I.O.U. is the story of how we came to experience such a complete and devastating financial implosion, and how the decisions and actions of a select group of individuals had profound consequences for America, Europe, and the global economy overall. John Lanchester begins with "The ATM Moment," that seemingly magical proliferation of cheap credit that led to an explosion of lending, and then deftly outlines the global and local landscapes of banking and finance. Viewing the crisis through the lens of politics, culture, and contemporary history -- from the invention and widespread misuse of financial instruments to the culpability of subprime mortgages -- Lanchester draws perceptive conclusions on the limitations of financial and governmental regulation, capitalism's deepest flaw, and, most important, on the plain and simple facts of human nature where cash is concerned.Weaving together firsthand research and superbly written reportage, Lanchester delivers a shrewd perspective and a digestible, comprehensive analysis that connects the dots for the expert and casual reader alike. I.O.U. is an eye-opener of a book -- it may well provoke anger, amazement, or rueful disbelief -- and, as the author clearly reveals, we've only just begun to get ourselves back on track.

    Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it’s the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it’s the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history. With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What’s the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do? This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can’t provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.

    Recipient of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economic Science, Gary S. Becker is a pioneer of applying economic analysis to human behavior in such areas as discrimination, marriage, family relations, and education. Becker's research on human capital was considered by the Nobel committee to be his most noteworthy contribution to economics.This expanded edition includes four new chapters, covering recent ideas about human capital, fertility and economic growth, the division of labor, economic considerations within the family, and inequality in earnings."Critics have charged that Mr. Becker's style of thinking reduces humans to economic entities. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Becker gives people credit for having the power to reason and seek out their own best destiny."—Wall Street Journal

    It details the intimate synergies between American military power and the financial means of Wall Street and Washington to create the most extensive global empire since the fall of the British Empire a century ago. It traces the rise of America from the 1800s to the hegemonic global superpower on the ashes of the British Empire by the end of the Second World War.Here's some of what you will learn:+ How a cabal of international Wall Street bankers in violation of the US Constitution made a coup d'etat in 1913 to create the private Federal Reserve to finance World War I and the rise of what they would later call the American Century. + How the Rockefeller family emerged during the Great Depression as the most influential family shaping America's destiny into and after World War II. + The real agenda of the American Century triumphantly proclaimed in 1941. + The real relation between America's military industrial complex and Bretton Woods Dollar System + How Wall Street banks systematically lifted all restraints on their expansion that ended in the 2007 Sub-prime meltdown and 2008 global financial crisis.The dollar financial system of Wall Street was born not at a conference in Bretton Woods New Hampshire in 1944. It was born in the first days of August, 1945 with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After that point the world was in no doubt who was the power to reckon with. This book is no ordinary book about money and finance. Rather it traces the history of money as an instrument of power; it traces the evolution of that power in the hands of a tiny elite that regards themselves as, quite literally, gods-The Gods of Money. How these gods abused their power and how they systematically set out to control the entire world is the subject.

    The material is reinforced with numerous examples to illustrate principles and imaginative, well-illustrated problems of varying degrees of difficulty. The book is committed to developing users' problem-solving skills. Features new "Photorealistc" figures (approximately 400) that have been rendered in often 3D photo quality detail to appeal to visual learners. Presents a thorough combination of both static and dynamic engineering mechanics theory and applications. Features a large variety of problem types from a broad range of engineering disciplines, stressing practical, realistic situations encountered in professional practice, varying levels of difficulty, and problems that involve solution by computer. For professionals in mechanical engineering, civil engineering, aeronautical engineering, and engineering mechanics careers.

    "Freaks of Fortune" tells the story of how the modern concept of risk emerged in the United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future.Focusing on the hopes and anxieties of ordinary people, Jonathan Levy shows how risk developed through the extraordinary growth of new financial institutions insurance corporations, savings banks, mortgage-backed securities markets, commodities futures markets, and securities markets while posing inescapable moral questions. For at the heart of risk s rise was a new vision of freedom. To be a free individual, whether an emancipated slave, a plains farmer, or a Wall Street financier, was to take, assume, and manage one s own personal risk. Yet this often meant offloading that same risk onto a series of new financial institutions, which together have only recently acquired the name financial services industry. Levy traces the fate of a new vision of personal freedom, as it unfolded in the new economic reality created by the American financial system.Amid the nineteenth-century s waning faith in God s providence, Americans increasingly confronted unanticipated challenges to their independence and security in the boom and bust chance-world of capitalism. "Freaks of Fortune" is one of the first books to excavate the historical origins of our own financialized times and risk-defined lives.

