Accounting Books

The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy--If We Let It Happen

Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, Peter Tanous

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Arthur Laffer -- the father of supply-side economics and a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board -- joins economist Stephen Moore of The Wall Street Journal editorial board and investment advisor Peter J. Tanous to send Americans an urgent message: We risk losing the exceptional standard of living that has made us the envy of the rest of the world if the pro-growth policies of the last twenty-five years are reversed by a new president.

Since the early 1980s, the United States has experienced a wave of prosperity almost unprecedented in history in terms of wealth creation, new jobs, and improved living standards for all. Under the leadership of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Americans changed the incentive structure on taxes, inflation, and regulation, and as a result the economy roared back to life after the anti-growth, high-inflation 1970s.

Now the rest of the world is following the American economic growth model of lower tax rates, more economic freedom, and sound money. Paradoxically, one country is moving away from these growth policies and putting its prosperity at risk -- America.

On the eve of a critical presidential election, Laffer, Moore, and Tanous provide the factual information every American needs in order to understand exactly how we achieved the prosperity many people have come to take for granted, and explain how the policies of Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi can cause America to lose its status as the world's growth and job creation machine.

The End of Prosperity is essential reading for all Americans who value our nation's free enterprise system and high standard of living, and want to know how to protect their own investments in the coming storm.

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (Wiley Investment Classics)

Charles P. Kindleberger, Robert Aliber

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Relevant but hard to read 3 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I am no economist and just an interested general reader. I expected to read narratives about past financial crises and how they played out. But this book is not organized that way. It doesn't tell any story from start to finish. Instead it references lots of different crises in a kind of shorthand way, without giving the background or the overall narrative.

Many of the references are pretty darn obscure, at least to me. So fine, if he's talking about how a certain phenomenon works and he says, "as in 1932," or "as in the S&L crisis," I'm with him. But when he says, "just as in the 1762 case in Belgium" (made up example)--well, my eyes start to glaze over, because he hasn't told me the story of 1762 Belgium, but referenced it as if it should be as familiar to me as the Great Depression in the US.

I also think there's something wrong with the writing style. He seems not to start out with topic sentences that show us where he's going, or to end with a summing up of the significance of what he's just said. Certain details recur within a few pages of each other. The effect is pretty scatter-shot, as if it was not carefully edited and made to flow.

There is plenty of raw material here for anyone watching our current economic crisis and wondering how it happened, but you have to work for it. What I get from it is that in certain circumstances, if everyone does what seems best to him or her in the market, the end result will be disaster for all. It's not really irrational to buy when prices are increasing by the day, because huge profits can indeed be made. But the more people that make that individually rational choice, the more irrational the whole thing becomes.

Maybe I could compare it to a stampede to an exit door in a fire. Each person's individual best choice is to get out as quickly as possible. But if you allow that psychological reality to play out, you might have people trampled to death at the door who then block everyone else from escaping.

Reading this was like listening to a rather elderly professor of history who is intimately familiar with many obscure incidents, but doesn't provide the context for his young students to follow his train of thought.

Editorial Review:

Manias, Panics, and Crashes, Fifth Edition is an engaging and entertaining account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries. Covering such topics as the history and anatomy of crises, speculative manias, and the lender of last resort, this book puts the turbulence of the financial world in perspective. The updated fifth edition expands upon each chapter, and includes two new chapters focusing on significant financial crises of the last fifteen years.

J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2009: For Preparing Your 2008 Tax Return (J.K. Lasser)

J. K. Lasser Institute

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Editorial Review:

J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2009--the nation's all-time top-selling tax guide--is a proven, accessible resource with important strategies, useful recommendations and of course, all the latest tax law changes. With over 39 million copies sold, Your Income Tax 2009 is the #1 choice for taxpayers around the country.

FairTax: The Truth: Answering the Critics

Neal Boortz, John Linder

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 123 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 2005, firebrand radio talk show host Neal Boortz and Georgia congressman John Linder created The FairTax Book, presenting the American public with a bold new plan designed to eliminate federal taxes and the IRS, jump-start the U.S. economy, bring back lost industries and jobs, and recapture billions of untaxed dollars hoarded by criminal and offshore businesses. Their book became an immediate #1 New York Times bestseller, propelling a powerful grassroots tax reform movement that's spreading like wildfire across our nation.

