Goldman Sachs’ Book List
Goldman Sachs put together a list of the best books and it is impressive and long – unfortunately it is hard to sift through since it just has the title and the author without any information on the book so we are helping you out by filing in that info. If you want to find the full list go here we also list it below at the bottom along with descriptions. Note: we do not endorse the short term trading strategies (well we really do not officially endorse anything) but to keep the list complete we have included all descriptions of books below. Because this is lengthy we will be breaking them up by section so stay tuned for more!- which brings to Industry Background and Flavor – there are some real classics in here and a few lesser known names and many of the books only cost a few pennies from Amazon and even with shipping will cost you less than $5 TOTAL, a bunch only cost a penny plus a few dollars shipping – so make sure to check them out!!
Also see Bill Gates: 5 Books To Read This Summer
Also see Written About, By or For Money Managers and Traders -> here
Also see Goldman Sachs’ Recommended Reading List – Industry Background and Flavor Part I
Goldman Sachs reading list sections
Written About, By or For Money Managers and Traders
Industry Background and Flavor
Broad Industry History
Analytical and Reference
Periodicals
Wall Street Journal (daily, Monday through Friday)
Barron’s (weekly publication)
General
IMD
FICC & Equities
Options/Derivatives
See Written About, By or For Money Managers and Traders -> here
Goldman Sachs’ Book List – Industry Background and Flavor is a lengthy section so we are splitting up – below is Part II
Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country by William Greider
William Greider’s groundbreaking bestseller reveals how the mighty and mysterious Federal Reserve operates—and manipulates and the world’s economy.
This ground-breaking best-seller reveals for the first time how the mighty and mysterious Federal Reserve operates—and how it manipulated and transformed both the American economy and the world’s during the last eight crucial years. Based on extensive interviews with all the major players, Secrets of the Temple takes us inside the government institution that is in some ways more secretive than the CIA and more powerful than the President or Congress.
• Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve by George Soros, Bryon Wien & Krisztina Koenen
George Soros Ends the Speculation
“The outcome [of this book] is a summing up of my life’s work. . . As I finish the book, I feel I have succeeded.”-George Soros from the Preface
Critical praise for Soros on Soros
“If you have ever wanted to sit down for a candid conversation with a phenomenal financial success, George Soros’s book provides the opportunity. You will meet a complex man and a first-rate mind.”-Henry A. Kissinger
“The best expert on Soros is undoubtedly George Soros! After all, who is better equipped to tell us what he really thinks and how he thinks, a matter of some importance given the fact that he has translated a remarkable personal financial success into a truly generous and historically significant effort to promote postcommunist democracy.” -Zbigniew Brzezinski
“The best X-ray of the mind of the master yet.” -Barton M. Biggs
“George Soros brings a lot more to the world of finance than the intuition and nerve of a born trader-and in Soros on Soros he’s no longer bashful about telling us about it. A philosopher at heart, George attributes his success at investing to a theory of the interaction of reality and human perception. What really drives the man now, with a personal fortune beyond all personal need, is a different kind of strategic investing-investment to build in Eastern Europe the kind of open societies he came to value in his own life.” -Paul A. Volcker
Financial guru George Soros is one of the most colorful and intriguing figures in the financial world today. Now in Soros on Soros, readers are given their most intimate and revealing look yet into the life and mind of the one BusinessWeek dubbed, “The Man Who Moves Markets.”
Soros on Soros interweaves financial theory and personal reminiscence, political analysis and moral reflection to offer a compelling portrait of the world (and its markets) according to Soros. In an interview-style narrative with Byron Wien, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, and with German journalist Krisztina Koenen, Soros vividly describes the genesis of his brilliant financial career and shares his views on investing and global finance, politics and the emerging world order, and the responsibility of power.
Speaking with remarkable candor, he traces his progress from Holocaust survivor to philosophy student, unsuccessful tobacco salesman to the world’s most powerful and profitable trader and introduces us to the people and events that helped shape his character and his often controversial views.
