Markets by Paddy Hirsch of NPR's "Marketplace" is economics explained, pure and simple, for the layperson who wouldn't know a "bond" from an "option," and who believes that a "future" is when we'll all have flying cars. Here is an illuminating, insightful, and wonderfully witty journey of discovery through the often confusing financial markets, offering clear, relatable explanations and definitions of the system's various instruments, yet less simplistically than the popular ...for Dummies series. Man Vs. Markets is a must-read handbook for everyday investors, serious students of finance and economics, and everyone who wants to understand what they're reading when they open their newspapers to the business section.

    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.

    More than four million homes were lost to foreclosures. Is it a coincidence that the United States witnessed a dramatic rise in household debt in the years before the recession—that the total amount of debt for American households doubled between 2000 and 2007 to $14 trillion? Definitely not. Armed with clear and powerful evidence, Atif Mian and Amir Sufi reveal in House of Debt how the Great Recession and Great Depression, as well as the current economic malaise in Europe, were caused by a large run-up in household debt followed by a significantly large drop in household spending. Though the banking crisis captured the public’s attention, Mian and Sufi argue strongly with actual data that current policy is too heavily biased toward protecting banks and creditors. Increasing the flow of credit, they show, is disastrously counterproductive when the fundamental problem is too much debt. As their research shows, excessive household debt leads to foreclosures, causing individuals to spend less and save more. Less spending means less demand for goods, followed by declines in production and huge job losses. How do we end such a cycle? With a direct attack on debt, say Mian and Sufi.  More aggressive debt forgiveness after the crash helps, but as they illustrate, we can be rid of painful bubble-and-bust episodes only if the financial system moves away from its reliance on inflexible debt contracts. As an example, they propose new mortgage contracts that are built on the principle of risk-sharing, a concept that would have prevented the housing bubble from emerging in the first place. Thoroughly grounded in compelling economic evidence, House of Debt offers convincing answers to some of the most important questions facing the modern economy today: Why do severe recessions happen? Could we have prevented the Great Recession and its consequences? And what actions are needed to prevent such crises going forward?

     From the founder of Dividend Mantra, this is a definitive guide on why you should aim to achieve financial independence early in life and how to actually get there. It includes information on my background, the strategies I've used to grow my wealth from below zero to well into the six figures, and practical, nuts-and-bolts advice. I've written over 650 articles, and this book includes some of my most useful, inspirational, and evergreen content I've ever put out there. If you're looking for information on how to execute a a real-life journey to financial independence in real-time, this is the book for you. I describe why you should aim for financial independence and I explore the idea of true sacrifice. I also discuss the 4% safe withdrawal rate, index funds, the power of dividends and dividend growth, living below your means, and how to analyze and value stocks. I've been featured in major media, including USA Today, CNBC, Today, Yahoo, and Mr. Money Mustache. I'm hoping this book inspires you. Living below your means and investing your excess capital into high-quality companies that pay and grow dividends is not only an incredibly easy and fun way to achieve financial independence early in life, but also incredibly robust.

    Cussed and discussed by all from notable politicians to academicians to laypersons. Do you want to know the truth about money? Creature from Jekyll Island will give you the answers to these, and other, questions: Where does money come from? Where does it go? Who makes it? The money magicians' secrets are unveiled. We get a close look at their mirrors and smoke machines, their pulleys, cogs, and wheels that create the grand illusion called money. A dry and boring subject? Just wait! You'll be hooked in five minutes. Creature from Jekyll Island Reads like a detective story which it really is. But it's all true. This book is about the most blatant scam of all history. It's all here: the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity. Creature from Jekyll Island is a "must read." Your world view will definitely change. You'll never trust a politician again or a banker.

    financial system, which had grown far too complex for its own good-and too unregulated for the public good-experienced a perfect storm beginning in 2007. When America's financial structure crumbled, the damage proved to be not only deep, but wide. It took the crisis for the world to discover, to its horror, just how truly interconnected-and fragile-the global financial system is. The second part of the story explains how American and international government intervention kept us from a total meltdown. Many of the U.S. government's actions, particularly the Fed's, were previously unimaginable. And to an amazing-and certainly misunderstood-extent, they worked. The worst did not happen. Blinder offers clear-eyed answers to the questions still before us, even if some of the choices ahead are as divisive as they are unavoidable. After the Music Stopped is an essential history that we cannot afford to forget, because one thing history teaches is that it will happen here again.

