Finance Books - Page 2

The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm

Robert F. Bruner, Sean D. Carr

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Before reading The Panic of 1907, the year 1907 seemed like a long time ago and a different world. The authors, however, bring this story alive in a fast-moving book, and the reader sees how events of that time are very relevant for today's financial world. In spite of all of our advances, including a stronger monetary system and modern tools for managing risk, Bruner and Carr help us understand that we are not immune to a future crisis."
—Dwight B. Crane, Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School

"Bruner and Carr provide a thorough, masterly, and highly readable account of the 1907 crisis and its management by the great private banker J. P. Morgan. Congress heeded the lessons of 1907, launching the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to prevent banking panics and foster financial stability. We still have financial problems. But because of 1907 and Morgan, a century later we have a respected central bank as well as greater confidence in our money and our banks than our great-grandparents had in theirs."
—Richard Sylla, Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets, and Professor of Economics, Stern School of Business, New York University

"A fascinating portrayal of the events and personalities of the crisis and panic of 1907. Lessons learned and parallels to the present have great relevance. Crises and panics are as much a part of our future as our past."
—John Strangfeld, Vice Chairman, Prudential Financial

"Who would have thought that a hundred years after the Panic of 1907 so much remained to be written about it? Bruner and Carr break significant new ground because they are willing to do the heavy lifting of combing through massive archival material to identify and weave together important facts. Their book will be of interest not only to banking theorists and financial historians, but also to business school and economics students, for its rare ability to teach so clearly why and how a panic unfolds."
—Charles Calomiris, Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia University, Graduate School of Business

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management

Roger Lowenstein

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 209 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

John Meriwether, a famously successful Wall Street trader, spent the 1980s as a partner at Salomon Brothers, establishing the best--and the brainiest--bond arbitrage group in the world. A mysterious and shy midwesterner, he knitted together a group of Ph.D.-certified arbitrageurs who rewarded him with filial devotion and fabulous profits. Then, in 1991, in the wake of a scandal involving one of his traders, Meriwether abruptly resigned. For two years, his fiercely loyal team--convinced that the chief had been unfairly victimized--plotted their boss's return. Then, in 1993, Meriwether made a historic offer. He gathered together his former disciples and a handful of supereconomists from academia and proposed that they become partners in a new hedge fund different from any Wall Street had ever seen. And so Long-Term Capital Management was born.
        In a decade that had seen the longest and most rewarding bull market in history, hedge funds were the ne plus ultra of investments: discreet, private clubs limited to those rich enough to pony up millions. They promised that the investors' money would be placed in a variety of trades simultaneously--a "hedging" strategy designed to minimize the possibility of loss. At Long-Term, Meriwether & Co. truly believed that their finely tuned computer models had tamed the genie of risk, and would allow them to bet on the future with near mathematical certainty. And thanks to their cast--which included a pair of future Nobel Prize winners--investors believed them.
        From the moment Long-Term opened their offices in posh Greenwich, Connecticut, miles from the pandemonium of Wall Street, it was clear that this would be a hedge fund apart from all others. Though they viewed the big Wall Street investment banks with disdain, so great was Long-Term's aura that these very banks lined up to provide the firm with financing, and on the very sweetest of terms. So self-certain were Long-Term's traders that they borrowed with little concern about the leverage. At first, Long-Term's models stayed on script, and this new gold standard in hedge funds boasted such incredible returns that private investors and even central banks clamored to invest more money. It seemed the geniuses in Greenwich couldn't lose.
        Four years later, when a default in Russia set off a global storm that Long-Term's models hadn't anticipated, its supposedly safe portfolios imploded. In five weeks, the professors went from mega-rich geniuses to discredited failures. With the firm about to go under, its staggering $100 billion balance sheet threatened to drag down markets around the world. At the eleventh hour, fearing that the financial system of the world was in peril, the Federal Reserve Bank hastily summoned Wall Street's leading banks to underwrite a bailout.
        Roger Lowenstein, the bestselling author of Buffett, captures Long-Term's roller-coaster ride in gripping detail. Drawing on confidential internal memos and interviews with dozens of key players, Lowenstein crafts a story that reads like a first-rate thriller from beginning to end. He explains not just how the fund made and lost its money, but what it was about the personalities of Long-Term's partners, the arrogance of their mathematical certainties, and the late-nineties culture of Wall Street that made it all possible.
        When Genius Failed is the cautionary financial tale of our time, the gripping saga of what happened when an elite group of investors believed they could actually deconstruct risk and use virtually limitless leverage to create limitless wealth. In Roger Lowenstein's hands, it is a brilliant tale peppered with fast money, vivid characters, and high drama.