In describing the investment theories and financial strategies that have made him “a superstar among money managers” (The New York Times), Soros tells the fascinating story of the phenomenally successful Soros Fund Management and its $12 billion flagship, Quantum Fund. He also offers fresh insights into some of his most sensational wins and losses, including a firsthand account of the $1 billion he made going up against the British pound and the fortune he lost speculating on the yen. Plus: Soros’s take on the devaluation of the peso and currency fluctuations internationally.
He tells of the personal and professional crises that more than once threatened to destroy him and of the personal resources he drew upon to turn defeat into resounding victory. And he explains his motivations for establishing the Soros Foundation and the Open Society Institute through which he worked to build open societies in postcommunist countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Finally, turning his attention to international politics, Soros offers keen insights into the current state of affairs in Russia and the former communist bloc countries and analyzes the reasons behind and likely consequences of the West’s failure to properly integrate them into the free world. He also explores the crisis of the ERM and analyzes the pros and cons of investing in a number of emerging markets.
Find out what makes one of the greatest financial wizards of this or any age tick. Soros on Soros is a must read for anyone interested in world finance and international policy.
• Guerrilla Investing: Winning Strategies for Beating the Wall Street Professionals by Peter Siris
Amazon.com Review
For Peter Siris, the stock market is a battleground. And if you’re an individual investor, you’d better understand your enemy–the professional investor–as well your own limits and capabilities. According to Siris, the professionals have many advantages over individual investors: they’ve got the inside track on information that moves the market, and they’re backed by research staffs and their networks with other pros. The trick to beating the pros is to employ guerrilla tactics–that is avoid their strengths and exploit their weaknesses.Guerrilla Investing looks at techniques that individual investors can use to win the investing game. Siris cautions against short-term trading, which plays into the hands of the professionals, and he instead advocates a buy-and-hold strategy. He shows how to read charts, interpret a company’s financial statement, and how not to get suckered by what market analysts say. He also encourages investors to develop a investment style and to stick with it. If you consider yourself a serious investor or are interested in becoming one, Guerrilla Investing is something you’ll find yourself coming back to again and again. Highly recommended. –Harry C. Edwards –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
• The Battle For Investment Survival by Gerald Loeb
A reader of one of my earlier discussions asked-“Have you ever tried out the ideas outlined in your book?” My reply was to the effect that the ideas were tried out first, and the book written afterward. Any earner who earns more than he can spend is automatically an investor. It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether he wants to be or not, or even whether he realizes that he is investing. Storing present purchasing power for use in the future is investing, no matter in what form it’s put away. Some popular and common forms include money itself, government bonds, savings bank deposits, real estate, commodities, securities of all types, diamonds and where and when it’s legal, gold.
• Money and Power: The History of Business by Howard B. Means
The dramatic story of greed, money, power, and the moguls and dynasties that have shaped business From merchant ships to microchips, industry has been defined by the powerful business leaders who have caused seismic shifts in the growth of commerce. The companion book to the acclaimed CNBC documentary, Money and Power takes readers on a gripping journey following the movement of power from east to west-from the feudal estates of medieval Europe to the halls of modern finance, from the teeming streets of ancient Venice to the serene campuses of Silicon Valley-to tell the story of how business shaped the modern world, and how the goals of a few ambitious people paved the way to the wealth and prosperity shared by so much of the world’s population today. A dramatic narrative focusing on the groundbreakers throughout history-from St. Godric, the twelfth-century monk reviled for his love of money to Bill Gates, the contemporary embodiment of money and power-traces the roots of banking, industry, commerce, and power. Fever-pitch moments in the book center around pivotal figures such as Cosimo de Medici, Philip II, the Rothschilds, J. P. Morgan, the Rockefellers, Henry Ford and others. The authors also extract important lessons about the strategies and tactics used to build these business empires.
• The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street as a World Power: 1653-2000 by John Steele Gordon
In “The Great Game,” acclaimed business historian John Steele Gordon chronicles the rise of Wall Street from its humble beginnings as an American trading post to its domination of the world economy, bringing to life the remarkable cast of bankers and brokers, visionaries and crooks who made it happen. From Alexander Hamilton to Michael Milken, the history of Wall Street is a history of risk, courage, avarice, patriotism, power, genius, and, occasionally, remarkable stupidity. In Gordon, Wall Street has finally found a biographer worthy of its extraordinary story.
• Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market by B. Mark Smith
To an unprecedented degree, the health of the American economy, and the financial well-being of the average American, is tied to the stock market. Toward Rational Exuberance tells the story of how the market came to be what it is today, providing an in-depth understanding of the theories that drive investor behavior, the vivid personalities who have dominated the stock market’s turbulent history, and the processes by which the market has evolved to its present state — elements essential to anyone seeking to understand the workings of the modern economy.
The stock market is big news now, influencing every aspect of the modern economy. Accepted wisdom has it that the market will provide retirement security for anyone willing to diligently save and invest.
Yet many people still alive can remember a very different time, when the stock market was little more than a primitive insider’s game viewed by most Americans with skepticism and suspicion. In Toward Rational Exuberance, B. Mark Smith, a retired stock trader with nearly two decades of practical experience, tells the story of how this stunning transformation occurred. It is a fascinating story, involving colorful personalities, dramatic events, and revolutionary new ideas. In the course of the narrative, Smith traces the evolution of popular theories of stock market behavior, showing how they have become widely accepted over time and have greatly influenced the way the investing public views the market. But he also shows how some of these theories — such as the notion that the market is often susceptible to speculative “bubbles” that will inevitably burst — are based on faulty interpretations of market history that may lead investors to draw inaccurate conclusions about the market today.
The central thesis of Toward Rational Exuberance is that the modern stock market is the product of a dynamic evolutionary process; it is very different from what it was in the past. It cannot be measured simply by comparison with arbitrary historical standards, and its behavior cannot be predicted by extrapolating those standards into the future. It is only by understanding the process by which the modern market has been created that today’s investor can begin to understand the market itself.
• 100 Years of Wall Street by Charles R. Geisst, Richard A. Grasso
There is probably no other “street” in the world that is as influential as Wall Street. From robber barons to money trusts; the Depression to the great 1950s bull market; increased government regulation and war to the ongoing 1990s boom; from insider trading and fraud to antitrust suits; from J.P. Morgan, Michael Milken, Ivan Boetsky to Bill Gates, Wall Street is a site of history-making events and unforgettable figures. This book gives a decade-by-decade, pictorial eyewitness account of Wall Street’s past, its people and events throughout the 20th century.
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Gordon Malkiel
This is an investement guide for the 1990s. An entirely new chapter has been added, “A life cycle guide to personal investing”, which shows how individuals can tailor their financial objectives to their particular incomes at any age and how a mix of saving and investment plans will provide funds when needed and for the years beyond retirement. Another new chapter takes up the techniques that turn the odds of success significantly in favour of the individual investor, while debunking premature claims of the death of the random walk theory. In addition, Burton Malkiel explains the new financial instruments that increase the options for either short-or long-run gains.
• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings by Philip A. Fisher
Widely respected and admired, Philip Fisher is among the most influential investors of all time. His investment philosophies, introduced almost forty years ago, are not only studied and applied by today’s financiers and investors, but are also regarded by many as gospel. This book is invaluable reading and has been since it was first published in 1958. The updated paperback retains the investment wisdom of the original edition and includes the perspectives of the author’s son Ken Fisher, an investment guru in his own right in an expanded preface and introduction
“I sought out Phil Fisher after reading his Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits…A thorough understanding of the business, obtained by using Phil’s techniques…enables one to make intelligent investment commitments.”
—Warren Buffett
• The Go-Go Years: The Drama and Crashing Finale of Wall Street’s Bullish 60s by John Brooks
The Go-Go Years
“The Go-Go Years is not to be read in the usual manner of Wall Street classics. You do not read this book to see our present situation reenacted in the past, with only the names changed. You read it because it is a wonderful description of the way things were in a different time and place.”
—From the Foreword by Michael Lewis
The Go-Go Years is the harrowing and humorous story of the growth stocks of the 1960s and how their meteoric rise caused a multitude of small investors to thrive until the devastating market crashes in the 1970s. It was a time when greed drove the market and fast money was being made and lost as the “go-go” stocks surged and plunged. Included are the stories of such high-profile personalities as H. Ross Perot who lost $450 million in one day, Saul Steinberg’s attempt to take over Chemical Bank, and the fall of America’s “Last Gatsby,” Eddie Gilbert.
