disclosures of very painful personal tragedies to extraordinary and outrageously funny anecdotes about the stars he knew, his confessions are blisteringly honest, touching - and often shocking. Crying With Laughter combines heartache with hilarity, sexy showbiz revelations with genuinely moving tales of the hard times, and typically funny jokes with sobering personal reflections, to create a passionate, witty and sparkling account of an extraordinary man's extraordinary life.

Bean Counters: The Triumph of the Accountants and How They Broke Capitalism


Richard Brooks - 2018
    Up in the high six figures, an average partner salary rivals that of a Premier League footballer. But how has the seemingly humdrum profession of accountancy got to this level? And what is the price we pay for their excesses?Leading investigative journalist Richard Brooks charts the profession's rise to global influence and offers a gripping exposé of the accountancy industry. From underpinning global tax avoidance to corrupting world football, Bean Counters reveals how the accountants have used their central role in the economy to sell management consultancy services that send billions in fees its way. A compelling history informed by numerous insider interviews, this is essential reading for anyone interested in how our economy works and the future of accountancy.

Good to Great Summarized for Busy People


James C. Collins - 2013
    Good to Great Summarized for Busy People

10 1/2 lessons from Experience: Perspectives on Fund Management


Paul Marshall - 2020
    

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.

Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think


Bryan Caplan - 2011
    Parents invest more time and money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run. These revelations have surprising implications for how we parent and how we spend time with our kids. The big lesson: Mold your kids less and enjoy your life more. Your kids will still turn out fine.Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is a book of practical big ideas. How can parents be happier? What can they change--and what do they need to just accept? Which of their worries can parents safely forget? Above all, what is the right number of kids for you to have? You'll never see kids or parenthood the same way again.

The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor


William Easterly - 2014
    Yet all too often, experts recommend solutions that fix immediate problems without addressing the systemic political factors that created them in the first place. Further, they produce an accidental collusion with "benevolent autocrats,” leaving dictators with yet more power to violate the rights of the poor.In The Tyranny of Experts, economist William Easterly, bestselling author of The White Man’s Burden, traces the history of the fight against global poverty, showing not only how these tactics have trampled the individual freedom of the world’s poor, but how in doing so have suppressed a vital debate about an alternative approach to solving poverty: freedom. Presenting a wealth of cutting-edge economic research, Easterly argues that only a new model of development—one predicated on respect for the individual rights of people in developing countries, that understands that unchecked state power is the problem and not the solution —will be capable of ending global poverty once and for all.

The End of Poverty


Jeffrey D. Sachs - 2005
    Sachs is renowned for his work around the globe advising economies in crisis. Now a classic of its genre, The End of Poverty distills more than thirty years of experience to offer a uniquely informed vision of the steps that can transform impoverished countries into prosperous ones. Marrying vivid storytelling with rigorous analysis, Sachs lays out a clear conceptual map of the world economy. Explaining his own work in Bolivia, Russia, India, China, and Africa, he offers an integrated set of solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that challenge the world's poorest countries.   Ten years after its initial publication, The End of Poverty remains an indispensible and influential work. In this 10th anniversary edition, Sachs presents an extensive new foreword assessing the progress of the past decade, the work that remains to be done, and how each of us can help. He also looks ahead across the next fifteen years to 2030, the United Nations' target date for ending extreme poverty, offering new insights and recommendations.

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty


Abhijit V. Banerjee - 2011
    But much of their work is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, harmful misperceptions at worst.Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab, is being carried out in dozens of countries. Drawing on this and their 15 years of research from Chile to India, Kenya to Indonesia, they have identified wholly new aspects of the behavior of poor people, their needs, and the way that aid or financial investment can affect their lives. Their work defies certain presumptions: that microfinance is a cure-all, that schooling equals learning, that poverty at the level of 99 cents a day is just a more extreme version of the experience any of us have when our income falls uncomfortably low.This important book illuminates how the poor live, and offers all of us an opportunity to think of a world beyond poverty.Learn more at www.pooreconomics.com

A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold (Peter L. Bernstein's Finance Classics)