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

G. Edward Griffin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 183 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Highly Recommended Book!! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This Book traces the International Bankers attempt to control the nations of the world through a privately owned central bank, manipulating and controlling the money supply creating recessions, depressions and financing wars.our Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution warned the nation of an institution like a central bank.''Give me control over a nations currency and I care not who writes its laws''wrote Rothschild! those that control the federal Reserve control the world.



Fiat money created out of nothing(unbacked by gold) issued by a private bank the federal reserve and charging interest on it,what a scam!!this is the cause of our current global economic crises!!!

Editorial Review:

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. 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 will change the way you view the world, politics, and money. Your world view will definitely change. You'll never trust a politician again — or a banker.

Leading Change

John P. Kotter

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 76 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good leadership advice, but narrow and out-dated 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

John Kotter is a business professor at Harvard University who writes "Leading Change" as a guide to business leaders, helping them to transform their stagnant, ineffective, hierarchical companies into more effective, responsive, team-oriented ones. To help companies and leaders make this transition, he presents eight sequential steps that must be followed in order and done well.

These eight steps are:

1. Establish a sense of urgency (fight complacency)

2. Create a guiding coalition (both influential leaders and effective managers)

3. Develop a widely inspiring vision and strategy for achieving it

4. Communicate the vision, communicate the vision, and communicate the vision even more.

5. Give the employees authority to creatively experiment concerning how to best make the vision a reality

6. Make sure you point out things to celebrate as you make progress toward your goals; it rewards appropriate behavior and, besides, people need to celebrate once in a while.

7. Understand Bowen Family Systems Theory--that when you change one thing, everything else changes with it. Systemic change is difficult work that produces a whole lot of anxiety and unintended consequences.

8. Make sure that, once the changes are made, they become engrained in the new culture of he company; make them "the way we do things around here."

Kotter does get credit for being comprehensive and for being among the first to write a leadership book of this sort (copyright 1996). He appears correct in all of his arguments and this reader has difficulty finding flaws in his eight steps. He appropriately balances task-orientation and relationship-orientation and distinguishes between leading and managing. Furthermore, he is the only author I've come across that understands how Family Systems Theory plays out in an organization undergoing change.

However, the book is outdated. Newer authors like Jim Collins, John Maxwell, and Kouzes & Posner have refined Kotter's ideas and presented them in a more readable, more applicable, and more modern way (again, 1996 copyright).

Kotter limits his ideas and examples to the large, highly structured business world; other authors deliberately address leadership within smaller businesses, schools, non-profits, and other environments. Kotter writes before the internet was widely used; other books keep rapid communication advancements in mind. The obligatory quotes from people I've never heard of who praise the book say over and over again how highly readable Kotter's prose is; I found the prose dry and could cite many examples from this genre which are much more readable.

The ideas Kotter presents are not bad; in fact they're quite good and have blazed the trail for other leadership books. However, "Leading Change" could certainly use an updated edition. Other authors have taken many of Kotter's ideas, refined them, re-worked them, and present them in a manner much more helpful to a wider audience.

I neither recommend this book nor do I contest it. You would do well to read "Leading Change," but you would do better to read some of the authors listed above.

Editorial Review:

In "Leading Change", John Kotter examines the efforts of more than 100 companies to remake themselves into better competitors. He identifies the most common mistakes leaders and managers make in attempting to create change and offers an eight-step process to overcome the obstacles and carry out the firm's agenda: establishing a greater sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering others to act, creating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing even more change, and institutionalizing new approaches in the future. This highly personal book reveals what John Kotter has seen, heard, experienced, and concluded in 25 years of working with companies to create lasting transformation.

Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements: The Search for the Company with a Durable Competitive Advantage

Mary Buffett, David Clark

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

With an insider's view of the mind of the master, Mary Buffett and David Clark have written a simple guide for reading financial statements from Warren Buffett's succccessful perspective.

Buffett and Clark clearly outline Warren Buffett's strategies in a way that will appeal to newcomers and seasoned Buffettologists alike. Inspired by the seminal work of Buffett's mentor, Benjamin Graham (The Interpretation of Financial Statements, 1937), this book presents Buffett's interpretation of financial statements with anecdotes and quotes from the master investor himself.

Potential investors will discover:

• Buffett's time-tested dos and don'ts for interpreting an income statement and balance sheet
• Why high research and development costs can kill a great business
• How much debt Buffett thinks a company can carry before it becomes too dangerous to touch
• The financial ratios and calculations that Buffett uses to identify the company with a durable competitive advantage -- which he believes makes for the winning long-term investment
• How Buffett uses financial statements to value a company
• What kinds of companies Warren stays away from no matter how cheap their selling price

Once readers complete and master Buffett's simple financial calculations and methods for interpreting a company's financial statement, they'll be well on their way to identifying which companies are going to be tomorrow's winners -- and which will be the losers they should avoid at all costs.

Destined to become a classic in the world of investment books, Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements is the perfect companion volume to The New Buffettology and The Tao of Warren Buffett.

