Friday November 21, 2008
Books: Business & Investing
Displayed below are the top selling items for today, Friday November 21, 2008 along with the review customers have voted "most useful".
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- The Forgotten Man : A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
- Fleeced : How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies ... Are Scamming Us ... and What to Do About It by Dick Morris
- Outliers : The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Tipping Point : How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
- Hot, Flat, and Crowded : Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman
- Crash Proof : How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse (Lynn Sonberg Books) by Peter D. Schiff
- The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets : How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down (Little Books. Big Profits) by Peter D. Schiff
- The Snowball : Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder
- The Ascent of Money : A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
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The Forgotten Man
A New History of the Great Depression
by Amity Shlaes
(based on 140 customer reviews)
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(Paperback)
Author: Amity Shlaes
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Price: $9.57
You save: $6.38 (40%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
463 out of 545 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 6/13/07
Changes your understanding of the Great Depression
Amity Shlaes: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression HarperCollins, 2007, 433pp
This is a remarkable book which will forever change your understanding of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's role and the lessons to be learned from government intervention.
Amity Shlaes makes a compelling case that Hoover and Roosevelt actually lengthened the Depression. They did this, Shlaes argues, by following bad monetary policy, which further deflated the currency, and by raising tariff barriers, which broke up world trade and reduced economic activity everywhere.
Shlaes makes the best case I have seen that business confidence is the key to economic expansion and that each step of the New Deal was a further blow to business confidence.
She also explains the view of the pre-government control entrepreneurs and investors who had created an extraordinarily successful country prior to 1929.
This is a superb book well worth reading, studying and then thinking about for a long time.
Click here to see more reviews for: The Forgotten Man
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Fleeced
How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies ... Are Scamming Us ... and What to Do About It
by Dick Morris
(based on 178 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Dick Morris
Publisher: Harper
Price: $16.17
You save: $10.78 (40%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
364 out of 507 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 6/24/08
Spot on Dick Morris.
Let me start out by saying I'm not convinced Dick Morris is a right wing anything. After all he served President Clinton during his administration. I suspect that what is happening is that individuals are aligning themselves as Conservatives and Liberals regardless of party names.
Fleeced is an indictment of large government and idiotic ideas and not a lambasting of democrats or petting of republicans. Whether it's a Congress who can't or won't get anything done or a government that is so grid locked that neither sides wants to give in first, Fleeced deals with the problem in an even handed way. Dick Morris is a consumate insider in Washington. I find his reasoning to be dead on.
Morris contends that 425 terrorists have been released from Gitmo and that 50 of those have been retaken or killed in Iraq. I heard that the figure was close to 100. I suspect the time lag is at work here, but the fact of the matter is that many of the detainees are infact combatants...perhaps all of them.
Is Fleeced a right wing manifesto? No. Morris is very even handed in his criticism. He indicts McCain for not showing up for his day job just as hard at he slams Clinton and Obama. He goes after all of Congress, Democtat and Republican.
I still have some reading to do to finish Fleeced. I've bounced around from chapter to chapter. Suffice it to say that if you're not upset after reading Fleeced I can't imagine why.
I highly recommend Fleeced to anyone who cares for this country.
Peace always
Click here to see more reviews for: Fleeced
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Outliers
The Story of Success
by Malcolm Gladwell (based on 17 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Price: $16.79
You save: $11.20 (40%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
34 out of 45 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 11/18/08
An interesting look at what gets success
In this wide-ranging third installment of Malcolm Gladwell's exploration of how people and social phenomena work, the New Yorker journalist takes a close look at what constitutes high levels of success. That is, what makes people at the top of their respective fields get there? As we've come to expect from Gladwell's previous books, the answer to the question is a bit complicated.
He says that upbringing, culture and even random luck have something to with success, but there is another important quality that anyone can control. Two chapters are dedicated to the "revelation" that IQ is only a baseline quality and success has little to nothing to do with having a high IQ or a low IQ. Rather, success is substantially a product of cultivating a high degree of what Robert Sternberg calls "practical intelligence" or what most refer to as "emotional intelligence."
Gladwell uses the example of Nobel laureates coming from unknown schools as often as ivy league schools. At this level of mastery IQ is no longer a factor. Success has little to do with where you were educated and everything to do with your level of practical/emotional intelligence and willingness to put in the 10,000 hours of practice required to reach mastery of your field.
All in all, it's an interesting read that isn't too heady and goes by pretty quickly, as the interesting anecdotes are what you would expect from Gladwell.
