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Best International Economics

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Lewis 's rare gift as a guide through the world of credit default swaps and sovereign debt doesn t come simply from his deep understanding of how the global financial system works . --Chuck Leddy. Michael Lewis possesses the rare storyteller 's ability to make virtually any subject both lucid and compelling. Combining his easy familiarity with finance and the talents of a travel writer, Mr. Lewis sets off in these pages to give the reader a guided tour through some of the disparate places hard hit by the fiscal tsunami of 2008, like Greece, Iceland and Ireland, tracing how very different people for very different reasons gorged on the cheap credit available in the prelude to that disaster. And in this book he weaves their stories into a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today 's headlines about Europe 's growing debt problems and the risk of contagion they now pose to the world. Lewis's rare gift as a guide through the world of credit default swaps and sovereign debt doesn't come simply from his deep understanding of how the global financial system works . Michael Lewis possesses the rare storyteller's ability to make virtually any subject both lucid and compelling. Combining his easy familiarity with finance and the talents of a travel writer, Mr. Lewis sets off in these pages to give the reader a guided tour through some of the disparate places hard hit by the fiscal tsunami of 2008, like Greece, Iceland and Ireland, tracing how very different people for very different reasons gorged on the cheap credit available in the prelude to that disaster. And in this book he weaves their stories into a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today's headlines about Europe's growing debt problems and the risk of contagion they now pose to the world. Combining his easy familiarity with finance and the talents of a travel writer, Mr. Lewis sets off in these pages to give the reader a guided tour through some of the disparate places hard hit by the fiscal tsunami of 2008, like Greece, Iceland and Ireland, tracing how very different people for very different reasons gorged on the cheap credit available in the prelude to that disaster. And in this book he weaves their stories into a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today s headlines about Europe s growing debt problems and the risk of contagion they now pose to the world. Lewis s rare gift as a guide through the world of credit default swaps and sovereign debt doesn t come simply from his deep understanding of how the global financial system works .
Reviews
"He's talking about European countries that drank the elixir of seemingly endless and cheap credit prior to the bursting of the recent financial bubble. What would you call a man who owns a 40,000 square foot ranch located on thousands of acres in the middle of nowhere with its own water supply and an arsenal of automatic weapons? to various governments, to the point that eventually markets would question the credibility of these governments. Just as Bass bought credit default swaps on subprime mortgages prior to the financial crisis, Bass later bought credit default swaps on Greek government bonds, because he was convinced that Greece would be one of the first countries to experience real problems. Ireland: "But while the Icelandic male used foreign money to conquer foreign places--trophy companies in Britain, chunks of Scandinavia--the Irish male used foreign money to conquer Ireland. Germany: "Either Germans must agree to integrate Europe fiscally, so that Germany and Greece bear the same relationship to each other as, say, Indiana and Mississippi (the tax dollars of ordinary Germans would go into a common coffer and be used to pay for the lifestyles of ordinary Greeks) or the Greeks (and probably, eventually, every non-German) must introduce `structural reforms,' a euphemism for magically and radically transforming themselves into a people as efficient and productive as the Germans." We've got the core of the average lizard.'. Wrapped around this reptilian core is a mammalian layer (associated with maternal concern and social interaction), and around that is wrapped a third layer, which enables feats of memory and the capacity for abstract thought. 'The only problem is our passions are still driven by the lizard core.'."
"Just like all Michael Lewis books, a good read."
"the most engrossing 20/20 hindsight of the year."
"I found the discussion riveting on how each country, state, or city adjusts to the problems of unfunded retirement accounts, out of control deficits and the greed that drives us all."
""Boomerang" transfers that unique ability fromthe world of individual cut throats on Wall Street to the world of short sighted politicians in small countries."
"Just a quick reading review of what happened the last time our economies went belly up... Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat and all that...."
"From Iceland and Greece to Ireland, Germany and California, Michael Lewis takes the reader on an entertaining, irreverent and insightful ride through the international debt crisis and the sociologies of the places he examines. Economics 101 or a little time in front of CNN will give the reader enough financial knowledge to enjoy "Boomerang," so don't let the lack of a PhD keep you from tackling it."
"Item is exactly as described."
