"We fed the monster until it blew up ..."While Wall Street was busy creating the biggest credit bubble of all time, a few renegade investors saw it was about to burst, bet against the banking system - and made a fortune. From the jungles of the trading floor to the casinos of Las Vegas, this is the outrageous story of the misfits, mavericks and geniuses who, against all odds, made the greatest financial killing in history. 20年前，迈克尔·刘易斯的成名作《说谎者的扑克牌》被公认为描写20世纪80年代华尔街的“教科书”，对美国商业文化产生了重大的影响。20年后，华尔街翻天覆地的闹剧之中，刘易斯照旧洞见烛微，以个人视角重现华尔街上演的市场传奇和诡谲道德剧。 一场金融危机，给一向声名远播的华尔街难以想象的重创，然而，在一片狼藉之中，却有一些藉藉无名之辈早已看出市场的漏洞，在众人疯狂的时候做空市场，最终赚得丰厚利润。
Every month you spend money in twelve majorcategories. And at the end of each month, you scratch your head andwonder, Where did it all go? In The Little Book of Big Savings, America’sFinancial Expert, Ellie Kay, will help you uncover theextra cash just waiting to be found in every area of your life. Notonly will you never again wonder where your cash went, you willhave extra to save–and even to share. Don’t mindlessly let hundreds of dollars slipout of your ATM every month. Ellie’s practical advice will showyou: ?How one phone call could save you $500 a yearor more ?How your kids can get a great education withoutbreaking the bank ?Three ways your water heater can save youmoney ?Why giving away money is one of the best waysto save it ?How to save up to 50% on your onlinepurchases Plus hundreds of other tips that will loosenyour budget without sacrificing your lifestyle. Soon you’ll findwhat you want the most when it comes to your finances: peace ofmind.
For Making Sense of Investing Today...the Fully Revised and Expanded Edition of the Bestselling The Motley Fool Investment Guide Today, with the Internet, anyone can be an informed investor. Once you learn to tune out the hype and focus on meaningful factors, you can beat the Street. The Motley Fool Investment Guide, completely revised and updated with clear and witty explanations, deciphers all the new information -- from evaluating individual stocks to creating a diverse investment portfolio. David and Tom Gardner have investing ideas for you -- no matter how much time or money you have. This new edition of The Motley Fool Investment Guide is built for today's investor, sophisticate and novice alike, with updated information on: * Finding high-growth stocks that will beat the market over the long term * Identifying volatile young companies that traditional valuation measures may miss * Using Fool.com and the Internet to locate great sources of useful information
“Ann Holmes has created the perfect guide to help women turntheir dreams into a reality.” –Donna Mullen Good, CEO of the Center for Women Enterprise If you’ve ever dreamed of starting your own business, or ifyou’ve ever wondered about how to build up the business you alreadyrun, but worry because you don’t have an MBA or a couple of yearsof college business courses, this book is for you. Based onextensive interviews with more than eighty women entrepreneurs fromaround the country, There’s a Business in Every Woman offersinspiring success stories (and instructive missteps) in a widerange of businesses–from catering, landscaping, personal training,and wedding and events planning to interior and clothing design,staffing, manufacturing, and product design. What the trailblazing women in this book have in common is a goodidea and the courage to turn a dream into a money-making realitythrough hard work, passion, and drive. Take, for instance, thewoman who started an IT cons
Forget what you’ve heard. Nice girls can get the corneroffice. As women, we haven’t always had the best role models at work. We’veeither worked for men or we’ve had female bosses who are, well, bigbitches. Woman still don’t have much of a road map right now whenit comes to taking charge at the office, so the team who broughtyou the national bestseller The Girl’s Guide to Starting YourOwn Business is drawing one for us. Caitlin Friedman andKimberly Yorio will teach you to be powerful without beingpossessive, to be opinionated without being brassy, and to have astrong voice without micromanaging. You’ll learn just how to ownthe role of queen bee in a positive way so that you can be morementor than manager, one who leads, inspires, and motivates. So, you finally got that promotion. You’re the boss now. Thesupervisor. The manager. The captain. The taskmaster. Those days oftaking orders, running errands, and clock-watching are over. Asexciting as all this might seem, once the rush of the pro
When it comes to investing in the stock market, investors have plenty of options: 1. They can do it themselves. Trillions of dollars areinvested this way. (Of course, the only problem here is that most people have no ideahow to analyze and choose individual stocks. Well, not reallythe only problem. Most investors have no idea how toconstruct a stock portfolio, most have no idea when to buy andsell, and most have no idea how much to invest in the firstplace.) 2. They can give it to professionals to invest. Trillions of dollars are invested this way. (Unfortunately most professionals actually underperform the market averages over time. In fact,it may be even harderto pick good professional managers than it is to pick goodindividual stocks.) 3. They can invest in traditional index funds. Trillions of dollars are also invested this way.(The problem isthat investing this way is seriously flawed--and almost a guaranteeof subpar investment returns over time.) 4. They can read The Big Secret for the
THE ESSENTIAL GALBRAITH includes key selections from the mostimportant works of John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the mostdistinguished writers of our time - from THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, thegroundbreaking book in which he conined the tern "conventionalwisdom," to THE GREAT CRASH, an unsurpassed account of the eventsthat triggered America's worst economic crisis. Galbraith's newintroductions place the works in their historical moment and makeclear their enduring relevance for the new century. THE ESSENTIALGALBRAITH will delight old admirers and introduce one of our mostbeloved writers to a new generation of readers. It is also anindispensable resource for scholars and students of economics,history, and politics, offering unparalleled access to the seminalwritings of an extraordinary thinker.
