Book picks similar to
The Sages: Warren Buffett, George Soros, Paul Volcker, and the Maelstrom of Markets by Charles R. Morris
business
investing
finance
economics
The Curse of Cash
Kenneth S. Rogoff - 2016
In The Curse of Cash, Kenneth Rogoff, one of the world's leading economists, makes a persuasive and fascinating case for an idea that until recently would have seemed outlandish: getting rid of most paper money.Even as people in advanced economies are using less paper money, there is more cash in circulation--a record $1.4 trillion in U.S. dollars alone, or $4,200 for every American, mostly in $100 bills. And the United States is hardly exceptional. So what is all that cash being used for? The answer is simple: a large part is feeding tax evasion, corruption, terrorism, the drug trade, human trafficking, and the rest of a massive global underground economy.As Rogoff shows, paper money can also cripple monetary policy. In the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, central banks have been unable to stimulate growth and inflation by cutting interest rates significantly below zero for fear that it would drive investors to abandon treasury bills and stockpile cash. This constraint has paralyzed monetary policy in virtually every advanced economy, and is likely to be a recurring problem in the future.The Curse of Cash offers a plan for phasing out most paper money--while leaving small-denomination bills and coins in circulation indefinitely--and addresses the issues the transition will pose, ranging from fears about privacy and price stability to the need to provide subsidized debit cards for the poor.While phasing out the bulk of paper money will hardly solve the world's problems, it would be a significant step toward addressing a surprising number of very big ones. Provocative, engaging, and backed by compelling original arguments and evidence, The Curse of Cash is certain to spark widespread debate.
Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States
Michael Lind - 2012
Yet technology-driven change leads to growing misalignment between an innovative economy and anachronistic legal and political structures until the gap is closed by the modernization of America's institutions—often amid upheavals such as the Civil War and Reconstruction and the Great Depression and World War II.When the U.S. economy has flourished, government and business, labor and universities, have worked together in a never-ending project of economic nation building. As the United States struggles to emerge from the Great Recession, Michael Lind clearly demonstrates that Americans, since the earliest days of the republic, have reinvented the American economy - and have the power to do so again.
Everyone Believes It; Most Will Be Wrong: Motley Thoughts on Investing and the Economy
Morgan Housel - 2011
Why are experts so bad at making predictions? Why do rich people take outsized risks to reach for money they don't need? Is America's manufacturing base really dwindling? What did we learn about risk after 9/11? Those questions and many more are tackled in these 21 irreverent and contrarian essays, which will have readers thinking differently about the conventional wisdom.
Sam Walton: Made In America
Sam Walton - 1992
And it's a story about believing in your idea even when maybe some other folks don't, and about sticking to your guns." It's the story of how Walton parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, he never lost the common touch. Here Walton tells his extraordinary story in his own inimitable words. Genuinely modest, but always sure of his ambitions and achievements, Walton shares his thinking in a candid, straight-from-the-shoulder style."Here is an extraordinary success story about a man whose empire was built not with smoke and mirrors, but with good old-fashioned elbow grease."
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.
There's Always Something to Do: The Peter Cundill Investment Approach
Christopher Risso-gill - 2011
In a seamlessly assembled narrative drawn from interviews, speeches, and exclusive access to the daily journal Cundill kept for forty-five years, Christopher Risso-Gill outlines Cundill's investment approach and provides accounts of his investments and the analytical process that led to their selection. A book for everyday investors as much as professional investors and investment gurus, There's Always Something to Do offers a compelling perspective on global financial markets and on how we can avoid their worst pitfalls and grow our hard-earned capital.
Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty
Muhammad Yunus - 1991
His dream is the total eradication of poverty from the world. In 1983, against the advice of banking and government officials, Yunus established Grameen, a bank devoted to providing the poorest of Bangladesh with minuscule loans. Grameen Bank, based on the belief that credit is a basic human right, not the privilege of a fortunate few, now provides over 2.5 billion dollars of micro-loans to more than two million families in rural Bangladesh. Ninety-four percent of Yunus's clients are women, and repayment rates are near 100 percent. Around the world, micro-lending programs inspired by Grameen are blossoming, with more than three hundred programs established in the United States alone. Banker to the Poor is Muhammad Yunus's memoir of how he decided to change his life in order to help the world's poor. In it he traces the intellectual and spiritual journey that led him to fundamentally rethink the economic relationship between rich and poor, and the challenges he and his colleagues faced in founding Grameen. He also provides wise, hopeful guidance for anyone who would like to join him in "putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long." The definitive history of micro-credit direct from the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is necessary and inspirational reading for anyone interested in economics, public policy, philanthropy, social history, and business. Muhammad Yunus was born in Bangladesh and earned his Ph.D. in economics in the United States at Vanderbilt University, where he was deeply influenced by the civil rights movement. He still lives in Bangladesh, and travels widely around the world on behalf of Grameen Bank and the concept of micro-credit.