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This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems. Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. [Klein] writes of a decisive battle for the fate of the earth in which we either take back control of the planet from the capitalists who are destroying it or watch it all burn.” (Roy Scranton Rolling Stone). “This may be the first truly honest book ever written about climate change.” (Bryan Walsh Time). It sets the most important crisis in human history in the context of our other ongoing traumas, reminding us just how much the powers-that-be depend on the power of coal, gas and oil. She skillfully blends politics, economics and history and distills out simple and powerful truths with universal applicability.” (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. ). Drawing on an impressive volume of research, Ms. Klein savages the idea that we will be saved by new technologies or by an incremental shift away from fossil fuels: Both approaches, she argues, are forms of denial. Ms. Klein is aware of the intractability of the problems she describes, but she manages optimism nonetheless.” (Nathaniel Rich The New York Times). We haven't made significant progress, Klein argues, because we've been expecting solutions from the very same institutions that created the problem in the first place. Klein's sharp analysis makes a compelling case that a mass awakening is part of the answer.” (Chris Bentley The Chicago Tribune). For those with whom her message does resonate — and they are likely to be legion — her book could help catalyze the kind of mass movement she argues the world needs now.” (Mason Inman San Francisco Chronicle). “Powerfully and uncompromisingly written, the impassioned polemic we have come to expect from Klein, mixing first-hand accounts of events around the world and withering political analysis. Her stirring vision is nothing less than a political, economic, social, cultural and moral make-over of the human world.” (Mike Hulme New Scientist). Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, and author of the New York Times and #1 international bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism . Klein is a contributing editor for Harper’s and reporter for Rolling Stone and writes a syndicated column for The Nation and the Guardian .
Reviews
"While she spends an entire chapter explaining why Virgin Airlines owner, Richard Branson, and other Green billionaires won't save us, she devotes three meager sentences to the most violent, wasteful, petroleum-burning institution on Earth--the US military. It props up the most reactionary petro-tyrannies; devours enormous quantities of oil to fuel its war machine; and spews more dangerous toxins into the environment than any corporate polluter. This odious relationship stands out in bold relief in the Middle East where Washington arms the region's repressive regimes with the latest weaponry and imposes a phalanx of bases where American soldiers, mercenaries, and drones are deployed to guard the pumps, pipelines, and sea lanes for Exxon-Mobil, BP, and Chevron. In response, the Pentagon is gearing up to fight "climate wars" over resources threatened by (or revealed by) atmospheric disruption, like Arctic deep sea oil, fresh water, arable land, and food. The current fall in oil prices also reflects the slowdown of the global economy (especially in China), as well as Saudi Arabia's determination keep production levels high in order to punish its political enemies (Iran & Russia) and drive its economic competitors (North American frackers) out of the market. In their estimation, global fossil fuel supplies will drop dramatically relative to rising demand because society will require ever-increasing amounts of energy just to find and extract the remaining dirty, unconventional hydrocarbons. But she avoids the deeper question this raises: if capitalism lacks the abundant, cheap energy needed to sustain growth, how will the climate movement respond when stagnation, recession, and depression become the new normal and carbon emissions begin falling as a result? How will a climate movement respond if credit freezes, financial assets vaporize, currency values fluctuate wildly, trade shuts down, and governments impose draconian measures to maintain their authority? In the midst of deep recession and dramatic reductions in carbon emissions would climate chaos remain a central public concern and a galvanizing issue for the Left? Will the public be receptive to calls for curbing carbon emissions to save the climate if burning cheaper hydrocarbons seems like the fastest way to kick start growth, no matter how temporary? Under these conditions, the movement will only survive if it transfers its focus from climate change to building a stable, sustainable recovery free from addiction to vanishing reserves of fossil fuels. If they initiate nonprofit forms of socially responsible banking, production, and exchange that help people survive systemic breakdowns, they will earn valuable public approval. And if they can rally people to protect their savings and pensions and prevent foreclosures, evictions, layoffs, and workplace shutdowns, then popular resistance to catabolic capitalism will grow dramatically. To nurture the transition toward a thriving, just, ecologically stable society, all of these struggles must be interwoven and infused with an inspirational vision of how much better life could be if we freed ourselves from this dysfunctional, profit-obsessed, petroleum-addicted system once and for all. To survive catabolic capitalism and germinate an alternative, movement activists will have to anticipate and help people respond to multiple crises while organizing them to recognize and root out their source. If the movement lacks the foresight to anticipate these cascading calamities and change its focus when needed, we will have squandered a vital lesson from Klein's previous book, The Shock Doctrine. If the Left cannot build a movement strong enough and flexible enough to resist the ecological, economic, and military emergencies of declining industrial civilization and begin generating hopeful alternatives it will quickly lose momentum to those who profit from disaster."