Praise for The Go-Go Years
“Those for whom the stock market is mostly a spectator sport will relish the book’s verve, color, and memorable one-liners.”
—New York Review of Books
“Please don’t take The Go-Go Years too much for granted: as effortlessly as it seems to fly, it is nonetheless an unusually complex and thoughtful work of social history.”
—New York Times
“Brooks’s great contribution is his synthesis of all the elements that made the 1960s the most volatile in Wall Street history . and making so much material easily digestible for the uninitiated.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Brooks … is about the only writer around who combines a thorough knowledge of finance with the ability to perceive behind the dance of numbers ‘high, pure, moral melodrama on the themes of possession, domination, and belonging.'”
—Time
• Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter Bernstein
A Business Week, New York Times Business, and USA Today Bestseller
“Ambitious and readable . . . an engaging introduction to the oddsmakers, whom Bernstein regards as true humanists helping to release mankind from the choke holds of superstition and fatalism.” -The New York Times
“An extraordinarily entertaining and informative book.” -The Wall Street Journal
“A lively panoramic book . . . Against the Gods sets up an ambitious premise and then delivers on it.” -Business Week
“Deserves to be, and surely will be, widely read.” -The Economist
“[A] challenging book, one that may change forever the way people think about the world.” -Worth
“No one else could have written a book of such central importance with so much charm and excitement.” -Robert Heilbroner author, The Worldly Philosophers
“With his wonderful knowledge of the history and current manifestations of risk, Peter Bernstein brings us Against the Gods. Nothing like it will come out of the financial world this year or ever. I speak carefully: no one should miss it.” -John Kenneth Galbraith Professor of Economics Emeritus, Harvard University
In this unique exploration of the role of risk in our society, Peter Bernstein argues that the notion of bringing risk under control is one of the central ideas that distinguishes modern times from the distant past. Against the Gods chronicles the remarkable intellectual adventure that liberated humanity from oracles and soothsayers by means of the powerful tools of risk management that are available to us today.
“An extremely readable history of risk.” -Barron’s
“Fascinating . . . this challenging volume will help you understand the uncertainties that every investor must face.” -Money
“A singular achievement.” -Times Literary Supplement
“There’s a growing market for savants who can render the recondite intelligibly-witness Stephen Jay Gould (natural history), Oliver Sacks (disease), Richard Dawkins (heredity), James Gleick (physics), Paul Krugman (economics)-and Bernstein would mingle well in their company.” -The Australian
“The market never ceases to befuddle and beguile. These two venerable works are fixtures on the short lists for most valuable books on the securities markets, and investors continue to cherish them.” -From the Introduction by Martin S. Fridson Managing Director, Merrill Lynch & Co. Author of Investment Illusions
Exploring the sometimes hilarious, sometimes devastating impact of crowd behavior and trading trickery on the financial markets, this book brilliantly combines two all-time investment classics. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and Confusión de Confusiones take us from Tulipmania in 1634-when tulips actually traded at a higher price than gold-to the South Sea “bubble” of 1720, and beyond. Securities analyst and author Martin Fridson guides you on a quirky, entertaining, and intriguing journey back through time.
Chosen by the Financial Times as Two of the Ten Best Books Ever Written on Investment
Critical Praise . . .
“This is the most important book ever written about crowd psychology and, by extension, about financial markets. A serious student of the markets and even anyone interested in the extremes of human behavior should read this book!” -Ron Insana, CNBC
“In combining ‘Extraordinary’ with ‘Confusion,’ the result is not extraordinary confusion. Instead, with clarity, the book sears into modern investor minds the dangers of following the crowd.” -Greg Heberlein, The Seattle Times
“You will see between its staid lines (written in ye olde English and as ponderable as Buddha’s navel) that, despite what the media says, nothing really important has changed in the financial markets in centuries.” -Kenneth L. Fisher, Forbes
• Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises by Charles Kindleberger
Manias, Panics, and Crashes, Fifth Edition is an engaging and entertaining account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries. Covering such topics as the history and anatomy of crises, speculative manias, and the lender of last resort, this book puts the turbulence of the financial world in perspective. The updated fifth edition expands upon each chapter, and includes two new chapters focusing on significant financial crises of the last fifteen years.
• Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street by Peter Bernstein
Capital Ideas traces the origins of modern Wall Street, from the pioneering work of early scholars and the development of new theories in risk, valuation, and investment returns, to the actual implementation of these theories in the real world of investment management. Bernstein brings to life a variety of brilliant academics who have contributed to modern investment theory over the years: Louis Bachelier, Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Fischer Black, Myron Scholes, Robert Merton, Franco Modigliani, and Merton Miller. Filled with in-depth insights and timeless advice, Capital Ideas reveals how the unique contributions of these talented individuals profoundly changed the practice of investment management as we know it today.
• The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market by Robert Sobel
First published in 1965, The Big Board was the first history of the New York stock market. It is a story of people: their foibles and strengths, earnestness and avarice, triumphs and crash-and-burns. It is full of entertaining anecdotes, cocktail-party trivia, and tales of love and hate between companies and investors.
Early investments in North America consisted almost exclusively of land. The few securities holders lived in cities, where informal markets grew, with most trading carried out in the street and in coffeehouses. Banking, insurance, and manufacturing activity increased only after the Revolution. In 1792, 24 prominent New York businessmen, for whom stock and bond trading was only a side business, met under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street and agreed to trade securities on a common commission basis. Five securities were traded; three government bonds and two bank stocks. Trading was carried out at the Tontine Coffee-House in a call market, with the president reading out a list of stocks as brokers traded each in turn.
The first half of the 19th century was heady for security trading in New York. In 1817, the Tontine gave way to the New York Stock and Exchange Board, with a more organized and regulated system. Canal mania, which peaked in the late 1820s, attracted European funds to New York and volume soared to 100 shares a day. Soon, the railroads competed with canals for funding. In the frenzy, reckless investors bought shares in “sheer fabrications of imaginative and dishonest men,” leading an economist of the day to lament that “every monied corporation is prima facie injurious to the national wealth, and ought to be looked upon by those who have no money with jealousy and suspicion.”
Colorful figures of Wall Street included Jay Gould and Jim Fisk who, in 1869, precipitated one of the worst panics in American financial history by trying to corner the gold market. Almost lynched, the two were hauled into court, where Fisk whined, “A fellow can’t have a little innocent fun without everybody raising a halloo and going wild.” Then there was Jay Cooke, who invented the national bond drive and, practically unaided, financed the Union effort in the Civil War. In 1873, however, faulty judgment on railroad investments led to the failure of Cooke & Co, and a panic on Wall Street. The NYSE closed for ten days. A journalist wrote: “An hour before its doors were closed, the Bank of England was not more trusted,”
Despite J, P. Morgan’s virtual single-handed role in stemming the Knickerbocker Trust panic of 1907, upon his death in 1913, someone wrote, “We verily believe that J. Pierpont Morgan has done more harm in the world than any man who ever lived in it.” In the 1950s, Charles Merrill was instrumental in changing this attitude toward Wall Streeters. His firm, Merrill Lynch, derisively known in some quarters as “We, the People” and “The Thundering Herd,” brought Wall Street to small investors, traditionally not worth the effort for brokers.
The Big Board closes with this story. Asked by a much younger man what he thought stocks would do next, J,P. Morgan “never hesitated for a moment. He transfixed the neophyte with his sharp glance and replied ‘They will fluctuate, young man, they will fluctuate,’ And so they will,”
Lauded by reviewers and scholars alike, Paul Blustein’s The Chastening examines the role of the International Monetary Fund in the series of economic crises that rocked the globe in the last decade. Based on hundreds of interviews with officials at the IMF, the World Bank, the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the White House, and many foreign governments, The Chastening offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Fund during an extraordinarily turbulent period in modern economic history and at a time when the IMF has become the object of intense political controversy.
