In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades. In Lords of Finance, we meet the neurotic and enigmatic Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, the xenophobic and suspicious Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, the arrogant yet brilliant Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose façade of energy and drive masked a deeply wounded and overburdened man. After the First World War, these central bankers attempted to reconstruct the world of international finance. Despite their differences, they were united by a common fear—that the greatest threat to capitalism was inflation— and by a common vision that the solution was to turn back the clock and return the world to the gold standard. For a brief period in the mid-1920s they appeared to have succeeded. The world’s currencies were stabilized and capital began flowing freely across the globe. But beneath the veneer of boom-town prosperity, cracks started to appear in the financial system. The gold standard that all had believed would provide an umbrella of stability proved to be a straitjacket, and the world economy began that terrible downward spiral known as the Great Depression. As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, the Great Depression and the year 1929 remain the benchmark for true financial mayhem. Offering a new understanding of the global nature of financial crises, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, of their fallibility, and of the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.

    When you base your purchase decisions on isolated facts and don't take the time to thoroughly understand the businesses you are buying, stock-price swings and third-party opinion can lead to costly investment mistakes. Your decision making at this point becomes dangerous because it is dominated by emotions. The Investment Checklist has been designed to help you develop an in-depth research process, from generating and researching investment ideas to assessing the quality of a business and its management team.The purpose of The Investment Checklist is to help you implement a principled investing strategy through a series of checklists. In it, a thorough and comprehensive research process is made simpler through the use of straightforward checklists that will allow you to identify quality investment opportunities. Each chapter contains detailed demonstrations of how and where to find the information necessary to answer fundamental questions about investment opportunities. Real-world examples of how investment managers and CEOs apply these universal principles are also included and help bring the concepts to life. These checklists will help you consider a fuller range of possibilities in your investment strategy, enhance your ability to value your investments by giving you a holistic view of the business and each of its moving parts, identify the risks you are taking, and much more.Offers valuable insights into one of the most important aspects of successful investing, in-depth research Written in an accessible style that allows aspiring investors to easily understand and apply the concepts covered Discusses how to think through your investment decisions more carefully With The Investment Checklist, you'll quickly be able to ascertain how well you understand your investments by the questions you are able to answer, or not answer, without making the costly mistakes that usually hinder other investors.

    Neill, a potent factor behind the economic booms and busts that blight our civilization.  The "Mississippi Bubble", Holland's incredible "Tulipmania" and the New York stock market crash of 1929 are historic examples of disasters magnified and hastened by the pressure of mass opinion.  Neill describes these occurrences in detail and tells the reader how to avoid and recognize the dangers that "following the pack" can pose to the discerning investor.

    

    Persuasively written by author, investment strategist, and geopolitical analyst Marko Papic, the book applies a novel framework for making sense of the cacophony of geopolitical risks with the eye towards generating investment-relevant insights.Geopolitical Alpha posits that investors should ignore the media-hyped narratives, insights from smoke-filled rooms, and most of their political consultants and, instead, focus exclusively on the measurable, material constraints facing policymakers. In the tug-of-war between policymaker preferences and their constraints, the latter always win out in the end. Papic uses a wealth of examples from the past decade to illustrate how one can use his constraint-framework to generate Geopolitical Alpha. In the process, the book discusses:What paradigm shifts will drive investment returns over the next decade Why investment and corporate professionals can no longer treat geopolitics as an exogenous risk How to ignore the media and focus on what drives market narratives that generate returns Perfect for investors, C-suite executives, and investment professionals, Geopolitical Alpha belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the intersection of geopolitics, economics, and finance.

    His instructions were simple. There was only one rule. They could only invest in their ten best ideas to make money.It seemed like a foolproof plan to make a lot of money. What could possibly go wrong? These were some of the greatest minds at work in the markets today - from top European hedge fund managers to Wall Street legends.But most of the investors' great ideas actually lost money. Shockingly, a toss of a coin would have been a better method of choosing whether or not to invest in a stock.Nevertheless, despite being wrong most of the time, many of these investors still ended up making a lot of money.How could they be wrong most of the time and still be profitable? The answer lay in their hidden habits of execution, which until now have only been guessed at from the outside world.This book lays bare those secret habits for the first time, explaining them with real-life data, case studies and stories taken from Freeman-Shor's unique position of managing these investors on a day-to-day basis.A riveting read for investors of every level, this book shows you exactly what to do and what not to do when your big idea is losing or winning - and demonstrates conclusively why the most important thing about investing is always the art of execution.