    From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world’s economy. “We’ve got to get some foam down on the runway!” a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the world’s financial system would experience. Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing neverdisclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were “too big to fail,” it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail.

    Material covered includes the difference between stocks and businesses, what constitutes a good business, when to buy and sell stocks, and how to value individual stocks. The book also includes a chapter covering four case studies as well as a supplemental chapter on the pros and cons of real estate versus stock market investing.

    Time-saving study tools help readers arrive at a complete understanding of human anatomy. KEY TOPICS: An Introduction to Anatomy, The Cell, Tissues and Early Embryology, The Integumentary System, The Skeletal System: Osseous Tissue and Skeletal Structure, The Skeletal System: Axial Division, The Skeletal System: Appendicular Division, The Skeletal System: Articulations, The Muscular System: Skeletal Muscle Tissue and Muscle Organization, The Muscular System: Axial Musculature, The Muscular System: Appendicular Musculature, Surface Anatomy and Cross-Sectional Anatomy, The Nervous System: Neural Tissue, The Nervous System: The Spinal Cord and Spinal Nerves, The Nervous System: The Brain and Cranial Nerves, The Nervous System: Pathways And Higher-Order Functions, The Nervous System:  Autonomic Division, The Nervous System: General and Special Senses, The Endocrine System, The Cardiovascular System: Blood, The Cardiovascular System: The Heart, The Cardiovascular System: Vessels and Circulation, The Lymphoid System, The Respiratory System, The Digestive System, The Urinary System, The Reproductive System, The Reproductive System: Embryology and HumanDevelopment. MARKET: For all readers interested in human anatomy.

    Weiner reveals how foreign countries and private investors are increasingly controlling the global economy and secretly wresting power from the United States in ways that our government cannot reverse and about which the average American knows nothing. The most potent force in global commerce today is not the Federal Reserve, not the international banks, not the governments of the G7 countries, and certainly not the European Union. Rather, it is the multi-trillion-dollar network of super-rich, secretive, and largely unregulated investment vehicles—foreign sovereign wealth funds, government-run corporations, private equity funds, and hedge funds—that are quietly buying up the world, piece by valuable piece. As Weiner’s groundbreaking account shows, the shadow market doesn’t have a physical headquarters such as Wall Street. It doesn’t have a formal leadership or an index to track or a single zone of exchange. Rather, it comprises an invisible and ever-shifting global nexus where money mixes with geopolitical power, often with great speed and secrecy.   Led by cash-flush nations such as China, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and even Norway, the shadow market is hiring the brightest international financial talent money can buy and is now assembling the gigantic investment portfolios that will form the power structure of tomorrow’s economy.   Taking advantage of the Great Recession and subsequent liquidity problems in the United States and Europe, the major players of the shadow market are deploying staggering amounts of cash, controlling the capital markets, and securing not only major stakes in multinational companies but huge tracts of farmland and natural resources across the world. Yet that’s not all; they’re also pursuing political agendas made possible by their massive wealth and are becoming increasingly aggressive with the United States and other governments.   Highly informative and genuinely startling, Eric J. Weiner’s up-to-date account gets out in front of daily events, with proof of his argument destined to appear in the news for years to come. The Shadow Market moves the conversation from “international competition” to “global financial warfare,” and stands as an urgent must-read for anyone interested in the future of the global economy, America’s position in the world, or how and where to invest money today. DID YOU KNOW? ***The Pentagon has run elaborate simulations of global financial war. Result: America lost, and the shadow market won. ***The U.S. dollar is under siege as a global currency; oil-producing nations have already begun secret discussions about replacing it in oil trading. ***While Greece was burning in the spring of 2010, the shadow market nations were spending hundreds of billions of dollars all over the world rather than helping to fix the European crisis. Why? Because it wasn’t their problem. ***With its wealth of natural resources, Brazil may be more powerful than Germany, France, and Great Britain put together, and may soon rival the United States for economic supremacy in the Western Hemisphere. ***In April 2009, China told the International Monetary Fund to sell 3,217 tons of gold. How much did China buy? That’s a secret. What else is China buying? As many of the oil reserves in non–Middle Eastern countries as it can, including in Canada. It has bought so many Australian natural resource companies that Australia is getting nervous. And some would say that China has, in effect, already purchased Taiwan. ***Many of the shadow market countries are racing to improve their food-security risks by buying large swaths of farmland in other countries, potentially at the risk of starving the local citizens. Saudi Arabia has a farm the size of Connecticut in Indonesia, and Korean industrial giant Daewoo controls half the arable land of Madagascar. ***Iran is China’s third largest oil supplier and in return receives significant protection from Chinese diplomats, who are increasingly important players on the geopolitical stage. ***The shadow market countries will soon control nearly $20 trillion in assets, a sum greater than the gross domestic product of the United States.