    First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident." --Arthur SchopenhauerThe Ponzi Factor is the most comprehensive research ever compiled on the negative-sum nature of capital gains (non-dividend stocks). The book shows why, as a whole, ALL investors will lose money from buying and selling stocks.Most people don’t realize that profits from buying and selling stocks come from other investors who are also buying and selling stocks. When one investor buys low and sells high, another investor is also buying high and needs to sell for even higher. Companies like Google, Telsa, Facebook never pay their investors. Their investors’ profits are dependent on the inflow of money from new investors, which by definition, is how a Ponzi scheme works.This book is not for everyone. If you are a finance junkie who wants to rationalize why companies don’t have to pay their investors and believe a system that shuffles money between investor can magically create more money than people contribute, then this book is not for you. On the other hand, if you understand why we can’t create money by shuffling it with imaginary paper, and that investors invest because they want money, not value, then you will learn something you will never forget: The mechanics of how the stock market works and what really makes a stock price move.A stock without dividends is a Ponzi asset. It’s not how equity instruments were designed to work historically and not how ownership instruments are supposed to work logically. The Ponzi Factor is not a perspective or an opinion. It is a proof that is based on definition, logic, and it is supported by observable facts and history. This is not a story that will disappear after another market crash. It is an idea that will remain relevant for as long as the stock market exists.Lastly, to critics, the naysayer, and the finance junkies who think the imaginary value = cash. The author will award $20,000 to anyone who can show why non-dividend stocks DO NOT meet the definition of a Ponzi scheme. That’s $20,000 in cash, not value. (Details on this book's website. The Ponzi Factor. Proof by Definition.)

    So what makes this one different? Well, you won't be overwhelmed with a bunch of 'tips' … or a strict budget (that you won't follow). You'll get a step-by-step formula: open this account, then do this; call this person, and say this; invest money here, and not there. All with a glass of wine in your hand. This book will show you how to create an entire financial plan that is so simple you can sketch it on the back of a serviette … and you'll be able to manage your money in 10 minutes a week. You'll also get the skinny on: Saving up a six-figure house deposit in 20 months Doubling your income using the 'Trapeze Strategy' Saving $78,173 on your mortgage and wiping out 7 years of payments Finding a financial advisor who won't rip you off Handing your kids (or grandkids) a $140,000 cheque on their 21st birthday Why you don't need $1 million to retire … with the 'Donald Bradman Retirement Strategy' Sound too good to be true? It's not. This book is full of stories from everyday Aussies — single people, young families, empty nesters, retirees — who have applied the simple steps in this book and achieved amazing, life-changing results. And you're next.

    It's wrong. And not just wrong, but dangerous.Money: the Unauthorised Biography unfolds a panoramic secret history and explains the truth about money: what it is, where it comes from, and how it works.Drawing on stories from throughout human history and around the globe, Money will radically rearrange your understanding of the world and shows how money can once again become the most powerful force for freedom we have ever known.

    Everyone who wants to make the world a better place becomes possessed by a grand idea.But what does it take to turn your idea into action?  Whether you are an entrepreneur, intrapreneur, or not-for-profit crusader, there’s no shortage of advice available on issues such as writing a business plan, recruiting, raising capital, and branding. In fact, there are so many books, articles, and Web sites that many startups get bogged down to the point of paralysis. Or else they focus on the wrong priorities and go broke before they discover their mistakes. In The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki brings two decades of experience as one of business’s most original and irreverent strategists to offer the essential guide for anyone starting anything, from a multinational corporation to a church group. At Apple in the 1980s, he helped lead one of the great companies of the century, turning ordinary consumers into evangelists. As founder and CEO of Garage Technology Ventures, a venture capital firm, he has field-tested his ideas with dozens of newly hatched companies. And as the author of bestselling business books and articles, he has advised thousands of people who are making their startup dreams real. From raising money to hiring the right people, from defining your positioning to creating a brand, from creating buzz to buzzing the competition, from managing a board to fostering a community, this book will guide you through an adventure that’s more art than science—the art of the start.

    The story of its final, brutal collapse in the autumn of 2008, and its controversial sale to JPMorgan Chase, is an astonishing account of how one bank lost itself to greed and mismanagement, and how the entire financial industry—and even the entire country— lost its way as well. Kirsten Grind’s The Lost Bank is a magisterial and gripping account of these events, tracing the cultural shifts, the cockamamie financial engineering, and the hubris and avarice that made this incredible story possible. The men and women who become the central players in this tragedy— the regulators and the bankers, the home buyers and the lenders, the number crunchers and the shareholders—are heroes and villains, perpetrators and victims, often switching roles with one another as the drama unfolds. As a reporter at the time for the Puget Sound Business Journal, Grind covered a story set far from the epicenters of finance and media. It happened largely in places such as the suburban homes of central California and the office buildings of Seattle, but Grind covered the story from the beginning, and the clarity and persistence of her reporting earned her many awards, including being named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Gerald Loeb Award. She takes readers into boardrooms and bedrooms, revealing the power struggles that pitted regulators at the Office of Thrift Supervision and the FDIC against one another and the predatory negotiations of investment bankers and lawyers who enriched themselves during the bank’s rise and then devoured the decimated bank in its final days. Written as compellingly as the finest fiction, The Lost Bank makes it clear that the collapse of Washington Mutual was not just the largest bank failure in American history. It is a story of talismanic qualities, reflecting the incredible rise and the precipitous collapse of not only an institution but of trust, fortunes, and the marketplaces for risk across the world.