Bitcoin: Hard Money You Can't F*ck With: Why bitcoin will be the next global reserve currency
Jason A. Williams - 2020
No governments, no companies, no central banks, no money printing. It’s a revolution as big as the internet. And it’s never been hacked.Entrepreneur and investor Jason A. Williams is the first author to put bitcoin in context of the 2020 crisis - a year of financial disaster and unprecedented money creation (money printer go brrr!)Not only was bitcoin the best-performing asset on the planet in 2020, it quietly established itself as the next global reserve currency as central banks around the world desperately printed their money into oblivion.Hard Money You Can’t F*ck With explains bitcoin in simple, readable terms and maps out how this ‘magic internet money’ will grow into the best form of money we’ve ever had.What’s inside?Part 1: Why Bitcoin Matters Now- What is bitcoin?- Who created it?- Why bitcoin is ‘money you can’t f*ck with’- How bitcoin emerged out of the 2008 banking crisis.- Why money printing slowly destroys your wealth.Part 2: A brief history of money (and money printing)- Take a step back and learn ‘what exactly is money?’- Why ‘printing cash’ has always led to the death of currency.- Why bitcoin is the best form of money ever created.Part 3: How bitcoin becomes the next global reserve currency- A deep dive into the 2020 financial crisis and how bitcoin emerged strongest- The emergence of national digital currencies to compete.- Why some nation states are now holding and trading in bitcoin.
Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor
Tren Griffin - 2015
His notion of "elementary, worldly wisdom"--a set of interdisciplinary mental models involving economics, business, psychology, ethics, and management--allows him to keep his emotions out of his investments and avoid the common pitfalls of bad judgment.Munger's system has steered his investments for forty years and has guided generations of successful investors. This book presents the essential steps of Munger's investing strategy, condensed here for the first time from interviews, speeches, writings, and shareholder letters, and paired with commentary from fund managers, value investors, and business-case historians. Derived from Ben Graham's value-investing system, Munger's approach is straightforward enough that ordinary investors can apply it to their portfolios. This book is not simply about investing. It is about cultivating mental models for your whole life, but especially for your investments.
Baruch: My Own Story
Bernard M. Baruch - 1993
Baruch, a man whose life spanned the late nineteenth century and over half of the twentieth century. Given the time period, he is a man who has seen much having met seven presidents, witnessing two wars and working on Wall Street for a time. In these memoirs, Baruch has tried to set forth the philosophy through which he had sought to harmonize a readiness to risk something new with precautions against repeating the errors of the past.
Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
Walter Bagehot - 1873
By the nineteenth century British economist and author of The English Constitution. A valuable financial work.
Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics
Joyce Purnick - 2009
He has run the toughest city in America with an independence and show of ego that first brought him great success—and eventually threatened it. Yet while Bloomberg is internationally known and admired, few people know the man behind the carefully crafted public persona.In Mike Bloomberg, Joyce Purnick explores Mr. Bloomberg's life from his childhood in the suburbs of Boston, to his rise on Wall Street and the creation of Bloomberg L.P., to his mayoral record and controversial gamble on a third term. Drawing on her deep knowledge of New York City politics, and interviews with Bloomberg's friends, family, colleagues, and the mayor himself, she creates a textured portrait of one of the more complex men of our era.
The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History and How We Can Fight Back
Alan Michael Collinge - 2009
He planned to land a solid job after college, repay his student loan debt, and then simply forget the loans ever existed. Like millions of Americans, however, in spite of working hard, Collinge fell behind on payments and entered a labyrinthine student loan nightmare.High school graduates can no longer put themselves through college for a few thousand dollars in loan debt. Today, the average undergraduate borrower leaves school with more than $20,000 in student loans, and for graduate students the average is a whopping $42,000. For the past twenty years, college tuition has increased at more than double the rate of inflation, with the cost largely shifting to student debt. The Student Loan Scam is an exposé of the predatory nature of the $85-billion student loan industry. In this in-depth exploration, Collinge argues that student loans have become the most profitable, uncompetitive, and oppressive type of debt in American history. This has occurred in large part due to federal legislation passed since the mid-1990s that removed standard consumer protections from student loans-and allowed for massive penalties and draconian wealth-extraction mechanisms to collect this inflated debt.Collinge covers the history of student loans, the rise of Sallie Mae, and how universities have profited at the expense of students. The book includes candid and compelling stories from people across the country about how both nonprofit and for-profit student loan companies, aided by poor legislation, have shattered their lives-and livelihoods. With nearly 5 million defaulted loans, this crisis is growing to epic proportions. The Student Loan Scam takes an unflinching look at this unprecedented and pressing problem, while exposing the powerful organizations and individuals who caused it to happen. Ultimately, Collinge argues for the return of standard consumer protections for student loans, among other pragmatic solutions, in this clarion call for social action.
Benjamin Graham the Memoirs of the Dean of Wall Street
Benjamin Graham - 1996
Describe his investment techniques, successful ventures, and association with the like of FDR and Baruch. Star Graham student, Warren Buffet, has become legendary.
Janesville: An American Story
Amy Goldstein - 2017
Most observers record the immediate shock of vanished jobs, but few stay around long enough to notice what happens next, when a community with a can-do spirit tries to pick itself up.Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Goldstein has spent years immersed in Janesville, Wisconsin where the nation’s oldest operating General Motors plant shut down in the midst of the Great Recession, two days before Christmas of 2008. Now, with intelligence, sympathy, and insight into what connects and divides people in an era of economic upheaval, she makes one of America’s biggest political issues human. Her reporting takes the reader deep into the lives of autoworkers, educators, bankers, politicians, and job re-trainers to show why it’s so hard in the twenty-first century to recreate a healthy, prosperous working class. For this is not just a Janesville story or a Midwestern story. It’s an American story.