When financial advisor Spencer Sherman found himself crossinga police line to retrieve his work files from a burning officebuilding, he realized he had money madness. He noticed it in hisclients, too: those irrational feelings about money that makeotherwise rational adults behave foolishly—buying high, sellinglow, overspending, lying to their spouses, equating theirself-worth with their net worth. Money madness stresses us out,poisons our relationships, and keeps us from making as much moneyas we can. So Spencer invented the cure. Now, in The Cure for MoneyMadness, he gives us the tools that have helped thousands of peoplefind greater peace of mind—and make more money. Money madness, Spencer shows us, comes from unproductive messagesthat we received long ago. “It takes money to make money.” “Payingrent is just throwing money down the drain.” “Don’t talk aboutmoney.” When you challenge the messages, you can transform allaspects of your money life: earning, spending, saving
John Kenneth Galbraith has long been at the center of Americaneconomics, in key positions of responsibility during the New Deal,World War II, and since, guiding policy and debate. His trenchantnew book distills this lifetime of experience in the public andprivate sectors; it is a scathing critique of matters as they standtoday. Sounding the alarm about the increasing gap between realityand "conventional wisdom" -- a phrase he coined -- Galbraith tells,along with much else, how we have reached a point where the privatesector has unprecedented control over the public sector. We havegiven ourselves over to self-serving belief and "contrivednonsense" or, more simply, fraud. This has come at the expense ofthe economy, effective government, and the business world.Particularly noted is the central power of the corporation and theshift in authority from shareholders and board members tomanagement. In an intense exercise of fraud, the pretense ofshareholder power is still maintained, even with the immediatepart
Your Road to Lifelong Financial Independence It’s about time you felt empowered tobetter manage your money because–in tough economic times more thanever–your financial freedom depends on making smart choices. Butit’s hard to know where to begin, especially when you’re juststarting out. And of course, it only gets more complicated as yougo through life: How do you establish good credit? Do you buy orrent? What kinds of health coverage do you really need? How do youactually stay afloat in an uncertain market? The Wall Street Journal Guide to Starting YourFinancial Life gets you off on the right financial foot, fromtackling everyday choices like cell-phone plans and pet ownershipto big decisions such as smart investment strategies and buying acar or a house. You’ll learn: ? How to open your first checking and savingsaccounts, get your first credit card, and establish goodcredit ? The ins and outs of starting a job, includinginformation about taxes, choosing health insurance options,
UNTIL THE SPRING OF 2001,THE HOUSTON energy giant Enron epitomized the triumph of the new economy. Feared by rivals, worshiped by investors,Enron seemingly could do no wrong, its profits rose every quarter; its stock price surged ever upward; its leaders were hailed as visionaries. Then a young Fortune writer named Bethany McLean wrote an article posing a simple question--How, exactly, does Enron make its money?--and the company's house of cards began to collapse. Though other business scandals would follow, none has had the shattering effect of Enron's bankruptcy, which caused Americans to lose faith in a system that rewarded top insiders with millions of dollars while small investors,including many Enron employees, lost everything. Despite enormous media coverage of Enron, the definitive story of its astonishing rise and fall comes alive for the first time in this gripping narrative by McLean and her Fortune colleague Peter Elkind.Drawing on a wide range of private documents and well-placed so
Even after the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, America isstill beset by the depredations of an oligarchy that is now bigger,more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever.Anchored by six megabanks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase,Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—whichtogether control assets amounting, astonishingly, to more than 60percent of the country’s gross domestic product, these financialinstitutions (now more emphatically “too big to fail”) continue tohold the global economy hostage, threatening yet another financialmeltdown with their excessive risk-taking and toxic “business asusual” practices. How did this come to be—and what is to be done?These are the central concerns of 13 Bankers, a brilliant,historically informed account of our troubled politicaleconomy. In 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson—one of the most prominent andfrequently cited economists in America (former chief economist ofthe International Monetary Fund, Professor of Entre
How can you construct a financial investment strategy toprotect yourself … yet still get the growth to ensure a solidfinancial future and comfortable retirement during these turbulenttimes? By building an investing safety net that gives you the gainsneeded for growth – though more modest than those of past years –but protection against the downside. So when turbulencestrikes again – and it will – you won’t re-live the financialnightmares of recent years when portfolios and 401Ks weredevastated.