Now, three years later, the authors are back to answer the outspoken and misinformed critics of their innovative proposal. Offering eye-opening new insights not covered in the original book, FairTax: The Truth debunks the negative myths and gross misrepresentations of this groundbreaking idea. The FairTax plan is simple, brilliant, and it will work—enabling you to keep all the money in your paycheck; eliminating the fraud, hassle, and waste of our current system; and revolutionizing the way America pays for itself.

How To Make Money In Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times or Bad, 3rd Edition

William J. O'Neil

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 216 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the school of unemotional investing comes the classic How to Make Money in Stocks, by Wall Street analyst and publisher William O'Neil. Readers new to securities will find it an excellent primer, one that relies on time-honored indicators such as quarterly earnings, market capitalization, and daily indexes. O'Neil's study of winning stocks stretches back to the 1960s, and he shares his insights here, describing what characterizes a growth stock, when to cut your losses (at 7 or 8 percent, no more), and how to spot a market top.

The techniques in How to Make Money in Stocks are hardly revolutionary, but therein lies their strength, as O'Neil claims his is "a winning system in good times or bad." Investors interested in Net stocks might be disappointed--the author's first rule is that a company must show a pattern of growing profits, which disqualifies many dot coms. (Try Rule Breakers, Rule Makers for a different take.) O'Neil's approach to stocks is, above all, rational, and he pays little heed to market hype.

Those new to investing would do well to read this book before embarking, and even more seasoned traders may find How to Make Money in Stocks a refreshing return to basics. Markets may swing bull and bear, but O'Neil promises to stand firm. --Demian McLean

Financial Peace Revisited

Dave Ramsey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 69 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Dave Ramsey knows what it's like to have it all. By age twenty-six, he had established a four-million-dollar real estate portfolio, only to lose it by age thirty. He has since rebuilt his financial life and, through his workshops and his New York Times business bestsellers Financial Peace and More than Enough, he has helped hundreds of thousands of people to understand the forces behind their financial distress and how to set things right-financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

In this new edition of Financial Peace, Ramsey has updated his tactics and philosophy to show even more readers:

€ how to get out of debt and stay out
€ the KISS rule of investing-"Keep It Simple, Stupid"
€ how to use the principle of contentment to guide financial decision making
€ how the flow of money can revolutionize relationships

With practical and easy to follow methods and personal anecdotes, Financial Peace is the road map to personal control, financial security, a new, vital family dynamic, and lifetime peace.

Rich Dad's Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest in, That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter

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Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Investing -> Introduction

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 196 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The rich are different from the rest of us, if for no other reason than U.S. tax and securities laws allow them to invest in ways that keep us from catching up to them. That's why 90 percent of all corporate shares of stock are owned by 10 percent of the people. Kiyosaki believes it's possible for anyone to move up into that 10 percent, but it takes a different view of investing than most people have: it takes a plan to be a successful investor. And a plan is more than simply buying and selling, or collecting "assets" that bring in no cash and are thus more akin to liabilities. The way most people invest, "they might as well be pushing a wheelbarrow in a circle," he writes. A plan is "mechanical, automatic, and boring," a formula for success that has worked historically for most of those who've used it. Kiyosaki's "rich dad" (actually, the father of his best friend) tells him the simplest analogy is the game Monopoly: buy four green houses, trade them for one red hotel, and repeat until you become rich.

The overall message of Rich Dad's Guide to Investing is that this is an abundant world, full of opportunity for the sophisticated investor. However, it sometimes takes a while to find this point. Much of the book is told in dialogues between young Kiyosaki and his rich dad, and these conversations can ramble. There are rewards for the careful reader--for example, in the middle of a section on the basic rules of investing, Kiyosaki's rich dad compares investor education to toilet training: difficult at first but eventually automatic. But getting to these inspired metaphors means wading through a lot of repetitive dialogue. It's a bit ironic that someone who advocates investor discipline should show so little as a writer. But by the end of the book, even the rambling starts to make sense. By the hundredth time you read that the rich don't work for money, and that you don't need money to make money, both concepts start to make sense. It still looks difficult to apply these ideas, but Rich Dad's Guide to Investing certainly makes the case that they'll work for anyone bold and smart enough to practice them. --Lou Schuler

The Interpretation of Financial Statements

Benjamin Graham, Spencer B. Meredith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"All investors, from beginners to old hands, should gain from the use of this guide, as I have."
From the Introduction by Michael F. Price, president, Franklin Mutual Advisors, Inc.

