Excellent overview

John Lanchester pulls together a number of threads to explain the Crunch.<br />Interesting, well researched and had me laugh out loud on a number of occasions with great turn of phrase.<br />Doesn't preach but looks for links, behaviours and systemic failures that led to the financial crisis.<br />Highly recommended.

Enthralling

I work in the industry and thought this book would be interesting for outsiders giving an insight inot the heady days of September 2008 but how wrong was I. How wrong was I? The level of detail and research that went into the book is remarkable. Wodnerful insights such as Geithner's father was best man at his wedding and that fellow executives thought Jamie Dimon was in great shape. Ironically such is the level of inside insight I'm not sure how interesting the book might be to those not familiar with the arcane terminology of Wall St but it's written in such a barnstorming fashion that it might well bridge that gap.

An accessible, entertaining and interesting read...

Superfreakonomics is, at its heart, a series of case studies of various economic principles, from scarcity value to supply and demand. What makes this book different (and its predecessor, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, as well) is the way that the authors apply the economic data to social problems, and reach conclusions based on the results which often seem quirky, and are always interesting. <br /><br />Each chapter covers one or two case studies , explored in detail - though in accessible prose, rather than academic jargon - and the reader is led carefully through the assumptions of the authors before they are presented with conclusions. The style is thorough, but chatty, and very easy to read, even(perhaps especially) for someone without an economics background. <br /><br />This is certainly a text produced for the popular market, and whilst I applaud that, it does make me suspicious of some of the claims put forward by the authors - it may be that there simply isn't enough space in the text to provide enough data to thoroughly support all of their conclusions - though they do nod in that direction throughout, with discussions of methods of data gathering, and an extensive bibliography for each chapter.<br />Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about this text is it's use as a conversation tool. Reading through, I was consistently finding myself saying"That's interesting...I didn't know that", and then sharing another interesting nugget of information with long-suffering bystanders. It's a quick, funny, and sometimes poignant read.<br /><br />The controversial sections noised about in the press (particularly that concerning solutions to global warming) do seem a little more forced than the others, but it doesn't seem as if an agenda is being pushed here; it's simply another case of the authors going out of their way to subvert and up-end our expectations surrounding an issue - where most see global warming as a long term problem with only possible solutions, they offer up a case study of a solution that could be deployed within three years. Quite how valid the science is could be debated, but it certainly makes for an interesting read, and again, has that pub-quiz curiosity factor.<br />Fun, enlightening, accessible and, above all, interesting reading in a topic traditionally populated by the dense and the abstruse. If you want to feel informed and entertained all at once, this (relatively thin!) book may be an excellent choice.<br />

Sobering study of fiscal failures

Every so often, experts sucker people into bidding up the prices of stocks or real estate because they announce that the economy has fundamentally changed. As the aftermath of the real estate bubble illustrates, the basics of economics don't really change, no matter what fantasies people come to believe. Economics professors Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff present a thorough historical and statistical tour of financial hubris through the centuries, a postmortem that will make you wonder how anyone ever believed"this time is different." The staid tone, formulas, charts and somewhat confusing organization make this fascinating history challenging to absorb. Yet, the content, which sweeps ambitiously and carefully across centuries and countries, rewards the persistent reader with many insights and gems, like the nation-by-nation appendix of fiscal history low points. getAbstract recommends this analytical overview to history buffs, investors, managers and policy makers who seek perspective on"financial folly."

a good read on how parents are stealing their children's future

David Willetts has been talking about the generation war for a while, and now has put down his thoughts in this highly engaging book. He might be a politician, but his book is both well written and very non-party political. It is full of enticing, and illuminating insights - for example, that Britain has had small nuclear families rather than large extended ones for the past millennium; that sex was discovered before the 1963 and the pill - but as a result an astonishingly high proportion (one quarter from memory) of young brides were pregnant. The central thesis - that the whole economic and social system is geared to the interests of baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965, and those who come afterwards are disadvantaged as a result - is not just convincing, but politically salient. The baby boomers have won the tug of war with their children, with the result that they had free university education, while their children didn't; lower taxes; lower government debt; lower house prices. The post-baby boomers will struggle as they pay off the debts of their parents living beyond their means as though there would be no tomorrow (at least for them). The problem is the solution - although the grey generation need to pay their way more to lessen the burdens on the young, which government is going to risk the wrath of precisely the generation which is the most diligent about going to the polling booths? I think the generations may be warring for some time to come.