    In his most important work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), Keynes critiqued the laissez-faire policies of his day, particularly the proposition that a normally functioning market economy would bring full employment. Keynes's forward-looking work transformed economics from merely a descriptive and analytic discipline into one that is policy oriented. For Keynes, enlightened government intervention in a nation's economic life was essential to curbing what he saw as the inherent inequalities and instabilities of unregulated capitalism.

    Based on a comprehensive, large-sample empirical analysis, this book reports financial documents' continuous deterioration in relevance to investors' decisions. An enlightening discussion details the reasons why accounting is losing relevance in today's market, backed by numerous examples with real-world impact. Beyond simply identifying the problem, this report offers a solution--the Value Creation Report--and demonstrates its utility in key industries. New indicators focus on strategy and execution to identify and evaluate a company's true value-creating resources for a more up-to-date approach to critical investment decision-making.While entire industries have come to rely on financial reports for vital information, these documents are flawed and insufficient when it comes to the way investors and lenders work in the current economic climate. This book demonstrates an alternative, giving you a new framework for more informed decision making.Discover a new, comprehensive system of economic indicators Focus on strategic, value-creating resources in company valuation Learn how traditional financial documents are quickly losing their utility Find a path forward with actionable, up-to-date information Major corporate decisions, such as restructuring and M&A, are predicated on financial indicators of profitability and asset/liabilities values. These documents move mountains, so what happens if they're based on faulty indicators that fail to show the true value of the company? The End of Accounting and the Path Forward for Investors and Managers shows you the reality and offers a new blueprint for more accurate valuation.

    Sowell reveals the general principles behind any kind of economy-capitalist, socialist, feudal, and so on. In readable language, he shows how to critique economic policies in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the goals they proclaim. With clear explanations of the entire field, from rent control and the rise and fall of businesses to the international balance of payments, this is the first book for anyone who wishes to understand how the economy functions.

    The discoveries made, however, are so far-reaching that a large portion of economics literature will have to be modified to accommodate another half to the macro economic spectrum of possibilities that conventional theorists have overlooked. In particular, Japan's Great Recession showed that when faced with a massive fall in asset prices, companies typically jettison the conventional goal of profit maximization and move to minimize debt in order to restore their credit ratings. This shift in corporate priority, however, has huge theoretical as well as practical implications and opens up a whole new field of study. For example, the new insight can explain fully the precise mechanism of prolonged depression and liquidity trap which conventional economics - based on corporate profit maximization - has so far failed to offer as a convincing explanation. The author developed the idea of yin and yang business cycles where the conventional world of profit maximization is the yang and the world of balance sheet recession, where companies are minimizing debt, is the yin. Once so divided, many varied theories developed in macro economics since the 1930s can be nicely categorized into a single comprehensive theory, i.e., the Holy Grail of macro economics The policy implication of this new discovery is immense in that the conventional aversion to fiscal policy in favor of monetary policy will have to be completely reversed when the economy is in the yin phase. The theoretical implications are also immense in the sense that the economics profession will no longer have to rely so much on various rigidities to explain recessions that have become the standard practice within the so-called New Keynesian economics of the last twenty years.

    We retired from full-time work at the age of 43 and have been living the good life ever since – and by good life we mean a life rich with travel and adventure rather than luxury and extravagance. In this book we share with you the roadmap we followed to get from full-time work to financial independence in less than 15 years. If we can do it, so can you! What makes this book different from all the other books out there on early retirement? We think it's the amount of personal financial detail we provide. We don’t hold back! You can use this information as a kind of financial yardstick to measure what you can achieve in your own life. If we can empower you to stop dreaming and start planning, to stop wishing and start willing your early retirement into existence, we’ll have done what we set out to do in this book.