Benjamin Graham has been called the most important investment thinker of the twentieth century. As a master investor, pioneering stock analyst, and mentor to investment superstars, he has no peer.

The volume you hold in your hands is Graham's timeless guide to interpreting and understanding financial statements. It has long been out of print, but now joins Graham's other masterpieces, The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis, as the three priceless keys to understanding Graham and value investing.

The advice he offers in this book is as useful and prescient today as it was sixty years ago. As he writes in the preface, "if you have precise information as to a company's present financial position and its past earnings record, you are better equipped to gauge its future possibilities. And this is the essential function and value of security analysis."

Written just three years after his landmark Security Analysis, The Interpretation of Financial Statements gets to the heart of the master's ideas on value investing in astonishingly few pages. Readers will learn to analyze a company's balance sheets and income statements and arrive at a true understanding of its financial position and earnings record. Graham provides simple tests any reader can apply to determine the financial health and well-being of any company.

This volume is an exact text replica of the first edition of The Interpretation of Financial Statements, published by Harper & Brothers in 1937. Graham's original language has been restored, and readers can be assured that every idea and technique presented here appears exactly as Graham intended.

Highly practical and accessible, it is an essential guide for all business people--and makes the perfect companion volume to Graham's investment masterpiece The Intelligent Investor.

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

Peter L. Bernstein

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 155 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Today's hero is often tomorrow's blockhead. 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

There are two things that I really liked about this book, and one thing that I didn't. The good things:

1) The author's vast knowledge of the financial markets, from most of a century of experience.
2) His extensive and entertaining history of risk analysis.

The bad thing:

His attempts to explain math concepts that he apparently doesn't understand very well.

His history of risk analysis was a pleasure to read -- from Fibonacci and Cardano, to Markowitz and Sharpe. My favorite, was his coverage of Francis Galton, the man who measured everything.

Above all, the greatest value in this book is that it's packed with the author's knowledge of finance, from 63 years of experience. He's 89 years old now, and appears to still be going strong.

This book is well worth reading.

My favorite quote from the book:
Today's hero is often tomorrow's blockhead.(pg 297)

Editorial Review:

With the stock market breaking records almost daily, leaving longtime market analysts shaking their heads and revising their forecasts, a study of the concept of risk seems quite timely. Peter Bernstein has written a comprehensive history of man's efforts to understand risk and probability, beginning with early gamblers in ancient Greece, continuing through the 17th-century French mathematicians Pascal and Fermat and up to modern chaos theory. Along the way he demonstrates that understanding risk underlies everything from game theory to bridge-building to winemaking.

Quicken Willmaker Plus 2009 Edition: Estate Planning Essentials (Book with Software)

Editors of Nolo

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 65 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

America's No. 1 selling estate planning software in book form, helps you create a will, living trust, living will -- and much more!

Help protect your family and your assets, and save on legal fees! Quicken Willmaker Plus 2009 Edition: Estate Planning Essentials provides the legal forms you need. So comprehensive, the software assembles your forms from among 40,000 document possibilities -- but so easy to use, you'll have them finished in minutes.

PLUS! Package includes a free CD-Rom of Nolo's bestselling title THE EXECUTOR'S GUIDE with Quicken Willmaker 2009, a value of $39.99!

Will

Living Trusts, including an AB Trust

Health Care Directive:
Living Will
Health Care Power of Attorney

Financial Powers of Attorney

Final arrangements document

Important documents for executors

Quicken Willmaker Plus 2009 Edition: Estate Planning Essentials also provides forms you can use every day, such as authorizations and agreements, promissory notes, and child and elder care forms.

For each document, Quicken Willmaker Plus 2009 Edition: Estate Planning Essentials takes you through a step-by-step interview. Your documents will automatically reflect the laws of your state. If you have any questions, simply check out the comprehensive onscreen legal manual.