Another book on the topic that I strongly recommend because it has been really helpful to me in actually applying what Gladwell teaches in my own life (for my own success!) is The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book.
Click here to see more reviews for: Outliers
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The Tipping Point
How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell (based on 940 customer reviews)
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(Paperback)
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Price: $10.19
You save: $4.80 (32%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
687 out of 772 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 5/7/00
Interesting Read
Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for New Yorker Magazine, in The Tipping Point, writes a fascinating study of human behavior patterns, and shows us where the smallest things can trigger an epidemic of change. Though loaded with statistics, the numbers are presented in a way that makes the book read like an exciting novel. Gladwell also gives several examples in history, where one small change in behavior created a bigger change on a national level. He also studies the type of person or group that it takes to make that change.Gladwell's first example is the resurgence of the popularity of Hush Puppies, which had long been out of fashion, and were only sold in small shoe stores. Suddenly, a group of teenage boys in East Village, New York, found the cool to wear. Word-of-mouth advertising that these trend-setters were wearing the once-popular suede shoes set off an epidemic of fashion change, and boys all over America had to have the "cool" shoes.
Galdwell also examines the difference in personality it takes to trigger the change. For example, we all know of Paul Revere's famous ride, but how many of us know that William Dawes made a similar ride? The difference was that people listened to Revere and not to Dawes. Why? Revere knew so many different people. He knew who led which village, knew which doors to knock on to rouse the colonists. Dawes didn't know that many people and therefore could only guess which people to give his message.
There are several other phenomena that Gladwell examines, showing the small things that spark a change, from the dip in the New York City crime rate to the correlation between depression, smoking and teen suicide. If you want to change the world for the better, this book will give you an insight into the methods that work, and those that will backfire. It's all in knowing where to find The Tipping Point.
Jo @ MyShelf.Com
Click here to see more reviews for: The Tipping Point
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Hot, Flat, and Crowded
Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America
by Thomas L. Friedman (based on 118 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Edition: 1
Author: Thomas L. Friedman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Price: $16.77
You save: $11.18 (40%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
160 out of 180 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 9/8/08
Spurring on Energy Creativity
Friedman writes on world population, the increase of the global middle class, and the growing energy crisis. All of this has contributed to a world that is in desperate need of an energy solution. The thing I like about Friedman's approach is he's optimistic and he's practical. His major points are...
-- The battle over green (energy) will define the first part of the 21st century, just like the battle over red (communism) defined the last half of the 20th century.
-- Everyone needs to accept that oil will never again be cheap...
-- Off-shore drilling may be a temporary fix, but it's not the long-term solution.
-- The fossil-fuel age will end only when we invent our way out of it...
-- The last big innovation in energy production was nuclear power half a century ago, which is an important component to solving our energy problem, but we need additional solutions...
-- In order to further real innovation we need people "throwing crazy dollars at every idea, in every garage, that we have 100,000 people trying 100,000 things, five of which might work, and two might be the next green Google."
-- Friedman emphasizes the practical side of green - "It's the incredible sense of opportunity here. It's not just about saving the polar bears. It's not just about saving three generations from climate change. It's also about rising to the greatest economic opportunity that's come along in a long, long, time."
In the end, he is asking for collaboration and innovation. Of course that begs the question - where does the money come from for all of this? It's always easy to point at the government, but when we look at where real economic solutions have come from it's most often private industry. I wish Friedman would have written on how governments can create environments were private industry is incentivized to create, invent, and discover. Even so, Friedman's book is a needed wake-up call.
Click here to see more reviews for: Hot, Flat, and Crowded
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Crash Proof
How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse (Lynn Sonberg Books)
by Peter D. Schiff (based on 259 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Peter D. Schiff
Publisher: Wiley
Price: $16.77
You save: $11.18 (40%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
627 out of 686 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 3/13/07
From a FinancialSense.com listener...
Peter Schiff, son of American patriot Irwin Schiff, has written a very useful book that can not only assist you to take the concrete steps necessary for financial survival, but also change your individual psychology toward the storm on the horizon that is rapidly gathering strength. Today, we have the illusion of prosperity, and the sooner we break through that delusional state, the sooner we can prepare for darker days.