While the IMF and its overseers at the Treasury and the Fed have sought to cultivate an image of economic masterminds coolly dispensing effective economic remedies, the reality is that as markets were sinking and defaults looming, the guardians of global financial stability were often floundering, improvising, and feuding among themselves. The Chastening casts serious doubt on the IMF’s ability to combat of investor panics at a time when massive flows of money traverse borders and oceans.
A readable, compelling account of the deeply flawed workings of the international political system, The Chastening is vital reading for students and scholars of international diplomacy, government, and economic and public policy.
• From Here to Economy: A Shortcut to Economic Literacy by Todd G. Buchholz
What is the GDP, and what does it mean? Why does the stock market go down when interest rates go up? What causes a dreaded recession? Economics impacts everyone’s life, but most people take on faith what they read in the newspaper. Now, for anyone who doesn’t know much about economics, noted economist Todd Buchholz explains it all simply and clearly. With refreshing wit and irreverence, Buchholz takes readers by the hand and reveals the basic rules behind everything from food prices to trade deficits. Instead of complicated graphs and charts he uses examples from contemporary life and popular culture to demonstrate the principles at work. By cutting through the arcane musings of academicians, the jargon of analysts and advisors, and the rhetoric of politicians, he gives us a precise and accessible understanding of economic ideas, actions, and consequences as they actually exist in the here and now. Here are some of the heretofore unintelligible ideas he helps us to understand: what causes or combats inflation, and why it is so feared; what moves stocks and bonds up and down – and how to invest wisely and safely; whether it is good or bad to “protect” America from foreign goods – and what happens when we do and when we don’t; what exactly Social Security is, and whether government spending is good or bad – and how dangerous the national debt is or isn’t. In today’s confusing economic climate, it has never been more important for everyone from homemakers to small-business owners to individual investors and middle managers to understand the forces at work.
• After the Trade Is Made: Processing Securities Transactions by David Weiss
This third edition of After the Trade Is Made reflects the changes that have taken place in recent years as a result of new products, technological breakthroughs, and the globalization of the securities industry. Comprehensive and easy to understand, it provides brokers, operations personnel, and individual investors with definitive and up-to-the-minute explanations of each step in the trading process—from the moment a customer decides to buy or sell a security through the final requirements of record keeping.
• The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered by George Soros
The global economy, on which the world now depends more than ever, is in crisis. The Russian economy has collapsed, leading to punishing inflation and economic hardship. Scores of Japanese banks are in ruin while the Japanese government muddles along, the nation falling deeper and deeper into recession. The once-booming economies of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia have imploded. Brazil and the rest of Latin America has begun to edge toward the precipice, and even in Europe and America the markets lurch violently, wiping out gains with each passing week.
No one is better positioned to explain the current global financial crisis than George Soros, the man Morgan Stanley head Barton Biggs calls “the finest analyst of the world in our time.” In The Crisis of Global Capitalism, Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management (whose Quantum Fund is considered to have been the best performing investment fund in the world over the past thirty years), dissects the current crisis and economic theory in general, revealing how theoretical assumptions have combined with human behavior to lead to today’s mess. He shows how unquestioning faith in market forces blinds us to crucial instabilities, and how those instabilities have chain-reacted to cause the current crisis—a crisis that has the potential to get much, much worse. Offering brilliant solutions to the global meltdown, based on years of Soros’s own experience as a financier and philanthropist, this is essential reading for anyone involved with the new economy—that is, all of us.
• Martin Zweig’s Winning on Wall Street by Martin Zweig
Arthur Zweig is the publisher of the influential, trend-spotting Zweig Forecast. Now in this new edition Zweig adds the latest numbers to his classic investment primer and evaluates their impact on the challenging market at the turn of the century.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
“This is a modern classic.” —Paul A. Samuelson, First American Nobel Prize Winner in Economics
“The best book there is about the stock market and all that goes with it.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Anyone whose orientation is toward where the action is, where the happenings happen, should buy a copy of The Money Game and read it with due diligence.” —Book World
” ‘Adam Smith’ is a veteran observer and commentator on the events and people of Wall Street…. His thorough knowledge of financial affairs gives his observations a great degree of authenticity. But the joy of reading this book comes from his delightful sense of humor. He is a lively and ingeniously witty writer who never stoops to acerbity. None of the solemn, sacred cows of Wall Street escapes debunking.” —Library Journal
Interest in Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Board has never been greater and veteran financial journalist Martin Mayer delivers a first rate explanation of how the Fed works and how its decisions drive financial markets.