Need to know more? Here are in-depth details about what you can do with Quicken Willmaker Plus 2009 Edition: Estate Planning Essentials:

Your Will
Provide for family, friends and charities. Name a personal guardian to care for young children. Specify the executor (or "personal representative") of your estate. Select a trusted person to manage property left to young people. Revise and update your will whenever you like.

Your Living Trust
Make a basic trust, whether you're married or single. If married, you can create a AB trust (or bypass trust) and spare your heirs from potentially heavy estate taxes. Create subtrusts for minor children and young adults. Name custodians for property left to children. Change or revoke your trust at any time.

Your Health Care Directive
Lets people who care for you make important decisions about your life and health when you can't. Create a:

Health Care Power of Attorney
Permit a loved one to make important medical decisions for you if you are unable to do so yourself.

Living Will
Specify whether you want your life prolonged through artificial means. Appoint someone to make sure your wishes are carried out.

Your Financial Power of Attorney
Name someone to make your financial decisions, in case you are medically incapacitated. Don't worry, you can grant as much authority as you wish.

Your Final Arrangements
Plan a funeral or other ceremony. Clarify whether you want a cremation or burial. Select someone to oversee your final arrangements -- and more!

Documents for Your Executor
Make sure your executor ("personal representative" in some states) has all the forms and instructions he or she needs to do the job: Checklists, letters, notices, claim forms -- and more.

Personal Finance Documents
Over a dozen forms that let you handle financial situations you might face on any given day, such as lending or borrowing money to friends or family, creating bills of sale, ending a credit card account -- and more!

Home & Family Documents
Whether you need to authorize someone to travel with your child to another country, want to lend your car to a friend, or create an agreement with a trusted person to take care of your elderly parent, Quicken Willmaker Plus 2009 Edition: Estate Planning Essentials can handle all these family situations -- and many more!

Estate planning documents not valid in Louisiana.

List of Forms
All forms are completed through a step-by-step interview, which customizes a document based on your answers. Completed documents can be printed directly, or exported to an RTF document, which can be opened in any word processor.

Wills and Living Trusts
Will
Self-Proving Affidavit (for Will)
Letter to Executor
Individual Living Trust
Shared Living Trust
AB Trust (aka Bypass Trust)
Certification of Trust
Assignment of Property (to Trust)
Reverse Assignment of Property (from Trust)
Revocation of Living Trust
Restatement and Amendment of Living Trust

Leaving Others in Charge
Health Care Directive (Living Will & Power of Attorney)
Durable Power of Attorney for Finances
Special (Limited) Power of Attorney for Finances
Information for the Attorney-in-Fact
Delegation Form for Attorney-in-Fact
Resignation Form for Attorney-in-Fact
Revocation Form for Recorded Durable Power of Attorney for Finances
Revocation Form for Unrecorded Durable Power of Attorney for Finances
Revocation of Health Care Directive
Revocation of Power of Attorney
Final Arrangements Letter

Documents for Your Executor
Affidavit of Domicile
Employee Death Benefits Letter
Executor's Checklist
Executor's Letter to Financial Institution
General Notice of Death
Notice to Creditor of Death
Notice to Homeowners Insurance Company of Death
Notice to Vehicle Insurance Company of Death
Request for Life Insurance Claim Form
Request for Life Insurance Proceeds

Personal Finance Documents
General Bill of Sale
Promissory Note (Amortized Monthly Payments)
Promissory Note (Balloon Payment)
Promissory Note (Payments of Interest Only)
Promissory Note (One Lump Sum Payment)
Security Agreement for Borrowing Money
Notice to Terminate Joint Credit Card Account
Notice to Put Name on Do Not Call List
Cancel Membership or Subscription

Documents for Home and Family
Child Care Agreement
Child Care Instructions
Authorization for Minor's Medical Treatment
Authorization for Foreign Travel With Minor
Temporary Guardianship Authorization for Care of Minor
Elder Care Agreement
Pet Care Agreement
Housekeeping Services Agreement
Housesitting Instructions
Authorization to Drive a Motor Vehicle
Property Inventory Worksheet