The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It

Robert J. Shiller

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The subprime mortgage crisis has already wreaked havoc on the lives of millions of people and now it threatens to derail the U.S. economy and economies around the world. In this trenchant book, best-selling economist Robert Shiller reveals the origins of this crisis and puts forward bold measures to solve it. He calls for an aggressive response--a restructuring of the institutional foundations of the financial system that will not only allow people once again to buy and sell homes with confidence, but will create the conditions for greater prosperity in America and throughout the deeply interconnected world economy.

Shiller blames the subprime crisis on the irrational exuberance that drove the economy's two most recent bubbles--in stocks in the 1990s and in housing between 2000 and 2007. He shows how these bubbles led to the dangerous overextension of credit now resulting in foreclosures, bankruptcies, and write-offs, as well as a global credit crunch. To restore confidence in the markets, Shiller argues, bailouts are needed in the short run. But he insists that these bailouts must be targeted at low-income victims of subprime deals. In the longer term, the subprime solution will require leaders to revamp the financial framework by deploying an ambitious package of initiatives to inhibit the formation of bubbles and limit risks, including better financial information; simplified legal contracts and regulations; expanded markets for managing risks; home equity insurance policies; income-linked home loans; and new measures to protect consumers against hidden inflationary effects.

This powerful book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got into the subprime mess--and how we can get out.

The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke

Suze Orman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 239 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

the money book for the young, fabulous and broke 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I purchased the book for my niece who is entering her freshman year in college and she thinks it's a great book, but of course I think that everything that Suze Orman writes is fabulous.
c jones

Fantastic Book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book gives you the ins and outs of personal finance. Things you think are common knowledge but you actually always overlook.

If you are going to college or a recent college graduate this book is perfect for you. It gives you the information needed to stay out of financial trouble and how to fix trouble that you have made; and if you're not in trouble it will help you better your situation.

To me the most valuable parts are knowing your credit score, how to save money, how to pay down your debt, and everything you need to know about student loans.

Lastly this isn't a drab or dry book. The book is written as if Suze is talking to you. Her humor takes the edge off of these sometimes dry topics.

I highly recommend this book. I'll be referencing mine for many years.

Editorial Review:

First time in paperback. The #1 New York Times bestseller from the phenomenal author of The Courage to Be Rich.

The world's most trusted expert on money matters answers a generation's cry for help-and gives advice on

- Credit card debt
- Student loans
- Credit scores
- The first real job
- Buying a first home
- Insurance facts: auto, home, renters, health
- Financial issues of the self-employed

And much more advice that fits the realities of "Generation Broke."

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Wiley Investment Classics)

Edwin Lefèvre

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 202 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Oldy but a great Goody 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Never before had I so much fun reading and learning about the psychology of buying and shorting stocks. This is an extraordinarily written piece of work that eases into explanations of the power of the subconscious as well as the power of emotions on the conscious decisions made during those uncertain moments of trading. Great book!

Editorial Review:

-Worth magazine

"The most entertaining book written on investing is Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, by Edwin Lefèvre, first published in 1923."
-The Seattle Times

"After twenty years and many re-reads, Reminiscences is still one of my all-time favorites."
-Kenneth L. Fisher, Forbes

"A must-read classic for all investors, whether brand-new or experienced."
-William O'Neil, founder and Chairman, Investor's Business Daily

"Whilst stock market tomes have come and gone, this remains popular and in print eighty years on."
-GQ magazine

First published in 1923, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is the most widely read, highly recommended investment book ever. Generations of readers have found that it has more to teach them about markets and people than years of experience. This is a timeless tale that will enrich your life-and your portfolio.

The Origin of Financial Crises: Central Banks, Credit Bubbles, and the Efficient Market Fallacy (Vintage)

George Cooper

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

4.5 stars-Cooper has connected all of the dots except one-he missed Keynes 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 32 people found this review helpful.

Cooper has written a book that currently must be judged to be superior to any other book written on the Subprime mortgage backed bond catastrope that has led the American Treasury Secretary Paulson to advocate the government purchase of about 1 trillion dollars of bank and investment bank assets about which no one has the slightest idea of what their true worth is.
Cooper simply and easily dismantles the Efficient Market Hypothesis(EMH)that is the foundation of modern finance theory.This hypothesis is also the foundation of ALL modern macroeconomic theory.The EMH goes under the name rational expectations,real business cycles,New Classical Economics,and New Keynesian Economics in macroeconomics.Underlying both is the Subjective Expected Utility(SEU)decision theory,a hybrid of the Frank Ramsey,Bruno De Finetti,and Leonard J. Savage subjectivist theory of probability that is combined with the Von Neumann and Morgenstern expected utility theory.This theory assumes that the weight of the evidence available to decision makers is complete.This means that all decision makers know and can apply a unique probability distribution's mean and standard deviation, or act " as if " they did,before they make any decision.This case is a very special case of Keynes's weight of the evidence variable,w, where w=1.w is defined on the unit interval between 0 and 1 (Ellsberg's rho variable gives the same results as Keynes's w because rho is also defined on the unit interval.A rho =1 means that the decision maker has complete confidence in his information set and can specify a unique probability distribution).