Entertaining study of how economics can reveal remarkable truths

Steven D. Levitt is a learned economist and academic. However, his professional interests, as well as the often-jarring questions he asks, are more those of a bookie, detective, filmmaker or treasure hunter. Indeed, Levitt professes little interest in economics per se. Instead, he likes to solve fascinating riddles and paradoxes. With the help of bestselling author Stephen J. Dubner, Levitt explores numerous offbeat, sometimes zany topics in this bestselling book, including why it doesn't pay to attend a better high school and why many drug dealers live with their moms. getAbstract thinks you will find something to relish on every page of this eye-opening book and recommends it highly, with this update: as summarized below, the authors attributed the 1990s drop in the U.S. crime rate to the nation's legalization of abortion in the 1970s, positing that unwanted children are likelier to become criminals. Writer Malcolm Gladwell later disproved this concept, contending that the contraceptive pill's advent in the '60s should have produced a similar result, but, one generation later, crime increased. Levitt has since updated his contention, stating,"During that period, more abortions implied less crime. Whether that is still true today is quite questionable."

A Page Turner

Having read so many books on the financial crisis I thought"Oh No! Not another!" when I was given this book as a gift. BUT once I started reading it I couldn't put it down. All the details of the whole sorry saga leading up to the crisis of 2008 are detailed in this book. A very honest account. Top Marks Hank :-)

CSCS Questions and Answers

All the Questions and Answers from the CITB Skills Health and Safety Test<br /><br />Does what it says. Significant changes in Questions asked over the last few years so its vital to use this new edition to ensure you pass first time.

Time for a change. A big one.

This is a clear and devasting critique of the attitudes and actions that led to the latest, albeit largest, in a long line of financial foul-ups. It is always hard, with a book like this, to be sure of how seriously one can take the opinions of the writer. To what extent is this wisdom after the event, another slice of punditry and speculation, or the grinding of a particular axe? However, given the author's undoubted credentials and long and consistent record on the subject, one cannot but take this seriously. The analysis is clear and the opinions cogent. Prof. Stiglitz knows his way around the complexities of the finance industry, and lays out the details of the mess in clear and lucid language.<br /><br />What is deeply troubling to discover, as an outsider, is the staggering depths to which the banking industry has sunk, and the seeming impossibility of dragging it back to some semblance of reason. The vested interests are now so huge and the stakes so high. If, as Prof. Stiglitz fears, there is just enough of an apparent recovery in the coming months and years to stave off any more searching questioning by those in power, the current situation may drivel on indefinitely. If his anaylsis is even half correct, this would be catastrophic.<br /><br />The author's line is clear. The banks need to be brought to heel and forced, through strict regulation, to confine their attention to what they were designed to do in the first place: act as a safe haven for people's money and as a source of (properly assessed) loans for homes and businesses. Nothing more. Banking should be"simple and dull". Money should be a means of exchange and not a commodity in its own right. Simple principles; massive changes. Among the largest is that we, in the developed West, need to admit that our way is neither the only way nor remotely the best way.<br /><br />For anyone even distantly interested in the hows and whys of the current crisis, this is unmissable reading.

Amazing introduction to value investment

This has to be one of the greatest books written on investment, this book does not promise to make you a millionaire in 2 or 3 years. It does however deliver on teaching safe value investment techniques, which when followed correctly can give give solid returns. <br /><br />There is a bit of maths involved, but it should not be beyond most people. Graham's technique is based on numbers and figures, hence the mathematics cannot be ignored. <br /><br />The commentary by Zwieg has got some stick in the reviews, however it does provide investment novices with more contemporary examples of applying Graham's rules and techniques. If you find in some cases Zweig is contradicting Graham's advice just ignore Zweig and take Graham's word. <br /><br />Excellent book, and a must for anyone interested in investment.

Zuzana Necedova

Excellent book. I was positively inspired. One should carry it like a little everyday manual.

