Bloomsburg Investment Group

The bestselling author of Investment Biker is back from the ultimate road trip: a three-year drive around the world that would ultimately set the Guinness record for the longest continuous car journey. In Adventure Capitalist, legendary investor Jim Rogers, dubbed “the Indiana Jones of finance” by Time magazine, proves that the best way to profit from the global situation is to see the world mile by mile. “While I have never patronized a prostitute,” he writes, “I know that one can learn more about a country from speaking to the madam of a brothel or a black marketeer than from meeting a foreign minister.” (from goodreads.com)

One of our wisest and most clear-eyed economic thinkers offers a masterful narrative of the crisis and its lessons

Many fine books on the financial crisis were first drafts of history—books written to fill the need for immediate understanding. Alan S. Blinder, esteemed Princeton professor, Wall Street Journal columnist, and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, held off, taking the time to understand the crisis and to think his way through to a truly comprehensive and coherent narrative of how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the government did to fight it, and what we can do from here—mired as we still are in its wreckage.

With bracing clarity, Blinder shows us how the U.S. financial system, which had grown far too complex for its own good—and too unregulated for the public good—experienced a perfect storm beginning in 2007. (from goodreads.com)

The focus of the narrative is on the evolution of Greenberg’s career from 1952 (at age 27) after returning from service as an officer in the U.S. Army until 2011 when he has embarked on new adventures in the vineyards of free enterprise, building (rebuilding?) C.V. Starr & Company and Starr International Company (SICO) together with several subsidiaries that pre-date AIG. Appropriately, the focus of most of the book is on Greenberg’s years at American International Group (AIG), especially during the last decade when internal power plays led to his forced retirement. Also in the same year (2005), then New York Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer made heavily-publicized allegations concerning accounting improprieties. However, revealingly, no criminal charges were ever brought and most of the civil charges were dropped.

Had there been an opportunity, I would have liked to meet with Greenberg and ask him a number of questions that would help me understand what interests me most about his life and career:

o Why he went to work for AIG’s founder, Cornelius Vander Starr, as the head of AIG’s failing North American holdings.
0 Why he achieved so much success that after several promotions, Starr named him as his successor
o His relationships with other senior-level executives at AIG, many of them rivals
o Why he created AIG (e.g. specific objectives, strategies, and resource allocation)
o How he explains AIG’s unsurpassed success in terms of market dominance, product development, sales, and profits
o The most significant differences between AIG and its major competitors
o The proper role of the federal government and, especially, its regulatory agencies
o Indications (i.e. “early-warning signs”) of problems with at least some board members
o Indications (i.e. “early-warning signs”) of problems with at least some C-level executives at AIG
o AG Spitzer’s motives and how he (Greenberg) explains them
o The nature and extent of AIG’s financial problems at the time of Greenberg’s “retirement”
o Over the years, the best and worse of AIG’s relationship with the federal government
o What he knew in 2005 that he wished he knew when Starr named him his successor in 1968
o The most valuable business lessons he has learned during the last 50 years
o The extent to which he expects those lessons to help him and his associates achieve the goals they have now

The “story” provided in this volume either provides all the information I hoped to have or at least, no small achievement, has enabled me to formulate reasonable assumptions and (yes) a few tentative conclusions about much of what has and hasn’t happened in Maurice R. (“Hank”) Greenberg’s life and career thus far. Lawrence Cunningham acknowledges that at least some questions remain unanswered or only partially answered, as they always do. He tells a compelling story whose complexity defies pure objectivity but, thanks to his rigorous and meticulous stewardship, a story that probably comes about as close as one could to explaining what really happened (from bobmorris.biz).

