Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and the Government Bailout Will Make Things Worse


Thomas E. Woods Jr. - 2009
    In clear, no-nonsense terms, Woods explains what led up to this economic crisis, who's really to blame, and why government bailouts won't work. Woods will reveal:* Which brave few economists predicted the economic fallout--and why nobody listened* What really caused the collapse* Why the Fed--not taxpayers--should have to answer for the current economic crisis* Why bailouts are band-aids that will only provide temporary relief and ultimately make things worse* What we should do instead, to put our economy on a healthy path to recoveryWith a foreword from Ron Paul, Meltdown is the free-market answer to the Fed-created economic crisis. As the new Obama administration inevitably calls for more regulations, Woods argues that the only way to rebuild our economy is by returning to the fundamentals of capitalism and letting the free market work

Fintech in a Flash: Financial Technology Made Easy


Agustin Rubini - 2017
    There are more than 5000 fintech startups operating, and 50 of them have already reached a billion-dollar valuation. The scope of this market goes way beyond online payments. Financial technology promises to change the way we manage our money online, disrupting the landscape of the financial services industry is being disrupted. Understanding its many facets is the key to navigating the complex nuances of this global industry.Fintech in a Flash is your comprehensive guide to the future of banking and insurance. The book aims to break down the key concepts in a way that will help you understand every aspect so that you can take advantage of new technologies. Inside you’ll find an array of hot topics such as online payments, crowdfunding, challenger banks, online insurance, digital lending, big data, and digital commerce. It will make you rethink the way that you manage your money online, and even find new ways of making online payments. Comprehensive, organized, and detailed, this guide is your go-to source for everything you need to confidently navigate the ever-changing scene of this booming industry.If you decide to buy this book now, you'll get: Easy to understand explanations of the 14 main areas of fintech The author's view on the future of each of these areas Insight into the main fintech hubs in the world Insight into the so called Unicorns, the fintech firms that have made it past a $1 billion valuation More than 100 upcoming fintech companies to watch About the Author: Agustín Rubini is an argentinean-born economist, master in international business, and Director at Banking Innovations. Passionate about building the future of financial services, Agustín spends much of his time speaking and writing on financial technology and advising businesses on innovation and digital transformation. He is a specialist in driving changes in top class banks that want to lead in how customers manage their money online. Tags: fintech, financial technology, financial services technology, money online, online payment, online insurance, insurtech, investing online, wealth management online, wealthtech, regtech, cybercrime, digital lending, digital commerce, ecommerce, e-commerce. Get started immediately Download now and take the first step on your very own road to mastering fintech. Scroll to the top of the page and hit the buy button.

The Economics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained


Niall Kishtainy - 2012
    Whether you're a beginner, and avid student, or an armchair expert, you'll find plenty to stimulate you within this book.--book jacket

Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers


Robert Jackall - 1988
     Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, Moral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation. Jackall reveals a world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but where sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might. Cheerfully-bland public faces mask intense competition in this world where people hide their intentions, and accountability often depends on the ability to outrun mistakes. In this topsy-turvy world, managers must bring often unforgiving technology and always difficult people together to make money, an uncompromising task demanding continual compromises with conventional truths. Moral questions become merely practical concerns and issues of public relations. Sooner or later, managers find themselves wondering how to act in such a world and still maintain a sense of personal integrity. This brilliant, sometimes disturbing, often wildly funny study of corporate thinking, decision-making, and morality presents compelling real life stories of the men and women charged with running the businesses of America. It will interest anyone concerned with how big organizations actually function, or with the current moral malaise in our public life.

House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again


Atif Mian - 2014
    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?

The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism


David Harvey - 2010
    In The Enigma of Capital, he delivers an impassioned account of how unchecked neoliberalism produced the system-wide crisis that now engulfs the world. Beginning in the 1970s, profitability pressures led the capitalist class in advanced countries to shift away from investment in industrial production at home toward the higher returns that financial products promised. Accompanying this was a shift towards privatization, an absolute decline in the bargaining power of labor, and the dispersion of production throughout the developing world. The decades-long and ongoing decline in wages that accompanied this turn produced a dilemma: how can goods--especially real estate--sell at the same rate as before if workers are making less in relative terms? The answer was a huge expansion of credit that fueled the explosive growth of both the financial industry and the real estate market. When one key market collapsed--real estate--the other one did as well, and social devastation resulted. Harvey places today's crisis in the broadest possible context: the historical development of global capitalism itself from the industrial era onward. Moving deftly between this history and the unfolding of the current crisis, he concentrates on how such crises both devastate workers and create openings for challenging the system's legitimacy. The battle now will be between the still-powerful forces that want to reconstitute the system of yesterday and those that want to replace it with one that prizes social justice and economic equality. The new afterword focuses on the continuing impact of the crisis and the response to it in 2010. One of Huffington Post's Best Social and Political Awareness Books of 2010 Winner of the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize for 2010 Praise for the Hardcover: "A lucid and penetrating account of how the power of capital shapes our world."--Andrew Gamble, Independent "Elegant... entertainingly swashbuckling... Harvey's analysis is interesting not only for the breadth of his scholarship but his recognition of the system's strengths."--John Gapper, Financial Times

A History of the United States in Five Crashes: Stock Market Meltdowns That Defined a Nation