Ascent of Money

A fascinating read, although if this is the layman's view of Financial Markets, I wouldn't like to read anything more complex. It often jumps to assumed knowledge for which it has not yet prepared the reader! Should ship with a highlighter pen to go through all the terms you don't understand so you can Google them as you go along! Seriously though it's an engaging read and tells an epic tale which is both insightful and alarming.

Solid but not exactly stellar

Well, never judge the book by the cover. Here it claims being downright amazing ;) It's OK and describes choice architecting - i.e. how to structure choices in a way so as to achieve a better societal result. For someone completely new to choice research the book might be a good first step (although the plentiful work by people like Kahnemann & Tversky (such as Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases)is probably a faster and more comprehensive option).<br /><br />I'd give it another star, if the authors would not fall prey to extreme carelessness and commit horrible cases of innumeracy on several occasions. They are supposed to be university professors and one of them in a relatively quantitative field (economics). So claiming that 60 or 70% of drivers cannot be better than average is not really helping their points. And while they often provide some salient evidence supporting their points, they occasionally do not and I was constantly left wondering, whether those are instances, where there is none, or all is stacked against the points they are trying to make.<br /><br />Fine as entertainment, though :)

Intellectual earthquake

+<br />This is an important book. All intellectual people should read it. It should be a set text - certainly for all business school students. The trouble is that business schools would have trouble accepting much of what he has to say. Furthermore, Mr Taleb is unrestrainedly outspoken, so that he almost seems offensive. In the first half of the book, I wondered what kind of egomaniac was keeping me company. BUT his erudition and his arguments (and his rough charm) gradually and firmly win through. By the end of the book, I simply have to admit that he is correct.<br /><br />To admit that he is correct is intellectually like an earthquake, since it shakes down the towers of many things taught in our conventional education, not least business school itself. If you accept he is correct and then go on with your life as normal, then you have not fully accepted that he is correct. I personally realise that I have not internalised his messages and changed my way of thinking and my way of life. I am somewhat confused about the far-reaching implications of his arguments. I will have to read it again and contemplate, and then implement some changes. This almost sounds like a religious book!<br /><br />So what is it about? A `Black Swan' is his label for a highly improbable, but high impact event. It is an outlier; something beyond our regular expectations. So we do not think about a `black swan' event much. We may not even know it exists. Our experience gives us no clue that it exists. We take a thousand balls out of a bag and find they are all white. Why would we expect a black ball? Our statistics, whether Pascalian or Bayesian, will not alert us to the possibility of a black ball. Then one day we draw out a black ball. All our previous experience is vitiated. Mr Taleb's metaphor comes from Europeans seeing only white swans, and being astonished to discover black swans in Australia.<br /><br />The metaphors of swans or balls in a bag do not capture well his other key point here. The `black swans' have a high impact. Think of history. 9/11 was unexpected and had high impact. The First World War has unexpected and had high impact - to put it mildly.<br /><br />Or think of your own life, and the unforeseen key events that changed your life for ever. They were not planned, but once they happened, everything changed. The person you met and married. The job you applied for and got, and the job you suddenly lost. Specifically I think of going to work in Japan, something not remotely contemplated 12 months before I arrived there. I also think of the thunderbolt of being diagnosed with Polycythaemia in 1994; or the stroke that might suddenly floor me as a result.<br /><br />If you think in personal terms, the significance of `black swans' comes home. Mr Taleb says forecasting is impossible in many circumstances. Planning often turns out to be futile. I would have been astounded to be told in 1978, as an English student at Oxford, that I would turn out to be a financial markets trainer in 2008 (having the effrontery to teach physics graduates financial maths!).<br /><br />Mr Taleb seems to wander over all kinds of ground in this book, and you wonder sometimes what the relevance and point is. But it all comes together by the end of the book. For instance, he discusses fame at several stages of the book. We tend to idolise the famous. But how did they become famous? Are they really worthy of our adulation? Maybe they were just lucky. Maybe they just happened to be a touch ahead in talent, but then were swept up in the many `winner takes all' processes of modern life. Are the footballers earning £10 million really 500 times better than a lowly footballer earning £20,000? Is the man on TV being heard by millions of people more worthy to be listened to than a mere teacher in a classroom? Was Admiral Nelson truly the greatest leader in the Royal Navy? And what about those who achieved great things, and have never been heard of? A stunning poem written in a book that is lost forever. A talented composer who never gets published? A man who prevents a terrorist outrage, whose name is never known to the public.<br /><br />What has this to do with infrequent, high impact events? Everything. Many of the fortunate are the products of positive black swan events. Furthermore the luck element, or some self-reinforcing effect like academic peer review, leads to the domination of ideas which are simply weak or misleading - or should be more critically challenged, were they not coming from the mouths of such `famous' people. When he is scathing of Nobel prize winners - especially those who won the Economics Prize - you at first think that Mr Taleb is being very disrespectful. Well he is. And when the scales fall from your eyes, and you see the unfair process by which Nobel prize winners are selected, you realise that Nobel prize are possibly not so worthy of our exaggerated respect. This is well explained by his description of social contagion.<br /><br />Contagion and feedback loops are a large part of social phenomena that set them apart from pure science. He discusses the financial markets in several chapters, and firmly regards them as social phenomena, affected by human emotions and crazes. He rips apart the ideas of efficient markets and portfolio diversification and risk management techniques (all Nobel prize winning topics).<br /><br />He talks a lot about `Mediocristan' and `Extremistan'. He says we have to know which country we are in, and it is fatal to the search for truth and assessing risk to mix them up. He stores up positive venom for those who misuse the Gaussian normal distribution curve. It is a tool of Mediocristan. It can be rightly applied in the physical sciences and mechanical / chemical engineering fields. But he rages against it being used in the social `sciences'. Banks who assess their `Value at Risk' with the normal distribution curve are telling us about the 99.9% confidence interval, which is actually unimportant. By their methods and actions they ignore the 0.1%, which is the Black Swan that changes everything. So they are not truly measuring risk, let alone thinking about it.<br /><br />Finance is rich with black swans that come out of the 0.1% zone: the 1929 and 1987 stock market crashes; the Latin American Debt crisis of 1981; the collapse of LTCM in 1998; the collapse of Bear Stearns and then Lehman Brothers in 2008. Oh, they are all explained after the event. But we really did not forecast them, and we really did not know the ultimate cause, any more than we really know the cause of the First World War.<br /><br />So we are urged to get away from the toxicity of Gaussian Curve thinking and to face the fact that many important distributions are highly skewed. Take wealth ownership for instance. Independently of this book, I have found statistics saying that 20% people own 83% of the world's wealth. Furthermore an eye-popping 1% of people own 40% of the world's wealth. The winner takes all - or so near to all that it hardly matters. We are talking about Extremistan here.<br />