    The Truth Machine is the best book so far on what has happened and what may come along. It demands the attention of anyone concerned with our economic future." --Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard, Former Treasury SecretaryFrom Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna, the authors of The Age of Cryptocurrency, comes the definitive work on the Internet's Next Big Thing: The Blockchain.Big banks have grown bigger and more entrenched. Privacy exists only until the next hack. Credit card fraud is a fact of life. Many of the "legacy systems" once designed to make our lives easier and our economy more efficient are no longer up to the task. Yet there is a way past all this--a new kind of operating system with the potential to revolutionize vast swaths of our economy: the blockchain.In The Truth Machine, Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna demystify the blockchain and explain why it can restore personal control over our data, assets, and identities; grant billions of excluded people access to the global economy; and shift the balance of power to revive society's faith in itself. They reveal the disruption it promises for industries including finance, tech, legal, and shipping.Casey and Vigna expose the challenge of replacing trusted (and not-so-trusted) institutions on which we've relied for centuries with a radical model that bypasses them. The Truth Machine reveals the empowerment possible when self-interested middlemen give way to the transparency of the blockchain, while highlighting the job losses, assertion of special interests, and threat to social cohesion that will accompany this shift. With the same balanced perspective they brought to The Age of Cryptocurrency, Casey and Vigna show why we all must care about the path that blockchain technology takes--moving humanity forward, not backward.

    Laid-back investing is not only easier, it can actually make you richer.Learn how to kill off debt, curb spending, find your best KiwiSaver fund, save painlessly, buy a house or be happy not buying one, and move confidently towards and through retirement (hint: you don't need $1 million). You'll also learn why it's best to 'set and forget' your investments. And why, beyond a certain point, having more money is not the key to happiness.Unlike many writers of finance books, Mary is not selling anything (except this book!). She just wants you to do well. She's on your side.'Mary has that rare ability to cut through the jargon to what really matters. She combines expert wisdom and real-world insights, with fantastic results!'DIANE MAXWELL, RETIREMENT COMMISSIONER'Mary Holm is in the first rank of New Zealanders offering simple and wise advice to those who want to take effective steps to secure their future financial wellbeing. This straightforward guide should help ordinary Kiwis navigate their way through the various traps they can fall into.'SIR MICHAEL CULLEN, FORMER DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER and MINISTER OF FINANCE

    Or it can be a way to lose your shirt. What determines whether you get rich or go broke can often be a tiny detail here, a missed opportunity there. The margin for error is slim. Heck, it’s non-existent. Fortunes are amassed by experienced options traders who know how to use this strategy THE RIGHT WAY. And financial lives are destroyed by those who don’t. This book will catapult you into that first category. Without all the fluff and B.S. that you don’t need. The Bullsh*t Free Guide to Iron Condors is a TRUE no-nonsense guide to the Iron Condor strategy, written by an experienced trader who lives (or dies) by working it every day. It’s designed as a real-life, step-by-step guide for experienced options traders who want to use this strategy the RIGHT WAY -- which means the CONSISTENTLY PROFITABLE way. In the book you’ll discover: * 6 little-known techniques for adjusting trades that go bad (most experienced traders don’t even know these) * How to create a trading journal and trading log, and why it’s CRUCIAL that you do. (Note: the book includes downloadable examples you can use yourself.) * The 3 ways the world’s top Iron Condor traders manage risk, including detailed examples so you can trade “like the big boys.” * How to save yourself thousands of dollars when entering live trades (this information is closely guarded by many trading “gurus”). * Which option broker is the best for trading Iron Condors. (This is one of the most important decisions you’ll make, so choose wisely.) * How to set up a trading plan that actually works. (We include a sample trading plan to get you started.) * Why weekly options are not as amazing as they sound (and are, in fact, often a HUGE mistake). * How to incorporate volatility into your trading. (You will come to LOVE huge volatility moves after reading this!) * How to eliminate the risk of early assignment. * How to avoid being caught with your pants down on settlement day. (Make this mistake and you can kiss your profits goodbye.)

    The book begins by addressing many of the challenges stock market investors face today and the various ways many investors use the stock market to achieve their goals.A valuable discussion of where paper assets fit (and do not fit) in the context of Rich Dad principles and its place among the other assets classes such as real estate business and commodities.The bulk of the book educates investors on "Andy's 4 pillars of stock market income" and effectively simplifies the four concepts to help investors begin to harness their power.The book concludes with ideas for an individual action plan suited to the goals of the reader