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."

    Michael Mauboussin, one of Wall Street's most creative and influential minds offers provocative new ways of thinking about the stock market, investing, and how we make decisions.

    He invented such things as "the highly confident letter" (I'm highly confident that I can raise the money you need to buy company X) and "the blind pool" (Here's a billion dollars: let us help you buy a company), and he financed the biggest corporate raiders--men like Carl Icahn and Ronald Perelman.And then, on September 7, 1988, things changed. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert with insider trading and stock fraud. Waiting in the wings was the US District Attorney, who wanted to file criminal and racketeering charges. What motivated Milken in his drive for power and money? Did Drexel Burnham Lambert condone the breaking of laws? The Predators' Ball dramatically captures American business history in the making, uncovering the philosophy of greed that has dominated Wall Street in the 1980s.

    

    These are people we know—or think we know: Obama, Geithner, Summers, Orszag, and a host of others.Scheiber shares his profound understanding of each member of the group, examining how they work—or don't work—as a team, peeling back the layers of each personality while revealing the pragmatism, vision, and blind spots each has in the fight to resurrect the American economy. Along the way, he sorts out the truth from the myths and the tactical finger-pointing that surround the recent worldwide financial meltdown.Here, egos compete, personalities clash, and ideas do battle. Never before have we seen such a crystal-clear, in-depth look at the way economic power is wielded at the highest levels in our nation—in Washington, on Wall Street, and in their effects on millions of households in America.This book will become the key to understanding whether the Obama team will succeed in bringing us back from the brink of economic ruin—or whether they have set us up for another crisis.

    It needs to be put to work getting some return so that it will grow.Smart investors will turn to high dividend paying stocks to get a stable and growing stream of income. Dividend investing-that provides an income beyond any gain in the share price-may be the investor's best weapon. Dividends are safe, largely reliable, and maybe at the their cheapest levels in many years. While the best paying dividend stocks of recent years, such as financials, took a huge beating in 2008, opportunities will abound in 2010 and beyond-if you know where to look.In The Little Book of Big Dividends, dividend stock expert Chuck Carlson presents an action plan for dividend-hungry investors. You'll learn about the pitfalls, how to find the opportunities, and will learn how to construct a portfolio that generates big, safe dividends easily through the BSD (Big, Safe Dividends) formula. If you're a bit adventurous, Carlson has you covered, and will teach you how to find big, safe dividends in foreign stocks, preferred stocks, ETFs, real estate investment trusts, and more.Contains the simple tools, strategies, and recommendations for finding big, safe dividends Helps you put a complete portfolio together that pays dividends every month Show you the top dividend paying stocks with their dividend payment dates It doesn't get any easier than this, and in these turbulent times, you can't afford to ignore the power of dividends. Read The Little Book of Big Dividends and gain a better perspective of how you can protect yourself for the future.

    But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality—the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth—today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.