An Insightful Read

I had recently read a biography of the Communist dictator Joseph Stalin and the idea of Communism intrigued me so I decided to get this as the works of Marx are frequently mentioned. I must make it clear at this point that upon purchasing this I knew absolutely nothing about Communism and only had a really vague idea thanks to the brief references in the Stalin biography.<br /><br />I have to be honest and say that although I learned a little more about the concepts of Communism, I felt I should have started somewhere simpler in terms of the history of the manifesto and Communism. The introduction to the Manifesto by Gareth Stedman Jones is very detailed and insightful in terms of important figures that helped influence the contents of the Manifesto, and also touching upon the relationship between Capitalism and Religion. <br /><br />For those familiar with the concepts of Communism or even those who have studied Psychology or Politics, this may be a bit easier to get your head around, but the introduction confused me quite a bit. In terms of the Manifesto itself and I am taking into account the time of which this was written, Marx is extremely passionate about his cause and it really shows. His hatred for the bourgeoisie class is apparent from the start.<br /><br />The Manifesto presents the ideas of Communism and how they propose the abolition of private property would fix society and help in creating a kinder human nature. I have heard Marx work discussed before reading this, and from the way he's discussed and the enthusiasm about him presented from those talking about him, you would think he is someone who would remain objective and just seek to present his idea of how to fix which the broken and selfish society of his time.<br /><br /> You would be also forgiven for thinking that his ideas would be a way of allowing cooperation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in creating an idea that would satisfy both sides in the distribution of wealth. However, that is not the case. Although his disdain towards the bourgeois is understandable, the venomous hatred comes across a bit too heavily in the Manifesto and I find myself accepting why Communism doesn't work as, the way it's presented by Marx, implies that for it to work, it would mean the total elimination of the bourgeoisie. <br /><br />This hatred becomes quite off putting and although I agree in principle to some of the arguments that he tries to put across, but the venomous hatred expressed makes it understandable to know why Communism by many is considered a dirty word. This is still a fantastically helpful book for those who are more knowledgeable in the terms of such social problems, but for me, I think I'll return to this when I've read something along the lines of Communism for Dummies.