At this point, there are so many possible triggers for the Second Great Depression, it's striking that it has not already begun. The sub-prime meltdown may just be such a trigger that brings down the house of cards, once it becomes more clear which entities actually hold all the risk created as part of the Housing Bubble. Wall Street, sub-prime lenders, and the large banks have been ingenious in their ability to push risk onto other parties, but it's not clear if the counter-parties will have the ability to weather the defaults. Thus, the risk may yet reside with the banks, which normally would have been more restricted in the number of loans they could create by more traditional standards. So much debt has been created, and so much risk obfuscated, that it is hard to imagine our present illusion of prosperity can be maintained much longer.
Mr. Schiff breaks through our modern mythology by shattering these illusions, and here is where he shines best. A bear's bear, Mr. Schiff steps down from the towers of the economic elite to provide analogies that can be readily digested by more casual readers. The analogy of the Asians and the American trapped on an island together is apropos, as it reveals much about the true state of international trade. The Dollar Bubble heavily distorts trade in favor of America, which benefits disproportionately from the inflated value of the dollar.
Mr. Schiff also understands very well the entitlement crisis brewing, and aptly names Social Security a Ponzi Scheme. Most people in Generations X and Y understand that we're the bagholders scheduled for the Ponzi Scheme, but many Baby Boomers love to be delusional about this tragic farce, thinking it's a form of savings rather than our government writing worthless IOUs to itself and lying to the American people. They think Gen X "owes" it to them! Ha Ha! The sooner we can end social security, the sooner we can start saving real money with real assets. Until then, we are slaves waiting for generational emancipation.
I remember the first time I heard Mr. Schiff speak on CNBC. The discussion was about inflation, and I couldn't help but notice Mr. Schiff's definition diverged significantly from the definition used by the brainless cheerleaders on CNBC, and for that matter, our government and most of Wall Street. The proper definition of inflation is "debasement" and secondarily, "an increase in the supply of money which causes a rise in prices" (Webster's 1982). Note the difference between these two definitions and the more commonly used definition today, which is simply "a rise in prices."
CNBC would have us believe that money supply doesn't matter when you can fool people into believing that the risks associated with exuberant money creation won't be felt by anyone, or only by parties "most able to bear that risk." How convenient! What the government doesn't want you to know is that the Federal Reserve creates inflation, and both government and the Federal Reserve benefit from this inflation at everyone else's expense. In the history of every mania and crash, rampant money creation is behind the genesis of every one. Usually, it takes a unique form. In this case, it was the Housing Bubble. So, inflation and the Housing Bubble are intimately linked. As many have often pointed out, the Housing Bubble was needed to replace the Nasdaq Bubble that popped in 2000-2002.
Finally, the juicy part - how to survive. Mr. Schiff advocates foreign equities that are sound and pay excellent dividends, which due to the Dollar Bubble, might do very well. So long as there is sufficient domestic demand (abroad) after a currency revaluation, this appears good advice. Although, one has to wonder if the U.S. catches cold, would Asians follow?
Next, buy gold and silver, and mining shares. This is pretty standard advice from the "Gloom and Doom" crowd as we are sometimes named. Lastly, he recommends staying liquid, which generally means reducing debt and keeping assets in a form that can be readily converted from one type to another. He recommends leveraging overvalued home equity in other currencies and storing small amounts of imported goods likely to rise in price, and a few other measures.
The piggy bank on the cover is a nice touch, and the list of books for further reading is most helpful for those who have not already read many of the titles.
A very quick read, easy to understand, and very well put together. I highly recommend this book.
Click here to see more reviews for: Crash Proof
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The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets
How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down (Little Books. Big Profits)
by Peter D. Schiff (based on 17 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Peter D. Schiff
Publisher: Wiley
Price: $13.57
You save: $6.38 (32%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
43 out of 44 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 10/9/08
They laughed at him with his negative outlook several years ago.
Gold, commodities, foreign companies with little exposure to the USA. That is the gist of Peter Schiff's investing recommendations. Why? He's not unpatriotic, but rational in his thinking that the US has lost its way through outsourcing production of goods, and overwhelmingly becoming a country of service oriented personnel. We make nothing, we buy most, and are up to our ears in debt, which will take its toll now and in the future on the dollar. There are several well known "Doctor Dooms" around. Rubini, Jim Rogers, Jim Sinclair, and Peter Schiff. I never thought that I would ever be a bear on the US stock market, until I started reading not only Peter Schiffs books and the others, but books on derivatives and other financial inventions, that could bring markets down entirely, and for a while. Impossible you say? If you think so, you need to read this. The Dow was down again today nearly 700 points. Maria Bartiromo is starting to call this a market crash. I stayed up the whole night reading this book. The writing flows and points are great, except when he recommends that you buy a gun, and learn how to use it- maybe he's correct there too. He's half tongue-in-cheek. He makes one recommendation that he says will make the dot.com bubble look like "warming up", during the next decade. Curious? Ans: gold producer stocks. Great book.