What is Gotcha Capitalism? Coughing up $4 fees for ATM transactions. Iron-clad cell phonecontracts you can’t get out of with a crowbar. Paying big bucks forinsurance you don’t need on a rental car or forking over $20 a dayfor supposedly “free” wireless internet. Every day we use banks,cell phones, and credit cards. Every day we book hotels and airlinetickets. And every day we get ripped off. How? Here are just a few examples of how big business can getyou: · You didn’t fill up the rental car with gas? Gotcha! Gas costs $7 a gallon here. · Your bank balance fell to $999.99 for one day? Gotcha! That’ll be $12. · You miss one payment on that 18-month same-as-cash loan? Gotcha! That’ll be $512 extra. · You’re one day late on that electric bill? Gotcha! All your credit cards now have a 29.99% interestrate. But not for much longer. In Gotcha Capitalism, MSNBC.com’s “RedTape Chronicles” columnist Bob Sullivan exposes the way
The intimate, fly-on-the wall tale of the decline and fall of anAmerica icon With one notable exception, the firms that make up what we know asWall Street have always been part of an inbred, insular culturethat most people only vaguely understand. The exception was MerrillLynch, a firm that revolutionized the stock market by bringing WallStreet to Main Street, setting up offices in far-flung cities andtowns long ignored by the giants of finance. With its “thunderingherd” of financial advisers, perhaps no other business, whether infinancial services or elsewhere, so epitomized the American spirit.Merrill Lynch was not only “bullish on America,” it was a bigreason why so many average Americans were able to grow wealthy byinvesting in the stock market. Merrill Lynch was an icon. Its sudden decline, collapse, andsale to Bank of America was a shock. How did it happen? Why did ithappen? And what does this story of greed, hubris, and incompetencetell us about the culture of Wall Street that continues to
No Matter Where You Start, David Bach Can Help You Live andFinish Rich With his national bestsellers "Smart Women Finish Rich"and "Smart Couples Finish" "Rich," renowned financial advisor andeducator David Bach has taught millions of people of all ages andincomes how to take control of their financial future. His message,that the key to building wealth is "values first, stuff second,"has inspired people all over the world. Now, "The" "Finish RichWorkbook" gives couples and singles alike a new opportunity totailor his advice for their individual circumstances. Combining thedown-to-earth, jargon-free approach that has made him so popularwith the hands-on practicality of a workbook, this new addition tothe "Finish Rich" series is like having a one-on-one session withDavid Bach. You will learn how to: - Use the power of the LatteFactor(TM), David Bach's international recognized approach tobuilding wealth on a few dollars a day. - Apply the Debt FreeSolutionTM, a powerful way to reduce debt quickly and repa
"This is a modern classic." —Paul A. Samuelson, First AmericanNobel Prize Winner in Economics "The best book there is about the stock market and all that goeswith it." — The New York Times Book Review "Anyone whose orientation is toward where the action is, where thehappenings happen, should buy a copy of The Money Game andread it with due diligence." — Book World " 'Adam Smith' is a veteran observer and commentator on the eventsand people of Wall Street.... His thorough knowledge of financialaffairs gives his observations a great degree of authenticity. Butthe joy of reading this book comes from his delightful sense ofhumor. He is a lively and ingeniously witty writer who never stoopsto acerbity. None of the solemn, sacred cows of Wall Street escapesdebunking." — Library Journal
Let’s face it: you can't avoid death or taxes. But you can create an estate plan that will make both a whole loteasier for your loved ones and put you in control of howyour assets will get passed to your heirs. Here, Wall Street Journal personal-finance reporter RachelEmma Silverman walks you step-by-step through the process.Chock-full of clear and solid advice on how to get the most out ofthe main estate planning tools - including wills, trusts, lifeinsurance, guardianship papers, and powers-of-attorney documents -the Wall Street Journal Complete Estate-Planning Guidebook will help make your estate-planning process as simple, smooth, andunintimidating as possible. This book will help you: · Clarify your estate-planning goals,such as dividing up property for heirs, reducing taxes or leavingmoney for charity · Understand the key estate-planningdocuments you’ll need, including wills, beneficiary-designationforms, powers-of-attorney and health-care advance directives · Decode the