Very Useful

I am working on quentitative analysis and I had forgotten so much about statistics. This books guides you step by step and explains in a friendly way.

Lords of Finance

On the face of it, a book about central banks and the world financial order between the two world wars would not make the most rivetting reading, but Liaquat Ahamed has produced a book that is both informative and eminently readable. With plenty of facts and enough - but not too many - figures, he describes the leading players and the context in which their decisions about the gold standard, international lending and borrowing and wartime reparations were made. With comprehensive references and a bibliography to back up the main text, it serves both as a complete book in itself for the interested reader and as an introducion to further study for those who have a deeper interest in history and how financial considerations contributed to the causes of the second world war.

I hope we are not blame?

Nigeria became independent on October 1, 1960. <br /><br />Despite"humongous billions" of oil revenue in dollars, Nigeria's GDP is lower than what it was in 1960. The majority of Nigerians would rather do odd jobs in London, Paris, New York, Frankfurt, Moscow (Moscow is dangerous, though), anywhere; rather than live in Nigeria, I mean Nigerian graduates no less.<br /><br />Are you saying that going on 60 years is not about time enough to have done something concrete and fantastic with really"humongous oil wealth in dollars", apart from squandering it in the West, building rambling mansions, and embezzling it to Europe and America where it is"stored" for us. <br /><br />In short, the West doesn't even pay for the Oil. Net, net we end up paying the West for taking the oil of us. Look at what the DRC or is it the Congo are doing with their mineral resources (the land). We are a truly intelligent species of Homo Sapiens are we not?<br /><br />The Niger Delta constitutes one of the biggest contributors to global warming on planet earth because we have no idea of what to do with the Natural Gas that is a by-product of oil exploration and recovery. We flare it (flare means"to set fire to, in order to burn" i.e it's burning as I speak). The carbon dioxide thus generated is a green house gas. <br /><br />I do not presuppose the heat generated from such senseless activities on a truly hellish scale will help in cooling down the planet. The devil must have a most comfortable living environment in that Niger Delta, because hell is very hot according to the Bible. Maybe that's why Nigeria is so upside down, his activities are becoming too wide ranging over there. The price of this gas is for evermore galluping upwards and onwards and never comes down. Have you ever witnessed your British Gas bill falling. No! Its always progressing in leaps and bounds. Why don't we just say,"Let us be slaves, Amen".<br /><br />Remember that Nigeria is not at all land locked. We have a very long coast line formerly known as the"Slave Coast" (the Slave Coast starts somewhere around Ghana and ends somewhere after the Bight of Bonny, where we used to export slaves from en masse, with the help of the Portuguese and the British. <br /><br />There was the Ivory Coast, the Gold and the"Slave Coast". I wish I was from Botswana. They have no coast. They are landlocked. <br /><br />I recently found out that that"Escravos" is a Potuguese word for slave. I never knew. I thought Escravos was a Mid-Western Nigerian word. Now, there is a tributary of the River Niger in the Niger Delta, a river known as Escravos. Many people will have heard of Oil and Gas projects around Escravos in Nigeria. <br /><br />It all came home to me. I mean the meaning of the phrase"he's been sold down the river". It's a Nigerian phrase. It means"to be cheated out of something" nowadays.<br /><br />And if you grew up in Nigeria, how many of us had omo-odo, or house-boy's and house-girls at home, employed by our parents. No one seemed to think that there was anything wrong with this practice. In fact, it is a practice that continues to this day. Did anyone ever think of trying to change the system of omo-odo, or why omo-odo exist and what could be done to eradicate such a system? A lot of our parents were educated in Europe. Remember, all forms of slavery inhibit technological progress. But that was not the point I was making. The system of omo-odo is inhumane. The stop is full.<br /><br />Colonisation of Africa was one of the worst things that ever happened to us. It prevented us from building anything resembling nation states. The result of which was the conglomeration of completely opposed ethnic and religious entities into individual towers of Babel called"countries", Nigeria being a prime example.