The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition
Jonathan Tepper - 2018
Digital monopolies like Google, Facebook and Amazon act as gatekeepers to the digital world. Amazon is capturing almost all online shopping dollars. We have the illusion of choice, but for most critical decisions, we have only one or two companies, when it comes to high speed Internet, health insurance, medical care, mortgage title insurance, social networks, Internet searches, or even consumer goods like toothpaste. Every day, the average American transfers a little of their pay check to monopolists and oligopolists. The solution is vigorous anti-trust enforcement to return America to a period where competition created higher economic growth, more jobs, higher wages and a level playing field for all. The Myth of Capitalism is the story of industrial concentration, but it matters to everyone, because the stakes could not be higher. It tackles the big questions of: why is the US becoming a more unequal society, why is economic growth anemic despite trillions of dollars of federal debt and money printing, why the number of start-ups has declined, and why are workers losing out.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - 2001
The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile,and The Bed of Procrustes.
An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk
Allison Schrager - 2019
But those people haven't met Allison Schrager, an economist and award-winning journalist who has spent her career examining how people manage risk in their lives and careers.Whether we realize it or not, we all take risks large and small every day. Even the most cautious among us cannot opt out--the question is always which risks to take, not whether to take them at all. What most of us don't know is how to measure those risks and maximize the chances of getting what we want out of life.In An Economist Walks into a Brothel, Schrager equips readers with five principles for dealing with risk, principles used by some of the world's most interesting risk takers. For instance, she interviews a professional poker player about how to stay rational when the stakes are high, a paparazzo in Manhattan about how to spot different kinds of risk, horse breeders in Kentucky about how to diversify risk and minimize losses, and a war general who led troops in Iraq about how to prepare for what we don't see coming.When you start to look at risky decisions through Schrager's new framework, you can increase the upside to any situation and better mitigate the downside.
The History of Money
Jack Weatherford - 1997
In his most widely appealing book yet, one of today's leading authors of popular anthropology looks at the intriguing history and peculiar nature of money, tracing our relationship with it from the time when primitive men exchanged cowrie shells to the imminent arrival of the all-purpose electronic cash card.
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.
The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
Zachary D. Carter - 2020
Writing a full two years before Keynes would revolutionize the economics world with the publication of The General Theory, Woolf nevertheless found herself unable to condense her friend's already-extraordinary life into anything less than twenty-five themes, which she jotted down at the opening of her homage: "Politics. Art. Dancing. Letters. Economics. Youth. The Future. Glands. Genealogies. Atlantis. Mortality. Religion. Cambridge. Eton. The Drama. Society. Truth. Pigs. Sussex. The History of England. America. Optimism. Stammer. Old Books. Hume."Keynes was not only an economist, as he is remembered today, but the preeminent anti-authoritarian thinker of the twentieth century, a man who devoted his life to the belief that art and ideas could conquer war and deprivation. A moral philosopher, political theorist, and statesman, Keynes immersed himself in a creative milieu filled with ballerinas and literary icons as he developed his own innovative and at times radical thought, reinventing Enlightenment liberalism for the harrowing crises of his day--which included two world wars and an economic collapse that challenged the legitimacy of democratic government itself. The Price of Peace follows Keynes from intimate turn-of-the-century parties in London's riotous Bloomsbury art scene to the fevered negotiations in Paris that shaped the Treaty of Versailles, through stock market crashes and currency crises to diplomatic breakthroughs in the mountains of New Hampshire and wartime ballet openings at Covent Garden.In this riveting biography, veteran journalist Zachary D. Carter unearths the lost legacy of one of history's most important minds. John Maynard Keynes's vibrant, deeply human vision of democracy, art, and the good life has been obscured by technical debates, but in The Price of Peace, Carter revives a forgotten set of ideas with the power to reinvent national government and reframe the principles of international diplomacy in our own time.
Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle
John Rolfe - 2000
For behind the walls of Wall Street's firms lies a stratum of stunted, overworked, abused, and in the end, very well-compensated, but very frustrated men and women. Monkey Business takes readers behind the scenes at Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette (DLJ), one of Wall Street's hottest firms of the 90s, from the interview process to the courting of clients to bonus time. It's a glimpse of a side of the business the financial periodicals don't talk about -- 20-hour work days, trips across the country where associates do nothing except carry the pitch book, strip clubs at night, inflated salaries, and high-powered, unforgettable personalities.Monkey Business provides readers with a first-class education in the real life of an investment banker. But best of all, it is an extremely funny read about two young men who, on their way towards achieving the American dream, quickly realized they were selling their souls to get there."
Fool's Gold
Gillian Tett - 2009
Drawing on exclusive access to J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and a tightly bonded team of bankers known on Wall Street as the "Morgan Mafia," as well as in-depth interviews with dozens of other key players, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Tett brings to life in gripping detail how the Morgan team's bold ideas for a whole new kind of financial alchemy helped to ignite a revolution in banking, and how that revolution escalated wildly out of control.The deeply reported and lively narrative takes readers behind the scenes, to the inner sanctums of elite finance and to the secretive reaches of what came to be known as the "shadow banking" world. The story begins with the intense Morgan brainstorming session in 1994 beside a pool in Boca Raton, where the team cooked up a dazzling new idea for the exotic financial product known as credit derivatives. That idea would rip around the banking world, catapult Morgan to the top of the turbocharged derivatives trade, and fuel an extraordinary banking boom that seemed to have unleashed banks from ages-old constraints of risk.But when the Morgan team's derivatives dream collided with the housing boom, and was perverted -- through hubris, delusion, and sheer greed -- by titans of banking that included Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, and the thundering herd at Merrill Lynch -- even as J.P. Morgan itself stayed well away from the risky concoctions others were peddling -- catastrophe followed. Tett's access to Dimon and the J.P. Morgan leaders who so skillfully steered their bank away from the wild excesses of others sheds invaluable light not only on the untold story of how they engineered their bank's escape from carnage but also on how possible it was for the larger banking world, regulators, and rating agencies to have spotted, and heeded, the terrible risks of a meltdown.A tale of blistering brilliance and willfully blind ambition, "Fool's Gold" is both a rare journey deep inside the arcane and wildly competitive world of high finance and a vital contribution to understanding how the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression was perpetrated.
Smart Investors Keep It Simple: Investing in dividend stocks for passive income
Giovanni Rigters - 2015
You’ve probably heard both good and bad things about it. Still, you want to learn more about the stock market. It could also be that you want to start investing but don’t know where to begin or how much to invest. If you’re already investing, you want to learn better ways to grow your investments, because you want to be more confident about your financial future. Up until now, you probably didn’t have enough time to learn about investing and it might seem too confusing, because there is so much information out there about investing. You also don’t want to lose your money or don’t have enough money to begin investing. What if you had the confidence to start investing on your own, so you could show off your investment performance to family and friends? Leave the stress of an insecure financial future behind you and create sustainable wealth, which you can pass down to your family. In this book I give you a quick overview about what you need to know about the stock market, how to begin, what to do if you don’t have enough cash, how to generate passive income, and how to analyze companies. I also give you a list of companies I personally invest in and I try to answer all the questions you might have that are stopping you from getting started or progressing in your investing journey. I'll show you why you need to watch out with investment vehicles such as the 401K and index funds. This book is a quick read and great to keep as a reference. Best of all, you can get started immediately after reading it. **Don’t wait and buy the book now. It’s on sale, but the price will increase in the near future.**
The Wealthy Barber Returns
David Chilton - 2011