When the first fissures became visible to the naked eye in August 2007, suddenly the most powerful men in the world were three men who were never elected to public office. They were the leaders of the world’s three most important central banks: Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, and Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank. Over the next five years, they and their fellow central bankers deployed trillions of dollars, pounds and euros to contain the waves of panic that threatened to bring down the global financial system, moving on a scale and with a speed that had no precedent. Neil Irwin’s The Alchemists is a gripping account of the most intense exercise in economic crisis management we’ve ever seen, a poker game in which the stakes have run into the trillions of dollars. The book begins in, of all places, Stockholm, Sweden, in the seventeenth century, where central banking had its rocky birth, and then progresses through a brisk but dazzling tutorial on how the central banker came to exert such vast influence over our world, from its troubled beginnings to the Age of Greenspan, bringing the reader into the present with a marvelous handle on how these figures and institutions became what they are #150; the possessors of extraordinary power over our collective fate.nbsp; What they chose to do with those powers is the heart of the story Irwin tells. Irwin covered the Fed and other central banks from the earliest days of the crisis for the Washington Post, enjoying privileged access to leading central bankers and people close to them. His account, based on reporting that took place in 27 cities in 11 countries, is the holistic, truly global story of the central bankers’ role in the world economy we have been missing.nbsp; It is a landmark reckoning with central bankers and their power, with the great financial crisis of our time, and with the history of the relationship between capitalism and the state. Definitive, revelatory, and riveting, The Alchemists shows us where money comes from#151;and where it may well be going.

Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow’s biography gives Hamilton his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that the political and economic greatness of today’s America is the result of Hamilton’s countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. “To repudiate his legacy,” Chernow writes, “is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world.” Chernow here recounts Hamilton’s turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washington’s aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States (from www.goodreads.com)

According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. And the full story, in all of its complexity and detail, is like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Almost everyone has missed the big picture. Almost no one has put all the pieces together.

All the Devils Are Here goes back several decades to weave the hidden history of the financial crisis in a way no previous book has done. It explores the motivations of everyone from famous CEOs, cabinet secretaries, and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers, analysts, and Wall Street traders. It delves into the powerful American mythology of home ownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature. (from goodreads.com)

The ultimate behind-the-curtain look at the hedge fund industry, unlocking the most valuable stories, secrets, and lessons directly from those who have played the game best.Written by Maneet Ahuja, "the" hedge fund industry insider, "The Alpha Masters" brings the secretive world of hedge funds into the light of day for the first time. (from goodreads.com)

Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is best known as the founder of Carnegie Steel ... Carnegie, the son of an impoverished linen weaver, moved to Pittsburgh at the age of thirteen. The embodiment of the American dream, he pulled himself up from bobbin boy in a cotton factory to become the richest man in the world. He spent the rest of his life giving away the fortune he had accumulated and crusading for international peace. For all that he accomplished and came to represent to the American public - a wildly successful businessman and capitalist, a self-educated writer, peace activist, philanthropist, man of letters, lover of culture, and unabashed enthusiast for American democracy and capitalism - Carnegie has remained, to this day, an enigma.-http://www.booksinprint.com.

The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking.

Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar's Poker. Out of a handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our time. (from goodreads.com)

Tom Wolfe's modern American satire tells the story of Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street "Master of the Universe" who has it all - a Park Avenue apartment, a job that brings wealth, power and prestige, a beautiful wife, an even more beautiful mistress.

Suddenly, one wrong turn makes it all go wrong, and Sherman spirals downward in a sudden fall from grace that sucks him into the ravenous heart of a New York City gone mad during the go-go, racially turbulent, socially hilarious 1980s. (from goodreads.com)

Discusses how the global economy will be shaped in the future by focusing on Nigeria, Indonesia, and Poland instead of the superstars of the last decade, China, Russia, and Brazil. (from WorldCat (OCLC))

The Buy Side, by former Galleon Group trader Turney Duff, portrays an after-hours Wall Street culture where drugs and sex are rampant and billions in trading commissions flow to those who dangle the most enticements. A remarkable writing debut, filled with indelible moments, The Buy Side shows as no book ever has the rewards – and dizzying temptations – of making a living on the Street. (from goodreads.com)

Vanguard Group founder John C. Bogle discusses changes in the culture of the mutual fund industry and how speculation has come to dominate investment. The book presents a hard-hitting look from the creator of the first index fund. Over the course of his sixty-year career in the mutual fund industry, the author has witnessed a massive shift in the culture of the financial sector. The prudent, value-adding culture of long-term investment has been crowded out by an aggressive, value-destroying culture of short-term speculation. Mr. Bogle has not been merely an eye-witness to these changes, but one of the financial sector's most active participants. At the end, he offers advice for investors and a warning for speculators. (from World Cat (OCLC))