"Read it and Weep."
"This is a highly informative and exceedingly well researched work."
"This book not only explains the what of the current carbon-climate problem, it explains the why, including why it is proving so difficult to make the transition to renewable energy."
"It is a great read, very informative."
"This work offers a profound analysis of climate modification due to human activities, a circumstance and dilemma different in kind and magnitude than any mankind has yet faced."
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The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio
Bernstein pulls back the curtain to reveal what really goes on in today‘s financial industry as he outlines a simple program for building wealth while controlling risk.Straightforward in its presentation and generous in its real-life examples, The Four Pillars of Investing presents a no-nonsense discussion of: The art and science of mixing different asset classes into an effective blend The dangers of actively picking stocks, as opposed to investing in the whole market Behavioral finance and how state of mind can adversely affect decision making Reasons the mutual fund and brokerage industries, rather than your partners, are often your most direct competitors Strategies for managing all of your assets—savings, 401(k)s, home equity—as one portfolio Investing is not a destination. The Theory of Investing: “Do not expect high returns without risks.” The History of Investing: “About once every generation, the markets go barking mad. From the essential soundness of classic portfolio theory through the inherent wisdom of investing in multiple asset classes, The Four Pillars of Investing provides a distinctive blend of market history, investing theory, and behavioral finance to help you become a successful, self-sufficient investor.
Reviews
"Money and time are the two things we struggle to manage."
"Bernstein takes extra effort to simplify the intimidating jargon of investing."
"I would recommend this book as a must read for anyone with a 401(k) or brokerage account."
"I consider this to be one of the top 4 books that every investor should read - including (perhaps especially) people who save via an IRA, 401(k) or any other long-term savings/investment plan."
"Best book on investing for the masses."
"A great book!"
"Insightful and well structured."
"This is solid investment advice."
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Best International Accounting

Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine
Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows. · Following 4 simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business by looking at bank account balances. Follow Mike’s counter-intuitive advice and put profits first.”. --VERNE HARNISH, author of Scaling Up “ Profit First is a brilliant smack-upside-the-head revelation for entrepreneurs. Apply the pay-yourself-first principle to your business and watch the profits roll in.”. —CHRIS GUILLEBEAU, author of Born for This and The $100 Startup " Profit First is a game-changer. This book has the potential to change the next 20 years of your small business life.”. —DAWN FOTOPULOS, Associate Professor of Business, The King’s College NYC; author of Accounting for the Numberphobic “ Profit First is a revelation. Profit First makes the process so radically simple that you no longer have an excuse not to be profitable AND have cash flow!”. —GREG CRABTREE, author of Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits. “Not only is Mike one of the most innovative small business authors of our time, his Profit First system—simple to apply and impactful in its results—can be the difference between constantly walking the financial tightrope or being predictably profitable. "Why are so few businesses actually profitable for their owners?
Reviews
"This book is a must read for anyone interested in starting a business or is already a business owner. Business Owners: For years, us accountants have been trying to teach our clients the business owners to run their business using the data in their accounting software and for years business owners have failed to thrive and simply manage sale to sale and payroll to payroll. I have personally witnessed these same business owners implement the stupidly simple strategy this book teaches and completely change the trajectory of their business and their financial position."
"FINALLY, Profit First is the book, the philosophy, the principles, and everything else I have been seeking to apply to the financial/accounting view of our businesses... - It's visual. - It's easy to comprehend. - It really gives you the TRUE financial picture of your business. BEST PART: When you fully implement Profit First, it makes being EXTREMELY PROFITABLE, EASY and FUN."
"With the profit first system, you will start taking your profit out first, and if you are not making a profit, your business will start asking you to address the problem."
"This is an actionable book, and the author encourages you to take simple (sometimes not easy) steps to overcome inertia. I even went so far as to email the author with a question (how the heck can my S corp pay my taxes?!"
"The message of Mike Michalowicz’s "Profit First" is that without a relentless focus on profit, our natural inclinations will drive our businesses into boom-and-bust cycles that revenue growth alone cannot fix."