Peter L. Bernstein - 1964
    Now, with classic titles such as Economist on Wall Street, A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold, and The Price of Prosperity--which have forewords by financial luminaries and new introductions by the author--you can enjoy some of the best of Bernstein in his earlier Wall Street days. With the proliferation of financial instruments, new areas of instability, and innovative capital market strategies, many economists and investors have lost sight of the fundamentals of the financial system--its strengths as well as its weaknesses. A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold takes you back to the beginning and sorts out all the pieces.Peter Bernstein skillfully addresses how and why commercial banks lend and invest, where money comes from, how it moves from hand to hand, and the critical role of interest rates. He explores the Federal Reserve System and the consequences of the Fed's actions on the overall economy. But this book is not just about the past. Bernstein's novel perspective on gold and the dollar is critical for today's decision makers, as he provides extensive views on the future of money, banking, and gold in the world economy.This illuminating story about the heart of our economic system is essential reading at a time when developments in finance are more important than ever.

Homewreckers


Aaron Glantz - 2019
    Two years before the housing market collapsed in 2008, Donald Trump looked forward to a crash: “I sort of hope that happens because then people like me would go in and buy,” he said. But our future president wasn’t alone. While millions of Americans suffered financial loss, tycoons pounced to heartlessly seize thousands of homes—their profiteering made even easier because, as prize-winning investigative reporter Aaron Glantz reveals in Homewreckers, they often used taxpayer money—and the Obama administration’s promise to cover their losses.In Homewreckers, Glantz recounts the transformation of straightforward lending into a morass of slivered and combined mortgage “products” that could be bought and sold, accompanied by a shift in priorities and a loosening of regulations and laws that made it good business to lend money to those who wouldn’t be able to repay. Among the men who laughed their way to the bank: Trump cabinet members Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, Trump pal and confidant Tom Barrack, and billionaire Republican cash cow Steve Schwarzman. Homewreckers also brilliantly weaves together the stories of those most ravaged by the housing crisis. The result is an eye-opening expose of the greed that decimated millions and enriched a gluttonous few.

The Age of Deleveraging


A. Gary Shilling - 2010
    Shilling explains in clear language and compelling logic why the world economy will struggle for several more years and what investors can do to protect and grow their wealth in the difficult times ahead. The investment strategies that worked for last 25 years will not work in the next 10 years. Shilling advises readers to avoid broad exposure to stocks, real estate, and commodities and to focus on high-quality bonds, high-dividend stocks, and consumer staple and food stocks. Written by one of today's best forecasters of economic trends-twice voted by Institutional Investor as Wall Street's top economist Clearly explains what to invest in, what to avoid, and how to cope with a deflationary, slow-growth economy Demonstrates how Shilling has been consistently right about major economic trends since he began forecasting in the early 1980s Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, this timely guide lays out a convincing case for why investors need to be prepared for a long period of weak growth and deflation-not inflation-and what you can do to prosper in the difficult times ahead.

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa


Dambisa Moyo - 2009
    Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much worse.In Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa today and unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth. In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined—and millions continue to suffer. Provocatively drawing a sharp contrast between African countries that have rejected the aid route and prospered and others that have become aid-dependent and seen poverty increase, Moyo illuminates the way in which overreliance on aid has trapped developing nations in a vicious circle of aid dependency, corruption, market distortion, and further poverty, leaving them with nothing but the “need” for more aid. Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing development of the world’s poorest countries that guarantees economic growth and a significant decline in poverty—without reliance on foreign aid or aid-related assistance.Dead Aid is an unsettling yet optimistic work, a powerful challenge to the assumptions and arguments that support a profoundly misguided development policy in Africa. And it is a clarion call to a new, more hopeful vision of how to address the desperate poverty that plagues millions.

On Liberty


Shami Chakrabarti - 2014
    The West's response to 9/11 has morphed into a period of exception. Governments have decided that the rule of law and human rights are often too costly. In On Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti - who joined Liberty, the UK's leading civil rights organization, on 10 September 2001 - explores why our fundamental rights and freedoms are indispensable. She shows, too, the unprecedented pressures those rights are under today. Drawing on her own work in high-profile campaigns, from privacy laws to anti-terror legislation, Chakrabarti shows the threats to our democratic institutions and why our rights are paramount in upholding democracy.