The coming financial apocalypse and what government and individuals can do to insulate themselves against the worst shocks In this controversial book a noted adherent of Austrian School of Economics theories advances the thesis that the United States is fast approaching the end stage of the biggest asset bubble in history. (from WorldCat (OCLC))

Everyone on Wall Street knows Jim Cramer, and Cramer knows Wall Street better than anyone. In the most candid and outrageous look at Wall Street since Liar's Poker, Cramer, co-founder of TheStreet.com, radio and television commentator, and for years a premier money manager, takes readers on the wild ride that is Wall Street -- revealing how the game is played, who breaks the rules, and who gets hurt. Confessions of a Street Addict takes us from Cramer's roots in the middle-class Philadelphia suburbs to Harvard, where he began managing money, and then to Goldman Sachs, where he went into business with his wife -- Karen, the "Trading Goddess" -- as his partner. He brilliantly describes the life of a money manager: the frenetic pace, the constant pressure to outperform the market and other fund managers, and the sharklike attacks fund managers make as they circle a fund perceived to be in trouble.

Throughout the book Cramer is characteristically outspoken, offering his hard-won insights about the market and everyone in it, himself included. There has never been a more eloquent market insider than Cramer, nor a more high-octane book about Wall Street. (from goodreads.com)

Evaluates the cost and consequences of high-speed trading, arguing that the development of automatic, super-intelligent trading machines is eliminating necessary human interests and compromising regulation measures. (from WorldCat (OCLC))

A #1 bestseller from coast to coast, Den of Thieves tells the full story of the insider-trading scandal that nearly destroyed Wall Street, the men who pulled it off, and the chase that finally brought them to justice. Pulitzer Prize-winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the eighties' biggest names on Wall Street-Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine -created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions, until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America's most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice. Based on secret grand jury transcripts, interviews, and actual trading records, and containing explosive new revelations about Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky written especially for this paperback edition, Den of Thieves weaves all the facts into an unforgettable narrative-a portrait of human nature, big business, and crime of unparalleled proportions.

"Insights into investing and leadership from the founder of The Vanguard Group Throughout his legendary career, John Bogle-founder of the Vanguard mutual fund group and creator of the first index mutual fund-has helped investors build wealth the right way, while, at the same time, leading a tireless campaign to restore common sense to the investment world. A collection of essays based on speeches delivered to professional groups and college students in recent years, in Don't Count on It is organized around eight themes. Illusion versus reality in investing. Indexing to market returns. Failures of capitalism. The flawed structure of the mutual fund industry. The spirit of entrepreneurship. What is enough in business, and in life. Advice to America's future leaders. The unforgettable characters who have shaped his career. Widely acclaimed for his role as the conscience of the mutual fund industry and a relentless advocate for individual investors, in Don't Count on It, Bogle continues to inspire, while pushing the mutual fund industry to measure up to their promise." (from WordCat (OCLC))

Provides an action plan based on leaner, more operationally proficient ways for maintaining the competitive advantage based on seven new axioms of global competitiveness: execute, strategize, and execute again; cater to the niches; scale to win; embrace chaos; acquire smart; expand with abandon; and no sacred cows. (from WorldCat (OCLC))

The Great Recession is more than four years old—and counting. Yet, as Paul Krugman points out in this powerful volley, "Nations rich in resources, talent, and knowledge—all the ingredients for prosperity and a decent standard of living for all—remain in a state of intense pain."

How bad have things gotten? How did we get stuck in what now can only be called a depression? And above all, how do we free ourselves? Krugman pursues these questions with his characteristic lucidity and insight. He has a powerful message for anyone who has suffered over these past four years—a quick, strong recovery is just one step away, if our leaders can find the "intellectual clarity and political will" to end this depression now. (from goodreads.com)

Since 2008, when Fixing Global Finance was first published, the collapse of the housing and credit bubbles of the 2000s has crippled the world's economy. In this updated edition, Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf explains how global imbalances helped cause the financial crises now ravaging the U.S. economy and outlines steps for ending this destructive cycle of which this is the latest and biggest. An expanded conclusion recommends near- and long-term measures to stabilize and protect financial markets in the future.