    Matt’s book shows you how to do that. It may be the missing link you’ve been looking for.” —William J. O’Neil, Investor’s Business Daily Founder and Chairman “Getting Started takes the guesswork out of investing. Anyone can use these routines and checklists to become a successful investor.” —Amy Smith, How to Make Money in Stocks—Success Stories Through both bull and bear markets, Investor’s Business Daily’s CAN SLIM® Investment System has consistently been the #1 growth strategy, according to the American Association of Individual Investors. How to Make Money in Stocks—Getting Started shows you how to put the CAN SLIM System to work for you. Using an easy-to-follow game plan designed for busy people, you’ll discover: 2 simple rules to protect your money 3 critical factors to consider before you buy Buying & Selling Checklists to help you capture – and keep – solid gains Easy-to-follow routines How to spot—and deal with—major changes in market direction Action Steps and online videos to quickly start using what you learn Getting Started is the latest addition to the bestselling How to Make Money in Stocks series launched by CAN SLIM creator and Investor’s Business Daily founder William J. O’Neil. Millions of investors have used O’Neil’s strategy to build financial peace of mind. Now it’s your turn! So whether you’re new to the stock market and a little nervous about jumping in—or if you’ve been investing for awhile, but aren’t yet achieving the kind of results you want—How to Make Money in Stocks—Getting Started gives you a clear, step-by-step path to investing success.

    As a guy who barely made a living as a river guide, I considered the whole process pretty impenetrable, and I was convinced that to do it right you had to make it a full-time job. Me, I was more interested in having full-time fun.So I was tempted to do what you’re probably doing right now: letting some mutual fund manager worry about growing your nest egg. Let me tell you why that decision could one day make you absolutely miserable. The fact is, because of natural market cycles, the mutual fund industry is likely to soon be facing twenty years of flat returns. That means that if you’ve got your nest egg tucked away in funds—especially the type found in most 401ks—your egg won’t get much bigger than it is now. Translation: Get ready for a retirement filled with lots of cold cuts, plenty of quality TV-watching time, and a place to live that’s too small to accommodate your visiting kids.In this book I’ll show you how I turned $1,000 into $1 million in only five years, and then proceeded to make many millions more. I came to investing as a person who wasn’t great at math, possessed zero extra cash, and wanted a life—not an extra three hours of work to do every day.Fortunately, I was introduced to The Rule.Rule #1, as famed investor Warren Buffett will tell you, is don’t lose money. Through an intriguing process that I’ll clarify in this book, not losing money results in making more money than you ever imagined. What it comes down to is buying shares of companies only when the numbers—and the intangibles—are on your side. If that sounds too good to be true, it’s because the mind-set I’ll be introducing you to leads not to bets but to certainties. Believe me, if there were anything genius-level about this, I’d still be a river guide collecting unemployment much of the year.Part of the secret is thinking of yourself as a business owner rather than a stock investor. Part is taking advantage of today’s new Internet tools, which drastically reduce the “homework factor.” (We’re talking a few minutes, tops.) Part is knowing the only five numbers that really count in valuing a potential investment. And part—maybe the most important part—is using the risk-free Rule #1 approach to consistently pay a mere 50 cents to buy a dollar’s worth of a business.What I won’t waste your time with is fluff: a lot of vague parables reminding you of what you already know and leaving you exactly where you started. This is the real deal, folks: a start-to-finish, one-baby-step-at-a-time approach that will allow you to retire ten years sooner than you planned, with more creature comforts than you ever imagined.Also available as a Random House AudioBook and eBook.

    The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile,and The Bed of Procrustes.

    Arcane credit derivative bets are now well into the tens of trillions. According to Charles R. Morris, the astronomical leverage at investment banks and their hedge fund and private equity clients virtually guarantees massive disruption in global markets. The crash, when it comes, will have no firebreaks. A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy will come crashing down with it.The Trillion Dollar Meltdown explains how we got here, and what is about to happen. After the crash our priorities will be quite different. But things are likely to get worse before they better. Whether you are an active investor, a homeowner, or a contributor to your 401(k) plan, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown will be indispensable to understanding the gross excess that has put the world economy on the brink--and what the new landscape will look like.