The Demise of the Dollar...: And Why It's Even Better for Your Investments (Agora Series)
by Addison Wiggin
from Wiley
As the dollar continues to weaken throughout the world, it has become clear that the impact is going to be significant as well as far reaching. This book explores the number of reasons for the dollar's current state, including the prior structural flaws of the dollar, the growing trade deficit, the Euro and other international factors. It also discusses the results of the dollar's fall and how it will impact economies worldwide. Continuing where The Demise of the Dollar left off, it explores the dollar's increasingly sharp decline over the past few years and provides readers with updated suggestions for protecting their portfolios.
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
by Jeffrey Sachs
from Penguin (Non-Classics)
Celebrated economist Jeffrey Sachs has a plan to eliminate extreme poverty around the world by 2025. If you think that is too ambitious or wildly unrealistic, you need to read this book. His focus is on the one billion poorest individuals around the world who are caught in a poverty trap of disease, physical isolation, environmental stress, political instability, and lack of access to capital, technology, medicine, and education. The goal is to help these people reach the first rung on the "ladder of economic development" so they can rise above mere subsistence level and achieve some control over their economic futures and their lives. To do this, Sachs proposes nine specific steps, which he explains in great detail in The End of Poverty. Though his plan certainly requires the help of rich nations, the financial assistance Sachs calls for is surprisingly modest--more than is now provided, but within the bounds of what has been promised in the past. For the U.S., for instance, it would mean raising foreign aid from just 0.14 percent of GNP to 0.7 percent. Sachs does not view such help as a handout but rather an investment in global economic growth that will add to the security of all nations. In presenting his argument, he offers a comprehensive education on global economics, including why globalization should be embraced rather than fought, why international institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank need to play a strong role in this effort, and the reasons why extreme poverty exists in the midst of great wealth. He also shatters some persistent myths about poor people and shows how developing nations can do more to help themselves.
Despite some crushing statistics, The End of Poverty is a hopeful book. Based on a tremendous amount of data and his own experiences working as an economic advisor to the UN and several individual nations, Sachs makes a strong moral, economic, and political case for why countries and individuals should battle poverty with the same commitment and focus normally reserved for waging war. This important book not only makes the end of poverty seem realistic, but in the best interest of everyone on the planet, rich and poor alike. --Shawn Carkonen
A landmark exploration of the way out of extreme poverty for the worldÂ’s poorest citizens
Among the most eagerly anticipated books of any year, this landmark exploration of prosperity and poverty distills the life work of an economist Time calls one of the worldÂ’s 100 most influential people. SachsÂ’s aim is nothing less than to deliver a big picture of how societies emerge from poverty. To do so he takes readers in his footsteps, explaining his work in Bolivia, Russia, India, China, and Africa, while offering an integrated set of solutions for the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that challenge the poorest countries. Marrying passionate storytelling with rigorous analysis and a vision as pragmatic as it is fiercely moral, The End of Poverty is a truly indispensable work.
Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life
by Richard Florida
from Basic Books
According to Richard Florida, this is wrong. Globalization is not flattening the world; in fact, place is increasingly relevant to the global economy and our individual lives. Where we live determines the jobs and careers we have access to, the people we meet, and the “mating markets” in which we participate. And everything we think we know about cities and their economic roles is up for grabs.
Who’s Your City? offers the first available city rankings by life-stage, rating the best places for singles, families, and empty-nesters to reside. Florida’s insights and data provide an essential guide for the more than 40 million Americans who move each year, illuminating everything from what those choices mean for our everyday lives to how we should go about making them.
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
"The Long Tail" is a powerful new force in our economy: the rise of the niche. As the cost of reaching consumers drops dramatically, our markets are shifting from a one-size-fits-all model of mass appeal to one of unlimited variety for unique tastes. From supermarket shelves to advertising agencies, the ability to offer vast choice is changing everything, and causing us to rethink where our markets lie and how to get to them. Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it, from DVDs at Netflix to songs on iTunes to advertising on Google. However, this is not just a virtue of online marketplaces; it is an example of an entirely new economic model for business, one that is just beginning to show its power. After a century of obsessing over the few products at the head of the demand curve, the new economics of distribution allow us to turn our focus to the many more products in the tail, which collectively can create a new market as big as the one we already know. The Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance. New efficiencies in distribution, manufacturing, and marketing are essentially resetting the definition of whats commercially viable across the board. If the 20th century was about hits, the 21st will be equally about niches.
Greenspan's Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve
by William Fleckenstein
from McGraw-Hill
No matter who you are-investor, trader, homeowner, 401(k) holder, or CEO-you are bound to feel the impact of Alan Greenspan's “Age of Ignorance” for years to come.
According to MSN Money columnist William A. Fleckenstein, Greenspan's nearly 19-year career as Federal Reserve Chairman is even worse than anyone imagined. Labeled “Mr. Bubble” by the New York Times, Greenspan was nothing less than a serial bubble blower with a long history of bad decision-making. His famous “Greenspan Put” fueled the perception of a Goldilocks economy-but, as this explosive exposé reveals, the bear has finally caught up with Goldilocks.