Reviewing global financial crises since 1980, Wolf lays bare the links between the microeconomics of finance and the macroeconomics of the balance of payments, demonstrating how the subprime lending crisis in the United States fits into a pattern that includes the economic shocks of 1997, 1998, and early 1999 in Latin America, Russia, and Asia. He explains why the United States became the "borrower and spender of last resort," makes the case that this was an untenable arrangement, and argues that global economic security depends on radical reforms in the international monetary system and the ability of emerging economies to borrow sustainably in domestic currencies (from freebookspot.es)

“Flash Boys” describes the surreal-seeming technology that replaced it. And it also explores the breakup of big, central stock exchanges into many small ones; the impossibility of investors’ knowing exactly what is being done with their money; and the immense new opportunities for skimming, kickbacks, secret fees and opacity that the new system has spawned. -from nytimes.com

In "The Forgotten Man," Amity Shlaes, one of the nation's most-respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. She traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers and the moving stories of individual citizens who through their brave perseverance helped establish the steadfast character we recognize as American today (from goodreads.com).

Discusses the analysis behind the designation of BRIC, an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, and China, as the four high-growth countries of the twenty-first century and looks at other countries of the world which are also posed for high growth in the future. (from WorldCat (OCLC))

Published to critical acclaim twenty years ago, and now considered a classic, The House of Morgan is the most ambitious history ever written about American finance. It is a rich, panoramic story of four generations of Morgans and the powerful, secretive firms they spawned, ones that would transform the modern financial world. Tracing the trajectory of J. P. Morgan's empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the financial crisis of 1987, acclaimed author Ron Chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the family's private saga and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved-a world that included Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Franklin Roosevelt, Nancy Astor, and Winston Churchill. A masterpiece of financial history-it was awarded the 1990 National Book Award for Nonfiction and selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century- The House of Morgan is a compelling account of a remarkableinstitution and the men who ran it, and an essential book for understanding the money and power behind the major historical events of the last 150 years.

Written with full cooperation from top management at Google, this is the story behind the most successful and admired technology company of our time. Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? The author, a technology reporter was granted access to the company, and in this book he takes readers inside Google headquarters, the Googleplex to show how Google works. While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google's earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Google's IPO nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the company's ad business was), Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more. The key to Google's success in all these businesses, the author reveals, is its engineering mind set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers, free food and dry cleaning, on site doctors and masseuses, and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire. But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China, and the author discloses what went wrong and how Brin disagreed with his peers on the China strategy. And now with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete? (from WorldCat (OCLC))

How did a weak collection of former British colonies become an industrial, financial, and military colossus? From the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, the American economy has been transformed by wave after wave of emerging technology: the steam engine, electricity, the internal combustion engine, computer technology. Yet technology-driven change leads to growing misalignment between an innovative economy and anachronistic legal and political structures until the gap is closed by the modernization of America's institutions--often amid upheavals such as the Civil War and Reconstruction and the Great Depression and World War II. When the U.S. economy has flourished, government and business, labor and universities, have worked together in a never-ending project of economic nation building. As the United States struggles to emerge from the Great Recession, Michael Lind clearly demonstrates that Americans, since the earliest days of the republic, have reinvented the American economy--and have the power to do so again.

Liar's Poker contains in part an autobiographical account of Michael Lewis's own experience just before and during his time in Salomon Brothers. The book also followed the rise and fall of Salomon Brothers, mainly focusing on the mortgage bond department whose fortune closely traced the speculative bubble in various mortgage backed securities in the 80s. The current subprime crisis indeed echoes some of the themes in that book. - from Wikisummaries http://bit.ly/11QCw3F

In "The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital," the pioneers of the industry share the investing and management wisdom they have gained by investing in and transforming their portfolio companies.

Based on original interviews conducted by the authors, this book is filled with colorful stories on the subjects that most matter to the high-level investor, such as selecting and working with management, pioneering new markets, adding value through operational improvements, applying private equity principles to non-profits, and much more. (from goodreads.com)