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Best Comparative Economics

Capital in the Twenty-First Century
The main driver of inequality—returns on capital that exceed the rate of economic growth—is again threatening to generate extreme discontent and undermine democratic values. It seems safe to say that Capital in the Twenty-First Century , the magnum opus of the French economist Thomas Piketty , will be the most important economics book of the year―and maybe of the decade. Piketty, arguably the world’s leading expert on income and wealth inequality, does more than document the growing concentration of income in the hands of a small economic elite. Capital in the Twenty-first Century does all these things… Piketty has written a book that nobody interested in a defining issue of our era can afford to ignore. Like [Paul] Kennedy a generation ago, Piketty has emerged as a rock star of the policy-intellectual world… But make no mistake, his work richly deserves all the attention it is receiving… Piketty, in collaboration with others, has spent more than a decade mining huge quantities of data spanning centuries and many countries to document, absolutely conclusively, that the share of income and wealth going to those at the very top―the top 1 percent, .1 percent, and .01 percent of the population―has risen sharply over the last generation, marking a return to a pattern that prevailed before World War I… Even if none of Piketty’s theories stands up, the establishment of this fact has transformed political discourse and is a Nobel Prize–worthy contribution. Whether or not his idea ultimately proves out, Piketty makes a major contribution by putting forth a theory of natural economic evolution under capitalism… Piketty writes in the epic philosophical mode of Keynes, Marx, or Adam Smith… By focusing attention on what has happened to a fortunate few among us, and by opening up for debate issues around the long-run functioning of our market system, Capital in the Twenty-First Century has made a profoundly important contribution. It is easy to overlook the achievement of Thomas Piketty ’s new bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century , as a work of economic history. But on any given page, there is data about the total level of private capital and the percentage of income paid out to labor in England from the 1700s onward, something that would have been impossible for early researchers… Capital reflects decades of work in collecting national income data across centuries, countries, and class, done in partnership with academics across the globe. But beyond its remarkably rich and instructive history, the book’s deep and novel understanding of inequality in the economy has drawn well-deserved attention… [Piketty’s] engagement with the rest of the social sciences also distinguishes him from most economists… The book is filled with brilliant moments… The book is an attempt to ground the debate over inequality in strong empirical data, put the question of distribution back into economics, and open the debate not just to the entirety of the social sciences but to people themselves. What makes Thomas Piketty ’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century such a triumph is that it seems to have been written specifically to demolish the great economic shibboleths of our time… Piketty’s magnum opus. Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics has done the definitive comparative historical research on income inequality in his Capital in the Twenty-First Century . Thomas Piketty ’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a monumental book that will influence economic analysis (and perhaps policymaking) in the years to come. In the way it is written and the importance of the questions it asks, it is a book the classic authors of economics could have written if they lived today and had access to the vast empirical material Piketty and his colleagues collected… In a short review, it is impossible to do even partial justice to the wealth of information, data, analysis, and discussion contained in this book of almost 700 pages. He has re-emphasized the distinction between ‘unearned’ and ‘earned’ income that had been tucked away for so long under misleading terminologies of ‘human capital,’ ‘economic agents,’ and ‘factors of production.’ Labor and capital―those who have to work for a living and those who live from property―people in flesh―are squarely back in economics via this great book. Instantly influential… [Its] euphoric reception is richly merited… [ Piketty ’s] chief intellectual accomplishment is to show how the basic forces of capitalism tend inevitably toward an ever-greater accumulation of wealth at the tip of the pyramid… Over the past couple decades, we have started to realize that capitalism is no longer delivering for the vast majority of people in most Western democracies. Piketty has now delivered the most empirically grounded, intellectually coherent explanation of what is going on… His masterwork… That’s why the most successful societies of the 21st century will be the ones whose plutocrats read Piketty and help come up with the political answers to the economic forces he so powerfully describes. Thomas Piketty ’s Capital in the 21st Century is the most important economics book of the year, if not the decade… Capital in the 21st Century essentially takes the existing debate on income inequality and supercharges it. [A] magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality… The big idea of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is that we haven’t just gone back to nineteenth-century levels of income inequality, we’re also on a path back to ‘patrimonial capitalism,’ in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled not by talented individuals but by family dynasties… Piketty has written a truly superb book. It’s a work that melds grand historical sweep―when was the last time you heard an economist invoke Jane Austen and Balzac?