    Roland grew up halfway to nowhere. His father is human and his mother is elf. Being Half-Elf would always bring difficulties and it also brought about innate magic. He heads off for adventure joining the Adventures Guild. The world is tough and Roland is an innocent. He discovers he is unique in more than one way. Danger is everywhere especially for those who adventure. He makes a decision that will affect him for the rest of his life. The he realizes he has made a rash decision. It might turn out good or it might turn out bad. He just doesn't know enough but he is committed. His unique gifts are needed and he heeds the call for help.

    Myerson introduces, clarifies, and synthesizes the extraordinary advances made in the subject over the past fifteen years, presents an overview of decision theory, and comprehensively reviews the development of the fundamental models: games in extensive form and strategic form, and Bayesian games with incomplete information.Game Theory will be useful for students at the graduate level in economics, political science, operations research, and applied mathematics. Everyone who uses game theory in research will find this book essential.

    Reingold was part of the "Street" and believed in it.But in this action-packed, highly personal memoir written with accomplished Fast Company senior writer Jennifer Reingold the author describes how his enthusiasm gave way to disgust as he learned how deeply corrupted Wall Street and much of corporate America had become during the roaring stock market bubble of the 1990s.Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst provides a front-row seat at one of the most dramatic -- and ultimately tragic -- periods in financial history. Reingold recounts his introduction to the world of Wall Street leaks and secret deal-making; his experiences with corporate fraud; and Wall Street's alarming penchant for lavish spending and multimillion-dollar pay packages.Reingold spars with arch rival Grubman; fends off intense pressures from Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs; and is wooed by Morgan Stanley's CEO, John Mack, and CSFB's über-banker Frank Quattrone.Reingold describes instances in which confidential deals are whispered days before their official announcement. He recalls the moment he learns that Bernie Ebbers's WorldCom was massively cooking its books. And he is shocked to have been an unwitting catalyst for a series of sexually explicit e-mails that would rock Wall Street; bring Jack Grubman to his knees; and contribute to the stepping aside of Grubman's boss, Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill.Some of Reingold's stories are outrageous, others hilarious, and many are simply absurd. But, together, they provide a sobering exposé of Wall Street: a jungle of greed and ego, a place brimming with conflicts and inside information, and a business absurdly out of touch with the Main Street it claims to serve.He shows how government investigators, headlines notwithstanding, never got to the heart of the ethical and legal transgressions of the era. And how they completely overlooked Wall Street's pervasive use of inside information, leaving investors -- even sophisticated professionals -- cheated. The book ends with a series of important policy recommendations to clean up the investing business.In the tradition of Liar's Poker and Den of Thieves, Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst is a no-holds-barred insider's account that will open the eyes of every investor.

    Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled mathematician, became the lynchpin of a wild alliance that included a prickly French trader nicknamed “Gollum”; the broker “Abbo,” who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a nervous Kazakh chicken farmer known as “Derka Derka”; a broker known as “Village” (short for “Village Idiot”) who racked up huge expense account bills; an executive called “Clumpy” because of his patchwork hair loss; and a broker uncreatively nicknamed “Big Nose” who had once been a semi-professional boxer. This group generated incredible riches —until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion.With exclusive access to key characters and evidence, The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam, but also a provocative examination of a financial system that was crooked throughout.

    It shouldn't take a worldwide pandemic and nationwide protests to bring economic and racial inequality to the forefront of problems we desperately need to solve. But now that the opportunity is here, what should we do? How can we create more equality, opportunity, and growth for everyone? Not someday, but what can government and the private sector do right now to disrupt a status quo that almost everyone wants to change?In Common Sense, the New York Times best-selling author Joel Greenblatt offers an investor's perspective on building an economy that truly works for everyone. With dry wit and engaging storytelling, he makes a lively and provocative case for disruptive new approaches--some drawn from personal experience, some from the outside looking in. How can leading corporations immediately disrupt our education establishment while creating high-paying job opportunities for those currently left behind? If we want a living wage for everyone, how can we afford it while using an existing program to get it done now? If we subsidize banks, what simple changes can we make to the way we capitalize and regulate them to help grow the economy, increase access, and create more jobs (while keeping the risks and benefits where they belong)? Greenblatt also explains how dramatically increasing immigration would be like giving every American a giant bonus and the reason Australia might be the best place to learn about saving for retirement.Not everyone will agree with what Greenblatt has to say--but all of us can benefit from the conversations he aims to start.