Emanuel Derman was a quantitative analyst (Quant) at Goldman Sachs, one of the financial engineers whose mathematical models became crucial for Wall Street. The reliance investors put on such quantitative analysis was catastrophic for the economy, setting off the ongoing string of financial crises that began with the mortgage market in 2007 and continues through today. Here Derman looks at why people -- bankers in particular -- still put so much faith in these models, and why it's a terrible mistake to do so.Though financial models imitate the style of physics and employ the language of mathematics, ultimately they deal with human beings. There is a fundamental difference between the aims and potential achievements of physics and those of finance. In physics, theories aim for a description of reality; in finance, at best, models can shoot only for a simplistic and very limited approximation to it. When we make a model involving human beings, we are trying to force the ugly stepsister's foot into Cinderella's pretty glass slipper. It doesn't fit without cutting off some of the essential parts. Physicists and economists have been too enthusiastic to acknowledge the limits of their equations in the sphere of human behavior--which of course is what economics is all about. (from goodreads.com)

Despite their heft, hedge funds—and the fund managers who take healthy fees for their work and who have become the "new elite," as Mr. Mallaby calls them—have remained something of an enigma. There are exceptions. Nearly everyone knows of Mr. Soros, the Hungarian-born trading titan who became a billionaire many times over by making big bets from his New York office near Central Park. But Mr. Robertson, whose Tiger Management kept pace with Warren Buffett's track record for years at a time, is a virtual unknown, as is James Simons, founder of the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund and arguably the most successful investor of all time. In 2009, his personal take was reportedly $2.5 billion.

This relative anonymity is due to the secretive nature of most hedge-fund managers, an obsession that makes them mysterious and often the subject of conspiracy theories. Hedge funds do wish to avoid scrutiny of their trading activities—but there is nothing particularly nefarious about this. Mr. Buffett himself has a special deal with regulators to delay disclosure of his stock investments, preventing copycats from piling on before he is finished buying.

The air of secrecy does stir curiosity, though, which is why the bright light shed by "More Money Than God" is particularly welcome. Mr. Mallaby, a fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and an expert on global economics, brings a keen sense of financial theory to his subject and a vivid narrative style.

Portraiture is part of his purpose. We meet Michael Steinhardt, the renowned hedge-fund manager who grew wealthy trading big blocks of stocks in the 1970s and 1980s. Now in retirement on his country estate an hour's drive north of New York City, Mr. Steinhardt is a lover of botany and a collector of exotic fauna. The author shows him dancing on his estate opposite "an elegant blue crane . . . that had taken to courting him with a graceful gavotte."

But none of the character portraits in "More Money Than God" is more captivating than the one of Alfred Jones, the father of the hedge-fund industry, who died in 1989. In Mr. Mallaby's telling, Jones was an erudite dandy, a onetime Marxist who hiked to the frontlines of the Spanish Civil War with the writer Dorothy Parker—where they shared a bottle of Scotch whisky with Ernest Hemingway.

Mr. Mallaby excels in unearthing hedge-fund lore, like the rise in the 1970s of a little-known Princeton outfit called the Commodities Corp. The firm reaped huge profits by betting, as its name suggests, exclusively on the markets for corn, soybeans, oil and other commodities. The fund's trend-following strategies gave birth to a cottage industry of shoot-from-the-hip investors whose cowboy approach typified hedge-fund investing in the 1980s and early 1990s. The motto of Commodities trading guru Amos Hostetter: "Cut your losses and ride your winners."

"More Money Than God" is primarily a narrative history, but it also delves frequently into some of the more esoteric theories behind hedge-fund investment strategies and their place in the financial world. If the book has a big idea, it is that hedge funds are an overall boon to Wall Street. (from online.wsj.com).

What do Dunkin' Donuts, J. Crew, Toys "R" Us, and Burger King have in common? They are all currently or just recently were owned, operated, and controlled by private equity firms. "The New Tycoons: Inside the Trillion Dollar Private Equity Industry That Owns Everything" takes the reader behind the scenes of these firms: their famous billionaire founders, the overlapping stories of their creation and evolution, and the outsized ambitions that led a group of clever bankers from small shops operating in a corner of Wall Street into powerhouse titans of capital. This is the story of the money and the men who handle it. (from goodreads.com)