In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized something fewothers suspected--that the housing market and the value of subprimemortgages were grossly inflated and headed for a major fall. Paulson's background was in mergers and acquisitions, however, andhe knew little about real estate or how to wager againsthousing. He had spent a career as an also-ran on Wall Street.But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark. Hejust wasn't sure how to do it. Colleagues at investment banksscoffed at him and investors dismissed him. Even prosskeptical about housing shied away from the complicated derivativeinvestments that Paulson was just learning about. But Paulsonand a handful of renegade investors such as Jeffrey Greene andMichael Burry began to bet heavily against risky mortgages andprecarious financial companies. Timing is everything, though.Initially, Paulson and the others lost tens of millions of dollarsas real estate and stocks continued to soar. Rather than back down,however, Paulson red
Although Africa has long been known to be rich in oil,extracting it hadnt seemed worth the effort and risk untilrecently. But with the price of Middle Eastern crude oilskyrocketing and advancing technology making reserves easier totap, the region has become the scene of a competition between majorpowers that recalls the nineteenth-century scramble forcolonization there. But what does this giddy new oil boom meanforAmerica, for the world, for Africans themselves? John Ghazviniantraveled through twelve African countriesfrom Sudan to Congo toAngolatalking to warlords, industry executives, bandits, activists,priests, missionaries, oil-rig workers, scientists, and ordinarypeople whose lives have been transformednot necessarily for thebetterby the riches beneath their feet. The result is a high-octanenarrative that reveals the challenges, obstacles, reasons fordespair, and reasons for hope emerging from the worlds newestenergy hot spot.
As you think about retirement, you’ve got facts to face,planning to do, decisions to make and numbers to crunch. With theexperts at The Wall Street Journal to guide you, you’ll learn howto tailor a financial plan for the lifestyle you want. ? Answers your biggest question—How big does my nest egg need tobe?—by linking it to your particular hopes for how you want tospend your days in retirement ? Shows how to translate your dreams and interests into dailyactivities, whether traveling, opening a business, volunteering orgoing back to school ? Provides a timeline for decisions to make and steps to take tenyears, five years and one year before you retire ? Offers tips on investing wisely and working with the rightfinancial adviser ? Tells you how to maximize your benefits from Social Securityand Medicare ? Guides you through the intricacies of 401(k)s, IRAs, annuitiesand other financial tools and resources Today, the average person can expect to spend two d
Fighting about money is the #1 reason for divorce in America.From first-time newlyweds at the start of new careers to peoplemarrying later in life or on their second or third marriage,couples face an overwhelming task when creating and managing atwo-income household. Most couples find themselves frustrated whenit comes to combining their complex financial histories, and, as aresult, both their relationships and bank accounts cansuffer. David Bach, nationally renowned financial advisor and author ofthe bestselling Smart Women Finish Rich, knows that it doesn't haveto be this way. After years of first-hand experience working withcouples young and old, David Bach reveals that throughcommunication and partnership, planning your finances together canbe both fun and easy when you have the right tools. In Smart Couples Finish Rich, David Bach offers couples astep-by-step guide to building and maintaining financial wealth foryears to come. Instead of avoiding each other when it comes time tobalance