Scott Nations - 2017
    Only billionaire J.P. Morgan was able to save the stock market.Black Tuesday (1929): As the newly created Federal Reserve System repeatedly adjusted interest rates in all the wrong ways, investment trusts, the darlings of that decade, became the catalyst that caused the bubble to burst, and the Dow fell dramatically, leading swiftly to the Great Depression.Black Monday (1987): When "portfolio insurance," a new tool meant to protect investments, instead led to increased losses, and corporate raiders drove stock prices above their real values, the Dow dropped an astonishing 22.6 percent in one day.The Great Recession (2008): As homeowners began defaulting on mortgages, investment portfolios that contained them collapsed, bringing the nation's largest banks, much of the economy, and the stock market down with them.The Flash Crash (2010): When one investment manager, using a runaway computer algorithm that was dangerously unstable and poorly understood, reacted to the economic turmoil in Greece, the stock market took an unprecedentedly sudden plunge, with the Dow shedding 998.5 points (roughly a trillion dollars in valuation) in just minutes.The stories behind the great crashes are filled with drama, human foibles, and heroic rescues. Taken together they tell the larger story of a nation reaching enormous heights of financial power while experiencing precipitous dips that alter and reset a market where millions of Americans invest their savings, and on which they depend for their futures. Scott Nations vividly shows how each of these major crashes played a role in America's political and cultural fabric, each providing painful lessons that have strengthened us and helped us to build the nation we know today.A History of the United States in Five Crashes clearly and compellingly illustrates the connections between these major financial collapses and examines the solid, clear-cut lessons they offer for preventing the next one.

The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth


Benjamin M. Friedman - 2005
    Friedman examines the political and social histories of the large Western democracies–particularly of the United States since the Civil War–to demonstrate the fact that incomes on the rise lead to more open and democratic societies. He explains that growth, rather than simply a high standard of living, is key to effecting political and social liberalization in the third world, and shows that even the wealthiest of nations puts its democratic values at risk when income levels stand still. Merely being rich is no protection against a turn toward rigidity and intolerance when a country’s citizens lose the sense that they are getting ahead.With concrete policy suggestions for pursuing growth at home and promoting worldwide economic expansion, this volume is a major contribution to the ongoing debate about the effects of economic growth and globalization.

Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School


Gene Callahan - 2002
    Gene Callahan shows that good economics isn't about government planning or statistical models. It's about human beings and the choices they make in the real world. This may be the most important book of its kind since Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. Though written for the beginner, it has been justly praised by scholars too, including Israel Kirzner, Walter Block, and Peter Boettke.

Can I Retire Yet?: How to Make the Biggest Financial Decision of the Rest of Your Life


Darrow Kirkpatrick - 2016
    You've reached major milestones and accumulated more assets than you dreamed possible, and yet you hesitate. “Can I retire?” This book will help answer that question by showing you…. The tools you need to live a secure and independent retirement, without worrying about money What you must know before leaving a career behind How much it will cost you to live in retirement, and how to manage your cash flow The current choices for retirement health care, including lesser-known but effective options The threat from inflation: two secrets that politicians and bankers will never admit A realistic assessment of the impact that income taxes will have on your retirement Social Security’s role in your retirement: when you should claim and how much it’s worth to you How to construct and manage an investment portfolio for income and growth in retirement About immediate annuities and why you need multiple sources of retirement income The key variables and unknowns in your retirement withdrawal equation Reviews of the best retirement calculators, and tips for how to use them accurately Beyond the simplistic 4% Rule to the latest research on safe withdrawal rates Realistic bracketing of your retirement savings needs, without over caution or overconfidence The history of economic cycles and the related asset classes for optimal retirement security A survey of strategies plus original research for how to orchestrate your retirement distributions A practical retirement fuel gauge alerting you to problems while you still have time to act Backup plans: the lifeboat strategies for ensuring you'll never be without essential income The 6 crucial questions to answer before you can retire The one, simple, powerful, non-financial reason that you can and should retire earlier than later

A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett


Peter Bevelin - 2012
    It tells in a short-easy-to-read way about what managers and investors can learn from Buffett. This is a selection of useful and timeless wisdom where Warren Buffett in his own words tells us how to think about business valuation, what is a good and bad business, acquisitions and their traps, yardsticks, compensation issues, how to reduce risk, corporate governance, the importance of trust and the right culture, learning from mistakes, and more.

Grunch of Giants


R. Buckminster Fuller - 1983
    In the form of a modern allegory, he traces the evolution of these multinational giants from the post-World War II military-industrial complex to the current army of abstract legal entities known as the corporate world.

Stock Market 101: From Bull and Bear Markets to Dividends, Shares, and Margins—Your Essential Guide to the Stock Market


Michele Cagan - 2016
    Stock Market 101 cuts out the boring explanations of basic investing, and instead provides hands-on lessons that keep you engaged as you learn how to build a portfolio and expand your wealth. From bull markets to bear markets to sideways markets, this primer is packed with hundreds of entertaining tidbits and concepts that you won't be able to get anywhere else. So whether you're looking to master the major principles of stock market investing or just want to learn more about how the market shifts over time, Stock Market 101 has all the answers--even the ones you didn't know you were looking for.

The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time


Karl Polanyi - 1944
    His analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism. New introductory material reveals the renewed importance of Polanyi's seminal analysis in an era of globalization and free trade.

The Internet of Money


Andreas M. Antonopoulos - 2016
    Acclaimed information-security expert and author of Mastering Bitcoin, Andreas M. Antonopoulos examines and contextualizes the significance of bitcoin through a series of essays spanning the exhilarating maturation of this technology. Bitcoin, a technological breakthrough quietly introduced to the world in 2008, is transforming much more than finance. Bitcoin is disrupting antiquated industries to bring financial independence to billions worldwide. In this book, Andreas explains why bitcoin is a financial and technological evolution with potential far exceeding the label “digital currency.” Andreas goes beyond exploring the technical functioning of the bitcoin network by illuminating bitcoin’s philosophical, social, and historical implications. As the internet has essentially transformed how people around the world interact and has permanently impacted our lives in ways we never could have imagined, bitcoin -- the internet of money -- is fundamentally changing our approach to solving social, political, and economic problems through decentralized technology.