In 2008, Howard Schultz, the president and chairman of Starbucks, made the unprecedented decisionto return as the CEO eight years after he stepped down from daily oversight of the company and became chairman. Concerned that Starbucks had lost its way, Schultz was determined to help it return to its core values and restore not only its financial health, but also its soul. In Onward, he shares the remarkable story of his return and the company's ongoing transformation under his leadership, revealing how, during one of the most tumultuous economic times in history, Starbucks again achieved profitability and sustainability without sacrificing humanity.   Offering readers a snapshot of a moment in history that left no company unscathed, the book zooms into show, in riveting detail, how one company struggled and recreated itself in the midst of it all. The fastpaced narrative is driven by day-to-day tension as conflicts arise and lets readers into Schultz's psyche as he comes to terms with his limitations and evolving leadership style. Onward is a compelling, candid narrative documenting the maturing of a brand as well as a businessman.   Onward represents Schultz's central leadership philosophy: It's not just about winning, but the rightway to win. Ultimately, he gives readers what he strives to deliver every day-a sense of hope that, nomatter how tough times get, the future can be just as or more successful than the past, whatever one defines success to be.

A lively account of physicists in finance.

A young physicist and contributor to Slate and Scientific American, Weatherall (Logic and Philosophy of Science/Univ. of California, Irvine) was puzzled when experts began blaming the 2008 economic collapse on physicists who created complex financial instruments for Wall Street. He wondered: What do physicists have to do with the economy? The author explains how physicists have been predicting the unpredictable on Wall Street for 30 years, accounting for such hedge-fund successes as Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies, whose staff, loaded with physics and math doctorates, produced a remarkable 2,478.6 percent return in the decade from 1988 to 1998. The story begins in 19th-century Paris with Louis Bachelier, an aspiring young physicist who worked at the Bourse and viewed trading as an elaborate game of chance. In his dissertation, he explained how probability theory could be used to understand financial markets. “In a just world, Bachelier would be to finance what Newton is to physics,” writes Weatherall. Bachelier was dismissed as a fringe figure in his lifetime, only to be rediscovered and championed years later by economist Paul Samuelson. Others trained in physics, including Maury Osborne of the U.S. Naval Research Lab, and Benoit Mandelbrot, who studied cotton markets, further refined the idea that markets can be understood in terms of a random walk. In a series of bright portraits, Weatherall describes the many subsequent figures who spurred the further evolution of financial modeling, including Edward Thorp, who developed a winning system for blackjack in 1960s Las Vegas and went on to invent the modern hedge fund; party-going wild man and Bell Labs scientist John Kelly Jr., who applied information theory to gambling; and the anti-establishment yippies Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard, who built their Prediction Company using tools developed to anticipate how a turbulent fluid would behave in a narrow pipe.

An enjoyable debut appropriate for both specialists and general readers (from kirkusreviews.com).

Today the phrase “securities fraud” evokes Enron, WorldCom and Tyco. Two decades ago, it evoked Drexel Burnham Lambert, the investment bank that ruled the junk-bond realm and helped fund some of the most audacious corporate takeovers of the 1980s. Enthroned at the center of Drexel Burnham was the king of junk, Michael Milken. Was he a financial genius who found ever more clever ways to make markets more efficient? Or was he a swindler running the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme? New Yorker writer Connie Bruck sets out to answer those questions in this cautionary tale of Drexel’s rise and fall. getAbstract recommends this fascinating, highly detailed financial history. However, the flaw in Bruck's narrative is the absence of a third act: She inexplicably ends the book before Milken's trial and sentencing. While its ending is weak, this provocative story makes one thing clear: Uneasy lies the head that wears a leveraged crown. - from www.getabstract.com

Quants - quantitative analysts - were the maths masterminds let loose on Wall Street in the belief that their brilliant, impregnable computer programs would always beat the market. This book charts their rise from obscurity to boom and then to bust, explaining why they were so confident - and how they got it so disastrously wrong. (from WorldCat (OCLC))

Especially in the wake of the financial meltdown, readers will hunger for Burton G. Malkiel’s reassuring, authoritative, gimmick-free, and perennially best-selling guide to investing. With 1.5 million copies sold, A Random Walk Down Wall Street has long been established as the first book to purchase when starting a portfolio. In addition to covering the full range of investment opportunities, the book features new material on the Great Recession and the global credit crisis as well as an increased focus on the long-term potential of emerging markets. With a new supplement that tackles the increasingly complex world of derivatives, along with the book’s classic life-cycle guide to investing, A Random Walk Down Wall Street remains the best investment guide money can buy (from amazon.com).