Using transcripts of Greenspan's FOMC meetings as well as testimony before Congress, this eye-opening book delivers a timeline of his most devastating mistakes and weaves together the connection between every economic calamity of the past 19 years:
- The stock market crash of 1987
- The Savings & Loan crisis
- The collapse of Long Term Capital Management
- The tech bubble of 2000
- The feared Y2K disaster
- The credit bubble and real estate crisis of 2007
Fleckenstein explains just how far-reaching Greenspan's mess has been flung, and presents damning evidence that contradicts the former Fed chief's public naiveté concerning shifts in the market and economy. He also points to a disturbing fact, that throughout his career, Greenspan not only made costly mistakes, but made the same ones-over and over again. And not only was he never able to recognize or admit to those mistakes, he constantly rewrote his own history to justify them.
Greenspan's Bubbles offers a lock-stock-and-barrel portrait of a flawed but fascinating man whose words and actions have led a whole generation astray, and whose legacy will continue to challenge us in the years ahead.
The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel
by Stephen Leeb
from Business Plus
Stephen Leeb shows how hard times can be a boon for smart investors. As the world faces an energy crisis of unprecedented scope, renowed economist Stephen Leeb shows how surging oil prices will contribute to an economic collapse. With meticulous research and analysis, Leeb shows that due to strong competition from India and China, prices could soon double, a cost for which most countries and investors are ill-prepared. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Leeb not only shows how this crisis will affect consumers, but how savvy investing can turn these dire times into financial gain.
China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future -- and the Challenge for America
by James Kynge
from Mariner Books
"Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world." Napoleon's words seem eerily prescient today, as the shock waves from China's awakening reverberate around the globe. Award-winning journalist James Kynge takes measure of the tremors made as China's ravenous hunger for jobs, raw materials, energy, and food — and its export of goods, workers, and investments — drastically reshapes world trade and politics. Through dramatic stories of the people who are driving China's transformation — entrepreneurs and visionaries, factory workers and store clerks — Kynge describes the breakneck rise of China, the extraordinary problems the country now faces, and the consequences of both.
Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life (Borzoi Books)
by Robert B. Reich
from Knopf
From the greatly admired author of The Work of Nations and The Future of Success, one of America's greatest economic and political thinkers as well as a distinguished public servant in three national administrations, a breakthrough book on the clash between capitalism and democracy.
Mid-twentieth-century capitalism has turned into global capitalism, and global capitalism—turbocharged, Web-based, and able to find and make almost anything just about anywhere—has turned into supercapitalism. But as Robert B. Reich makes clear in this eye-opening book, while supercapitalism is working wonderfully well to enlarge the economic pie, democracy—charged with caring for all citizens—is becoming less and less effective under its influence.
Reich explains how widening inequalities of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and the spreading effects of global warming are the logical outcomes of supercapitalism. He shows us why companies, fighting harder than ever to maintain their competitive positions, have become even more deeply involved in politics; and how average citizens, seeking great deals and invested in the stock market to an unprecedented degree, are increasingly loath to stand by their values if it means biting the hands that feed them. He makes clear how the tools traditionally used to temper America's societal problems—fair taxation, well-funded public education, trade unions—have withered as supercapitalism has burgeoned.
Reich sets out a clear course to a vibrant capitalism and a concurrent, equally vibrant democracy. He argues forcefully that the spheres of business and politics must be kept distinct. He calls for an end to the legal fiction that corporations are citizens, as well as the illusion that corporations can be "socially responsible" until laws define social needs. Reich explains why we must stop treating companies as if they were people—and must therefore abolish the corporate income tax and levy it on shareholders instead, hold individuals rather than corporations guilty of criminal conduct, and not expect companies to be "patriotic." For, as Reich says, only people can be citizens, and only citizens should be allowed to participate in democratic decision making.
Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes, Revised and Updated Edition
by Michael J. Panzner
from Kaplan Publishing
From desperate interest rate cuts and chaos in global financial markets to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and a fast-crumbling tower of public and private debt, Wall Street insider Michael J. Panzner exposes the cracks in the dike, the looming economic threats, and the vast array of promises and obligations that will ultimately go unfulfilled.
How did we get to this place, and how can we protect ourselves from the fallout?
This revised and updated edition features a new introduction by the author on the predictions that have come to pass since the book was first published. It also provides a financial bomb shelter for every American by identifying the most pressing risks we face today as well as what we can do to survive the crisis:
How an unraveling economy will affect each one of usWhen to sell, what to buy, and where to invest as the crisis unfoldsThe social, political, and geopolitical fallout from widespread financial upheaval
Everyone must learn of the disaster-in-the-making so they can protect themselves, their families, and their economic well-being—before it's too late. Financial Armageddon is today’s call to action.
How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years in the 21st Century
by Howard Ruff
from Berkley Trade
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