The Fed has entered a new era, and few understand the rules of its game. Whereas it once indirectly exerted influence on the economy by overseeing what the banks did, it now must push directly on the markets. What brought about this sweeping change? Why do interest-rate changes sometimes move the markets as expected and other times fail to have any effect? How else do Fed decisions affect us?
Offering behind the scenes stories from past and present Fed administrations and explaining the significance of the recent expansion in the Fed’s power and perks, Martin Mayer, one of the world’s best financial journalists, offers a new explanation of the Fed’s changing role, explains why all the old rules for Fed watchers are no longer relevant, and what investors must know to understand the Fed today.
• Maestro : Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom by Bob Woodward
In eight Tuesdays each year, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan convenes a small committee to set the short-term interest rate that can move through the American and world economies like an electric jolt. As much as any, the committee’s actions determine the economic well-being of every American. The availability of money for business or consumer loans, mortgages, job creation and overall national economic growth flows from those decisions. Perhaps the last Washington secret is how the Federal Reserve and its enigmatic chairman, Alan Greenspan, operate. In Maestro, Bob Woodward takes you inside the Fed and Greenspan’s thinking. We listen to the Fed’s internal debates as the American economy is pushed into a historic 10-year expansion while the world economy lurches from financial crisis to financial crisis. Greenspan plays a sometimes subtle, sometimes blunt behind-the-scenes role. He appears in Maestro up close as never before — alternately nervous and calm, plunging into mathematics one moment and politics the next, skeptical, dispassionate, always struggling — often alone.
Maestro traces a fascinating intellectual journey as Greenspan, an old-school anti-inflation hawk of the traditional economy, is among the first to realize the potential in the modern, high-productivity new economy — the foundation of the current American boom. Woodward’s account of the Greenspan years is a remarkable portrait of a man who has become the symbol of American economic preeminence.
• The Quotations of Chairman Greenspan: Words from the Man Who Can Shake the World by Larry Kahaner
The core of this book is a series of quotations by Dr. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve (1987 – ) on the subjects of banks, capitalism, competition, debt and deficits, derivatives, education, employment, the Federal Reserve, forecasting, the gap between rich and poor, globalization, gold, housing, humor, inflation, the new economy, politics, reputation, risk, small business, Social Security and Medicare, the stock market, technology, and trade. The quotations are simplified into their key principles in brief commentaries by the author, Mr. Kahaner. The author has also provided a brief biographical sketch of Dr. Greenspan as well as comments by others about Dr. Greenspan. (For trivia buffs: Did you know he was once married to the painter, Joan Mitchell?)
Index below
Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country by William Greider
• Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve by George Soros, Bryon Wien & Krisztina Koenen
• Guerrilla Investing: Winning Strategies for Beating the Wall Street Professionals by Peter Siris
• The Battle For Investment Survival by Gerald Loeb
• Money and Power: The History of Business by Howard B. Means
• The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street as a World Power: 1653-2000 by John Steele Gordon
• Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market by B. Mark Smith
• 100 Years of Wall Street by Charles R. Geisst, Richard A. Grasso
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Gordon Malkiel
• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings by Philip A. Fisher
• The Go-Go Years: The Drama and Crashing Finale of Wall Street’s Bullish 60s by John Brooks
• Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter Bernstein
• Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises by Charles Kindleberger
• Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street by Peter Bernstein
• The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market by Robert Sobel
• From Here to Economy: A Shortcut to Economic Literacy by Todd G. Buchholz
• After the Trade Is Made: Processing Securities Transactions by David Weiss
• The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered by George Soros
• Martin Zweig’s Winning on Wall Street by Martin Zweig
• Maestro : Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom by Bob Woodward
• The Quotations of Chairman Greenspan: Words from the Man Who Can Shake the World by Larry Kahaner