This is the exclusive biography of Steve Jobs. Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years, as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues the author has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted. Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple's hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values. (from WorldCat (OCLC))

Investment legend and bestselling author Rogers offers his insights on money and investing from a lifetime in the markets. (from WorldCat (OCLC))

A biography of America's first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., drawing from Rockefeller's personal papers to provide information about his rustic origins, his creation of Standard Oil, his often controversial business tactics, and his personal relationships and attributes. (from WorldCat (OCLC))

Over the course of nearly half a century, five American presidents, and leaders around the world, have relied on the financial acumen, and the integrity, of Paul A. Volcker to help steer the global economy through turmoil and drastic change. From the collapse of the gold standard to the inflation crisis of the 1970s, Volcker demonstrated that a determined central banker can prevail over economic turmoil--so long as he can resist relentless political pressure. And as the U.S. struggled to recover from the meltdown of 2008, it called once more on the veteran banker to restore trust to the financial markets with the Volcker Rule. This award-winning biography is the definitive account of Paul Volcker’s indispensable role in economic history. (from goodreads.com)

The classic economic treatise that inspired Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century With this landmark treatise on political economy, Adam Smith paved the way for modern capitalism, arguing that a truly free market - fired by competition yet guided as if by an 'invisible hand' to ensure justice and equality  - was the engine of a fair and productive society. In Books IV-V, Smith offers his considered response to the French Physiocrats and assesses the nature of the mercantile system. The Wealth of Nations (Books I-III) are also published in Penguin Classics.

The bursting of a housing bubble in 2007 exposed the hidden vulnerabilities of the global financial system, bringing it to the brink of meltdown. From the implosion of the investment bank Bear Stearns to the unprecedented bailout of insurance giant AIG, efforts to arrest the financial contagion consumed Bernanke and his team at the Fed. Around the clock, they fought the crisis with every tool at their disposal to keep the United States and world economies afloat.

At once a classic family saga and a major work of economic, social and political history, this is the definitive biography of some of the most powerful financiers of recent times.

When RBS collapsed and had to be bailed out by the taxpayer in the financial crisis of October 2008 it played a leading role in tipping Britain into its deepest economic downturn in seven decades. The economy shrank, bank lending froze, and hundreds of thousands lost their jobs. Living standards are still falling and Britons will be paying higher taxes for decades to pay the clean-up bill. How on earth had a small Scottish bank grown so quickly to become a global financial giant that could do such immense damage when it collapsed? Based on over 80 interviews and with access to diaries and papers kept by those at the heart of the meltdown, this is the definitive account of the RBS disaster which still casts a shadow over our economy.

Like all of us, though few so visibly, Alan Greenspan was forced by the financial crisis of 2008 to question some fundamental assumptions about risk management and economic forecasting. No one with any meaningful role in economic decision making in the world saw beforehand the storm for what it was. How had our models so utterly failed us? To answer this question, Alan Greenspan embarked on a rigorous and far-reaching multiyear examination of how Homo economicus predicts the economic future, and how it can predict it better. Economic risk is a fact of life in every realm, from home to business to government at all levels. Whether we're conscious of it or not, we make wagers on the future virtually every day, one way or another. Very often, however, we're steering by out-of-date maps, when we're not driven by factors entirely beyond our conscious control. The Map and the Territory is nothing less than an effort to update our forecasting conceptual grid. It integrates the history of economic prediction, the new work of behavioral economists, and the fruits of the author's own remarkable career to offer a thrillingly lucid and empirically based grounding in what we can know about economic forecasting and what we can't.The book explores how culture is and isn't destiny and probes what we can predict about the world's biggest looming challenges, from debt and the reform of the welfare state to natural disasters in an age of global warming.

Written with all the intellectual command and trenchant judgment that have made Martin Wolf one of the world's most influential economic commentators, The Shifts and the Shocks matches impressive analysis with no-holds-barred criticism and persuasive prescription for a more stable future. It is a book no one with an interest in global affairs will want to neglect.

In this business classic--now with a new Afterword in which the author draws parallels to the recent financial crisis--Lowenstein captures the gripping roller-coaster ride of Long-Term Capital Management. Drawing on confidential internal memos and interviews with dozens of key players, Lowenstein explains not just how the fund made and lost its money but also how the personalities of Long-Term's partners, the arrogance of their mathematical certainties, and the culture of Wall Street itself contributed to both their rise and their fall.