<br /><br />However, it is difficult to excuse our rank stupidity in letting these"fairly obvious to the blind","individual towers of Babel" evolve into such advanced kleptocracies that are a shame to us all and our future generations, and as one of my freinds put it succintly, have driven and continue to drive people into slavery in the west but this time"voluntarily". In fact he asked"but, don't we want to be slaves. Voluntarily"?! <br /><br />I don't agree with him. I dont want to be a slave.<br /><br />If we were not all too ready and willing to sell our fellow Africans into slavery then, Britain and Portugal would have found it difficult to establish trading posts along the Atlantic Coast,"the Slave Coast"; which they would then have to defend as valuable trading interests, trading slaves (African Humans) for goods,"trade by barter", and carrying out centuries long triangular trade complete with documentation.<br /><br />Remember, Lagos the long standing capital of Nigeria (before Abuja) is not an African word. It is not English. It is portuguese for Lagoon.<br /><br />You may think I am absolving Europe and America for the slave trade and their multiple crimes in Africa. Far from it, I am just saying that we were just as brutal as they were. One does not excuse the other. We were all equally bad. We, for selling millions of Aficans into slavery no less, we were probably worse.<br /><br />Pesonally, I have not sold anyone"down any river". My family were not involved in the slave trade. Neither were your's most likely. Neither were a lot of families. However, those that were, did us all such a massive damage that will afflict us for centuries to come judged by the current progress of affairs.<br /><br />And how come Africans were the suppliers of the trans-saharan slave trade. Were we just having too many children that we didn't know what to do with other than to sell? I lived in Northern Nigeria for a while in the Sahel, near the sahara. There, a system of Alimanjeri exists where young children are set about begging for food. I never quite understood why such a system evolved from, but is that not a pre-requisite for slavery. People used to shoo away the children as if they were dogs. That system is a whole new question and a whole new debate, though.<br /><br />Many apologist explanations exist for slavery in Africa. One is that it was on nothing like the industrial scale of the trans-atlantic slave trade, and it was no where as brutal. However, it was there. The worst thing is that it still exists. You look at the web site of Anti-Slavery International.I hope the sub-text of these apologist explanations is not that"we sold them in the expectation that they would be treated mecifully". I am begining to wonder!<br /><br />I have found it necessary to apologise to people of Carribean descent I have worked with on occassion, out of curtesy and recognition of the past, of how they became Carribean in the first place.<br /><br />May be this our payback. <br /><br />I hope not. It's just too painfull.<br /><br />One last point. Did the practice of Dahomey kings and heaven knows which other kings, of sacrificing hundreds of captured slaves for days on end on royal deaths and annivessaries of royal deaths contribute to such institutional instability as to weaken the very foundations of any pre-colonial empire engaged in such a practice, thereby rendering them vulnerable to takeover by colonial interlopers who may have been seen as more merciful than the incumbents.<br /><br />Maybe some people will see me as too"westernised". I can see the abuse coming. But before you start, remember that I am just as concerned as you are about the state of Africa.

Dead Aid

It is a good book for scholars. The content or the argument presented does not really reflect the book title. Its view of china as a strategic economical partner to Africa can not be proved. The author does not recognize that cheap Chinese products in Africa have forced many companies to close. The authors primarily source of confidence in writing this book is based on her stay in her native country Zambia, therefore, the book is not a trues representation of African countries, those referencing to it need to be careful. <br /><br />Facts, Aid to Africa is no really helpful in the form it is given today. <br />

It takes courage to take on the GDP Growth Immoral Majority

A great book from a sustainable development expert who dares to take on the economic dinosaurs and shows how to escape the growth-spiral that got us into the mess we're unfortunately still in. Can we prosper as a global economy without our obsession with output growth as a model? Jackson explains.