Click here to see more reviews for: The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets
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The Snowball
Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
by Alice Schroeder (based on 81 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Alice Schroeder
Publisher: Bantam
Price: $21.00
You save: $14.00 (40%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
153 out of 167 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 9/29/08
The New De Facto Buffett Biography
Alice Schroeder has done a wonderful job parsing the incredibly interesting and complex life of one of the world's true, living legends.
This should become the tome to site for all things Buffett. It is thorough, examining his family history, his father's career, and details of his youthful adventures; which in many instances, went well over the moral line he now teaches people to steer away from. The hardships suffered by close family members of the financial, psychological, and personal variety are honestly portrayed through the biography, as are details of the complex relationships he has had with women throughout his life.
For students of business and investment, the book details clearly the growth of his business knowledge early on and the success of his many investment partnerships. Alice details the countless problems he experienced once owning Berkshire Hathaway and the businesses that were later rolled in to create the present Berkshire. The details of his many acquisitions highlight his unique intelligence, as well as the intellect of his contemporaries, who in-fact were first to discover many of the corporate gems he acquired over the years. His collaboration with other investment managers proved vital to his success, contrary to much of what has been said elsewhere. Lastly, flaws are exposed in his investment acumen numerous times with regard to operations of target companies, and his early judgment in management teams. The very fact that he has been so successful, even given these errors, is testament to his unique abilities as a businessman.
The book highlights Buffett's amazing focus and zest for life. His relationships and personal experiences, which have never been exposed in any detail, have led to the unique character of Warren Buffett. His development into a great human being and quest to create something enduring in Berkshire, the Foundations, and his many "students", is wonderfully explained in this thoroughly enjoyable biography.
Click here to see more reviews for: The Snowball
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The Ascent of Money
A Financial History of the World
by Niall Ferguson (based on 5 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Price: $19.77
You save: $10.18 (34%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
35 out of 38 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 11/15/08
The Financial Subplot
Niall Ferguson has written an easily accessible and very entertaining history of finance, ranging from the clay tokens of Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago to the hedge funds of today. The title of this book has apparently been modelled on Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man," and like that book it will be made into a television series. Being a television celebrity is not something that wins the admiration of one's peers in the history profession, to say the least. But those little rebukes are relatively mild compared to the scorn he received for his political views in Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power and Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. In those works he argued that empire was beneficial not only to the mother country but the dominated countries as well. In this work he chronicles not only the history of money but also makes a case for liberalized finance.
Ferguson examines the financial subplot behind some of the major historical powers such as the role of money in ancient Mesopotamia, the denarius in Roman society, and gold and silver in the civilization of the Incas. He is very good in his descriptions of financial families like the Medicis and the Rothchilds, and how they became banking dynasties. Another memorable episode was the rise of Amsterdam as the world's financial center and the center's subsequent shift to London.
History is also filled with financial disasters of which we are well aware today. Ferguson tells the story of John Law and how he became France's head of finance. He engineered a financial bubble that took them several generations to overcome. Making matters worse, it occurred at the same time as the British South Sea Bubble.
Also instructive is the history of the first great globalization (1870-1914). (For this period also read Jeffrey Frieden's Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century.) The world had become so economically interdependent that the pundits believed the possibility of war between great powers had been eliminated. This sentiment was famously expressed in "The Great Illusion" by Norman Angell.
Although this book was written before the current economic crisis, the last chapter is very prescient. "From Empire to Chimerica" tells of the symbiotic relationship between China and America. The combined country "accounts for just over a 10th of the world's land surface, a quarter of its population, and a third of its economic output, and more than half of the global economic growth of the last eight years". This relationship, in which China saves and America spends, and in which China's savings is used to enable America to spend even more, is clearly unsustainable. Ferguson sees this savings glut as the cause of the current subprime crisis. That, in my humble opinion, was one of the causes; there were many bad actors involved in this catastrophe, citizen-borrowers included.
Although it is not obvious to everyone in the midst of a crisis, Ferguson correctly points out that financial engineering is one of the great forces behind human progress. The history of finance is a process of creative destruction. Financial risk-taking is necessary for economic expansion and human development, and Ferguson does a good job in making the case. Too bad it reads like a script made for the History Channel.
Click here to see more reviews for: The Ascent of Money
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