The efficient market hypothesis assumes that w and rho =1,just as the rational expectations hypothesis does.Cooper,unfortunately,overlooks the fact that Minsky's financial fragility hypothesis,which shows how waves of speculation ,magnified and amplified by bank loans to speculators ,will morph into Ponzi finance schemes that lead to the collapse of the bubble and a crash , is directly built on Keynes's Chapter 21 analysis in his General Theory(1936;GT) which integrated Keynes's weight of the evidence analysis concerning w from chapters 6 and 26(sections 7 and 8) of the A Treatise on Probability(1921;TP)into his elasticity analysis on pp.304-306 of the GT.The crucial result is that a complete information set requires that the macro elasticity e = 1(or ed subscript =1).A e = 1(this means the same thing as w = 1 or rho = 1)means that there is a complete information set that allows decison makers to calculate the riskiness of different alternative portfolios.The Efficient Market Hypothesis and Rational Expectations hypothesis will both hold.There will be no uncertainty or ambiguity(Ellsberg's term),only risk.However,Keynes points out that the general case is that e < 1(so both w < 1 and rho < 1).Uncertainty exists and results in a speculative demand for money.The greater the speculative demand for money is the greater the amount of involuntary unemployment and economic instability that will result.I have deducted 1/2 of a star because Cooper overlooks the fact that Keynes had already demonstrated theoretically that a Minsky crisis can occur whenever w or rho or e is less than 1.Minsky himself had absolutely no understanding of the technical results derived by Keynes in chapter 21 of the GT because he never read either chapter 20 or chapter 21.There is nothing new,original,or innovative in Minsky's work.
Cooper redeems himself by showing how Mandelbrot's analysis of his general 4-parameter model, built around the Cauchy distribution's dangerous wild risk ,that, practically, goes out as far as 25 standard deviations ,demonstrates the special case nature of both modern finance theory and modern macroeconomic theory.Both theories are built on the Normal distribution's plus or minus 3 standard deviations covering 99.7 % of all outcomes.The Normal distribution is a special case of the Cauchy distribution.Heavy government regulation of the financial and banking system,aimed at stopping banker financed speculation ,can, as argued by Adam Smith(The Wealth of Nations,1776,Modern Library(Cannan)edition,pp.260-340) over 230 years ago in his 80 page discussion of why a central bank was needed,prevent the boom-bust turbulence of the Cauchy distribution from arising.A heavily regulated financial and macroscopic system can artificially create normally distributed outcomes with no more than plus or minus 3 standard deviations ,thus preventing the wild risk of the Cauchy from destroying the financial system.Deregulation and privatization automatically unleach the destructive potential of the Cauchy.Cooper covers this satisfactorily,but somewhat unevenly,in chapters 2,4,7,and 8 of his book.

This book is not meant for the general reader.The potential buyer needs to be familiar with both modern finance theory(EMH) and macroeconomic theory(REH) ,as well as Mandelbrot's work,to understand why the world's financial markets can be destroyed in a deregulated environment of the type that has been constructed between 1978 and 2008 in the United States and the World.

Editorial Review:

In a series of disarmingly simple arguments financial market analyst George Cooper challenges the core principles of today's economic orthodoxy and explains how we have created an economy that is inherently unstable and crisis prone. With great skill, he examines the very foundations of today's economic philosophy and adds a compelling analysis of the forces behind economic crisis. His goal is nothing less than preventing the seemingly endless procession of damaging boom-bust cycles, unsustainable economic bubbles, crippling credit crunches, and debilitating inflation. His direct, conscientious, and honest approach will captivate any reader and is an invaluable aid in understanding today's economy.

Moneyball

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 382 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

This is what happens when you question assumptions 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

More than baseball, Moneyball is about questioning assumptions - challenging everything you know to be true about your situation and asking yourself if maybe it "ain't necessarily so." How did Billy Beane and the Oakland A's achieve so many wins with such a limited budget?

1. They questioned assumptions (about the valuation of players).
2. They determined that various time-honored metrics metrics (for determining a player's value or worth) did not hold up under scrutiny.
3. Because no one ELSE did 1 and 2, they were able to invest their limited resources on players who were clearly undervalued.

What happens when you question assumptions? You often arrive at winning solutions! Discussed in detail (along with other great examples) in:Shake That Brain: How to Create Winning Solutions and Have Fun While You're At It

Editorial Review:

Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places tok look would be the gront offices of major leauge teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?