―with painstaking data analysis… A tour de force of economic modeling, an approach that integrates the analysis of economic growth with that of the distribution of income and wealth. He also offers what amounts to a unified field theory of inequality, one that integrates economic growth, the distribution of income between capital and labor, and the distribution of wealth and income among individuals into a single frame… Capital in the Twenty-First Century makes it clear that public policy can make an enormous difference, that even if the underlying economic conditions point toward extreme inequality, what Piketty calls ‘a drift toward oligarchy’ can be halted and even reversed if the body politic so chooses… His masterwork… Sometimes it seems as if a substantial part of our political class is actively working to restore Piketty’s patrimonial capitalism. Piketty has transformed our economic discourse; we’ll never talk about wealth and inequality the same way we used to. Piketty ’s new volume offers a fresh perspective and a wealth of newly compiled data that will go a long way in helping us understand how capitalism actually works. It makes for fascinating, grim and alarming reading… Piketty’s book provides a valuable explanatory context for America’s economic woes… Piketty gives us the most important work of economics since John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory . It is the most important study of inequality in over fifty years… Although the contours of Piketty ’s history confirm what economic historians already know, his anatomizing of the 1 percent’s fortunes over centuries is a revelation. Magnificent…Even though it is a work more concerned with the past 200 years, it’s no coincidence that the full title of Piketty ’s book is Capital in the Twenty-First Century . [ Piketty ] is just about to emerge as the most important thinker of his generation…He makes his case in a clear and rigorous manner that debunks everything that capitalists believe about the ethical status of making money…He demonstrates that there is no reason to believe that capitalism can ever solve the problem of inequality, which he insists is getting worse rather than better. This is why his book has crossed over into the mainstream--it says what many people have already been thinking…Unlike many economists he insists that economic thinking cannot be separated from history or politics…As poverty increases across the globe, everyone is being forced to listen to Piketty with great attention. Piketty has researched data over more than a century in order to derive his understanding of the dynamics of modern capitalism. Magisterial… Piketty ’s Capital feels very much like a Category 4 hurricane that hasn’t yet made landfall…Piketty draws on a vast store of historical data to argue that the broad dissemination of wealth that occurred during the decades following World War I was not, as economists then mistakenly believed, a natural state of capitalist equilibrium, but rather a halcyon interval between Belle Époque inequality and the rising inequality of our own era…Piketty’s most provocative argument is that the discrepancy between the high returns to capital and much more modest overall economic growth--briefly annulled during the mid-century--ensures that the gulf between the rich (who profit from capital investments) and the middle class (who depend chiefly on income from labor) will only continue to grow…The best reason to raise tax rates is not to punish the rich, of course, but to raise the revenue which the United States needs to invest in infrastructure and research, not to mention to pay for Social Security and health care. Defies left and right orthodoxy by arguing that worsening inequality is an inevitable outcome of free market capitalism…[It] suggests that traditional liberal government policies on spending, taxation and regulation will fail to diminish inequality…Without what [ Piketty ] acknowledges is a politically unrealistic global wealth tax, he sees the United States and the developed world on a path toward a degree of inequality that will reach levels likely to cause severe social disruption. If already existing agglomerations of wealth tend to grow faster than incomes from work, it is likely that the role of inherited wealth in society will increase relative to that of recently earned and therefore more merit-based fortunes…The arithmetic suggests that the concentration of wealth and its ability to grow will favor an increasing weight of inheritance as compared with talent…If the ownership of wealth in fact becomes even more concentrated during the rest of the twenty-first century, the outlook is pretty bleak unless you have a taste for oligarchy…Wouldn’t it be interesting if the United States were to become the land of the free, the home of the brave, and the last refuge of increasing inequality at the top (and perhaps also at the bottom)? The blockbuster economics book of the season, Thomas Piketty ’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century , argues that the great equalizing decades following World War II, which brought on the rise of the middle class in the United States, were but a historical anomaly. Anyone remotely interested in economics needs to read Thomas Piketty ’s Capital in the 21st Century . In its magisterial sweep and ambition, Piketty ’s latest work, Capital in the Twenty-First Century , is clearly modeled after Marx’s Das Kapital . And where Marx foresaw capitalism’s collapse leading to a utopian proletariat paradise, Piketty sees a