While you're at it, learn a thing or two about your personal motivation and how to point it in the right direction. And laugh your socks off, too! I thoroughly enjoyed this book!"Gail Vaz-Oxlade, TV Host of Til Debt Do Us Part and Financial Author"The Task Force on Financial Literacy can stop dithering. All it has to do is distribute Dave Chilton's long-awaited The Wealthy Barber Returns."Jonathan Chevreau National Post Columnist and Author of Findependence"Very funny. Very smart. This fast-paced journey through the world of personal finance will help a lot of people. I loved it!" Amanda Lang, CBC Senior Business Correspondent"A simple plan for a better financial future: Read this book. It's down to earth, fun to read and wise to all the mistakes people make in managing money."Rob Carrick, Personal Finance Columnist, The Globe and Mail
Why We Want You To Be Rich: Two Men, One Message
Donald J. Trump - 2006
Kiyosaki and celebrity rich man Donald J. Trump join forces to come to the aid of America's shrinking middle class. These thriving multimillionaires give advice designed to help average readers expand their wealth in the harsh economy. Firm steps towards financial literacy.From book cover:The world is facing many challenges and one of them is financial. The entitlement mentality is epidemic, creating people who expect their countries, employers, or families to take care of them. Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki, both successful businessmen, are natural teachers and have joined forces to address these challenges. They believe you cannot solve money problems with money. You can only solve money problems with financial education. Trump and Kiyosaki want to teach you to be rich."Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.Teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."They each could have written a book on the subject, but they chose instead to write a book together because of their shared passion for education and their desire to bring emphasis to the importance of financial education. In addition they have designated a portion of the profits from each book to be donated to charitable and educational organizations that also support financial education.
Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
Milton Friedman - 1980
In this classic discussion, Milton and Rose Friedman explain how our freedom has been eroded and our affluence undermined through the explosion of laws, regulations, agencies, and spending in Washington. This important analysis reveals what has gone wrong in America in the past and what is necessary for our economic health to flourish.
Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance
Nouriel Roubini - 2010
Renowned economist Nouriel Roubini electrified his profession and the larger financial community by predicting the current crisis well in advance of anyone else. Unlike most in his profession who treat economic disasters as freakish once-in-a-lifetime events without clear cause, Roubini, after decades of careful research around the world, realized that they were both probable and predictable. Armed with an unconventional blend of historical analysis and global economics, Roubini has forced politicians, policy makers, investors, and market watchers to face a long-neglected truth: financial systems are inherently fragile and prone to collapse. Drawing on the parallels from many countries and centuries, Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm, a professor of economic history and a "New York Times Magazine" writer, show that financial cataclysms are as old and as ubiquitous as capitalism itself. The last two decades alone have witnessed comparable crises in countries as diverse as Mexico, Thailand, Brazil, Pakistan, and Argentina. All of these crises-not to mention the more sweeping cataclysms such as the Great Depression-have much in common with the current downturn. Bringing lessons of earlier episodes to bear on our present predicament, Roubini and Mihm show how we can recognize and grapple with the inherent instability of the global financial system, understand its pressure points, learn from previous episodes of "irrational exuberance," pinpoint the course of global contagion, and plan for our immediate future. Perhaps most important, the authors-considering theories, statistics, and mathematical models with the skepticism that recent history warrants explain how the world's economy can get out of the mess we're in, and stay out. In Roubini's shadow, economists and investors are increasingly realizing that they can no longer afford to consider crises the black swans of financial history. A vital and timeless book, "Crisis Economics" proves calamities to be not only predictable but also preventable and, with the right medicine, curable."
The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future
Jeff Booth - 2020
The Coffeehouse Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get On with Your Life
Bill Schultheis - 1998
He had discovered that when you simplify your investment decisions, you end up getting better returns. As a bonus, you gain more time for family, friends, and other pursuits.The Coffeehouse Investor explains why we should stop thinking about top-rated stocks and mutual funds, shifts in interest rates, and predictions for the economy. Stop trying to beat the stock market average, which few “experts” ever do. Instead, just remember three simple principles: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And save for a rainy day.By focusing more on your passions and creativity and less on the daily ups and downs, you will actually build more wealth—and improve the quality of your life at the same time.