future of slow growth and Gilded Age disparities in which the wealthy--owners of capital--capture a steadily larger share of global wealth and income…Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an intellectual tour de force, a triumph of economic history over the theoretical, mathematical modeling that has come to dominate the economics profession in recent years. Piketty offers a timely and well-reasoned reminder that there is nothing inevitable about the dominance of human capital over financial capital, and that there is inherent in the dynamics of capitalism a natural and destabilizing tendency toward inequality of income, wealth and opportunity. This mountain of data allows Piketty to tell a simple and compelling story…The database on which the book is built is formidable, and it is difficult to dispute his call for a new perspective on the modern economic era, whether or not one agrees with his policy recommendations… We are all used to sneering at communism because of its manifest failure to deliver the sustained rates of growth managed by market economies. Piketty wants to return his field to what the 19th century called ‘political economy’: a discipline about power, justice, and--also, but not first--wealth…[Piketty spoils] the longstanding conventional wisdom, supported by economics Nobel winners like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, plus lots of less controversial characters, that capitalism is democracy’s best friend…It shows a world getting radically more unequal, the return of hereditary wealth, and--at least in the U.S.--an economy so distorted that much of what happens at the very top can be fairly described as class-based looting. Magisterial… Piketty provides a sweeping, data-driven narrative about inequality trends in the United States and other Western economies over the past century or more, identifies a worrisome increase in income and wealth concentration in a small percentage of the population since 1980, and warns that this trend won’t likely correct itself…Piketty is not optimistic that the forces of greater income and wealth inequality will abate on their own, but he is not an economic determinist. Piketty ’s new book is an important contribution to understanding what we need to do to produce more growth, wider economic opportunity and greater social stability. The book has made everyone with a stake in capitalism sit up and take notice…[ Piketty ’s] analysis should challenge Americans to rethink our notions of wealth and poverty and whether any semblance of ‘equal opportunity’ actually exists…Piketty has made an important contribution. Capital in the Twenty-First Century is written in the tradition of great economic texts… Piketty and his colleagues have spent recent years putting together a World Top Incomes Database, their detailed investigation into income in countries around the globe, spanning several decades…Informed by this historical, cross-country data, Piketty evaluates--and rejects--a number of generally accepted conclusions in economic thought, while being careful to note the limitations of inevitably “imperfect and incomplete” sources. The main finding of his investigation is that capital still matters…This book is significant for its findings, as well as for how Piketty arrives at them. When it comes to economics…you need to get yourself a hold of Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty …Piketty’s study will have readers plotting capital’s downfall because what it shows is that the growing inequalities we are seeing between the haves and have nots are endemic to the system. Piketty , whose previous work we are indebted to for providing statistical verification that the top 1 percent of the population possesses a outsize percentage of wealth, has written a magisterial book about the ever-increasing inequality. Piketty 's magnum opus…But unlike many other authors of tracts from the ‘dismal science,’ this distinguished French economist has rendered an eminently readable account of the history and dynamics of capitalism and inequality…A lucid tale of why inequality in the world is increasing, and what we should be doing about it. The right leaning crowd may be dismayed with his prescriptions of stiff global wealth taxes, but neither leftists nor rightists can dispute the data that he presents…According to Piketty, the only real corrective to capital’s concentration is a global capital tax (because it is freely globally mobile), and a stiff inheritance tax. Piketty has looked at centuries of tax archives to formulate a theory of capitalism that is evidence-based and rigorously researched, but also attempts to answer the most basic questions in economic theory. Much of the debate over inequality in recent years is the result of the work of Thomas Piketty and his fellow researchers…This book contains important lessons for economists. Over the last decade or so, economist Thomas Piketty has made his name central to serious discussions of inequality…Piketty expands upon his empirical work of the last 10 years, while also setting forth a political theory of inequality. If Piketty is right, there are big political implications, and the beauty of the book is that he never refrains from drawing them…The book’s terms and explanations are utterly simple; with a myriad of historical data, Piketty reduces the story of capitalism to a clear narrative arc. Piketty’s Capital , unlike Marx’s Capital , contains solutions possible on the terrain of capitalism itself. The big questions that concerned Mill, Marx and Smith are now rearing their heads afresh… Thomas Piketty-- who spent long years, during which the mainstream neglected inequality, mapping the distribution of income--is making waves with Capital in the Twenty-First Century . [ Capital in the Twenty-First Century ] has jolted the right, who are scrabbling around for an answer to its main message: rising inequality is killing capitalism…It is a big book in every sense of the word, using empirical evidence from 30 countries to describe how capitalism has evolved over the past 300 years and is now reverting to what Piketty calls the Downton Abbey world of a century ago. Where much modern writing about economics is cloaked in impenetrable jargon, Piketty is not afraid to draw on literature and popular culture to make his points…Piketty’s book seems to explain the brutal world of the Great Recession and its aftermath rather better than trickle-down economics…It is rare for economics books to fly off the shelves. Thomas Piketty ’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century shares its title with Marx’s work but its argumentative verve with Mill’s, and it has been a runaway bestseller in the United States. Piketty’s economics is ‘data driven,’ while Marx was short of useful data, did not make good use of what data he had and generalized wildly from a few exceptional cases of capital-intensive industries…The book is a terrific achievement. Not since John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971 has a work of political theory been as rapturously received on the left as Thomas Piketty ’s Capital in the 21st Century …In this supposedly superficial and anti-intellectual age, his 690-page treatise on inequality, rich in empirical research, has resonated because it speaks to one of the central anxieties of our time: that society is becoming ever more fragmented as the very rich pull away from the rest. As Piketty elegantly demonstrates, as long as the rate of return on what he calls capital continues to exceed the growth rate of the economy (as it has done since the 1970s), inequality will widen to levels unknown since the Victorian era. The strength of Piketty’s book is his close attention to the different sources of inequality, the massive documentation underpinning his history and conclusions, and his impressive culls from sociology and literature, which exhibit the richness of ‘political economy’ compared to its thin mathematical successor that has attained such prominence…Piketty’s book is a timely intervention in the current debate about inequality and its causes. Thomas Piketty …has written a 700 page book on inequality which has achieved something few would have thought possible. To read the tidal wave of reviews by economics professors and others across the world is to get a sense of the impact that Piketty’s conclusions are having: that inequality is even more extreme than most experts thought, is worse than at any time since the 19th century and is set to reach nightmare proportions in the years ahead. Drawing on hundreds of years of economic data (some of which has only recently become available to researchers) Piketty reaches a simple but disturbing conclusion: In the long run, the return on capital tends to be greater than the growth rate of the economies in which that capital is located. What this means is that in a modern market economy the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the already-rich is as natural as water flowing downhill, and can only be ameliorated by powerful political intervention, in the form of wealth redistribution via taxes, and to a lesser extent laws that systematically protect labor from capital…Readers can already guess the dire conclusion that flows from combining Piketty’s theory with the plausible assumption that unregulated wealth leads to plutocracy: If the only way to avoid plutocracy would be to employ political processes that the plutocrats themselves will eventually buy lock, stock and barrel, then the only way to avoid being ruled by the Lords of Capital is to become one of them. [ Piketty ] has been perhaps the most important thinker on inequality of the past decade or so… With his book, he’s handed liberals a coherent framework that justifies the discomfort that they probably already felt about the wealth gap… Capital will change the political conversation in a more subtle way as well, by focusing it on wealth, not income… Whether or not Piketty’s grand unified theory is exactly correct, he’s moving the popular conversation in the right direction. Basically, Piketty has finally put to death, with data, the fallacies of trickle down economics and the Laffer curve, as well as the increasingly fantastical notion that we can all just bootstrap our way to the Forbes 400 list… We can only hope that the politicians crafting today’s economic programs will take this book to heart. In Capital in the Twenty-first Century , Piketty sums up his research, tracing the history and pattern of economic inequality across a number of countries from the eighteenth century to the present, analyzing its causes, and evaluating some policy fixes. Clearly written, ambitious in scope, rooted in economics but drawing on insights from related fields like history and sociology, Piketty’s Capital resembles nothing so much as an old-fashioned work of political economy by the likes of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, or John Maynard Keynes. His original and rigorously well-documented insights into the deep structures of capitalism show us how the dynamics of capital accumulation have played out historically over the past three centuries, and how they’re likely to develop in the century to come… America’s twenty-first-century inequality crisis is, if anything, even more daunting and complex than the one we experienced a century ago. Thomas Piketty ’s new book, Capital in the 21st Century, painstakingly details the dynamics of wealth and income inequality throughout the last two centuries, and offers a somewhat grim picture of the future of economic inequality. Indeed, Piketty argues that it is a feature of capitalism itself―unless governments take action to rein in capitalism’s excesses… But the value of Piketty’s work is that it shows that capitalism’s postwar heyday―in which incomes at the bottom and the top actually converged ―was a historical anomaly. Thomas Piketty ’s magisterial study of the structure of capitalism since the 18th century, Capital in the 21st Century , is such a book… As leaders from Pope Francis to Barack Obama have proclaimed, growing inequality is the defining issue of our time. Piketty ends his book with a ringing call for the global taxation of capital. Reading Thomas Piketty ’s famous book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, after all the fuss about it, is a bit of a shock. It’s both much more radical and much less radical than its reputation…I was anticipating a left-wing rant, but Piketty’s tone is modest and polite--not at all what you expect from a rock-star French intellectual…Piketty and his book remind me of my favorite economist, the 19th-century American Henry George, and his best-selling book, Progress and Poverty (1879). Capital in the Twenty-First Century might be more aptly titled Inequality in the Twenty-First Century… Piketty is relentless in his indictment of inequality…Piketty assembles a mountain of numbers and tables to demonstrate that economic inequality is intensifying; that the wealthier are wealthier; and that the rich own more…Piketty hits bullseye after bullseye about the exacerbating inequalities that disfigure society--especially American society…For [those] who suffer from the relentless blather about why the minimum wage cannot be raised; why ‘job creators’ cannot be taxed; and why American society remains the most open in the world, Piketty is what the doctor ordered. Piketty is concerned with the dynamics of income and wealth since the eighteenth century to draw lessons for the century ahead. Piketty’s overall analysis and conclusions cannot be waved away by those who feel threatened by the book’s analysis and policy recommendations…In addition to uncovering [some] fundamental contradictions of capitalism and documenting the ensuing inequality in great detail, Piketty’s book contains a large number of less central, but nevertheless very arresting insights and findings…Very importantly, Piketty goes beyond uncovering the dynamics of capitalism and the ensuing inequalities and goes on to suggest policy measures to arrest/reverse them. As befits a book of such size, Capital is broad-ranging, both historically and geographically…This impressive book contains the odd equation and chart that might not appeal to the general reader, but I hope this work will not go the way of A Brief History of Time-- a book more talked about than read. Riveting…[ Piketty ] embodies a model of engaged and sophisticated public debate, the sort of which politicians can only dream…One of Piketty’s main messages is that the structures of inequality societies choose to live with are the results of political choices, not natural or immutable economic tendencies, and that to pretend otherwise is an ‘ideological’ fiction…Capital inequality has dispossessed us of our ‘democratic sovereignty,’ and that’s something we should all really worry about… His book is as much a story about the limits of modern democratic politics as it is about the structures of inequality…When Piketty’s insights are eventually fused into new histories of economic and political thinking about global competition from the French Revolution to the present, the results will be...electrifying, particularly when it comes to revisiting the political and economic ideas of the global wars of the first half of the twentieth century…[This book] will certainly also shake the foundations of many university courses in political philosophy. Piketty darkly hints that the last time this happened, the world tore itself to pieces, twice, in an orgy of destruction that left millions dead and whole nations in ruin…It’s a rare thing to see economists, especially pro-capitalist economists, praising taxation itself, but Piketty--careful, unemotional Piketty--dares…Besides, he says, the thing every red-blooded entrepreneur wants to see is people getting rich by their wits and deeds, not by the birthright of kings…Piketty wants desperately to salvage captalism, even if that means proposing something that every capitalist will hate: a global wealth tax. The impact of the book will be [deep] and long lasting… Piketty has elevated many issues to a higher level by making the study of inequality as one of political economy embedded in history, data and configuration of socio-political groups… This book has all the makings of a classic. A book of such magisterial sweep… Piketty deserves huge credit for kickstarting a debate about inequality and illuminating the distribution of income and wealth. Using sophisticated computer modeling and analyses, the professor from the Paris School of Economics debunks a long-held assumption--that income from wages will tend to grow at roughly the same rate as wealth--and instead makes a compelling case that, over time, the apparatus of capitalism grows wealth faster than wages. Capital in the Twenty-First Century convinces because Piketty supports his arguments about inequality with two innovative forms of evidence largely neglected by his predecessors on both the left and the right. The first is an unprecedented trove of historical economic data, which Piketty uses to demonstrate increasing inequality due to the long-term tendency of returns on capital to outpace economic growth. Many who were content to ignore the warnings of [David] Harvey and company that our economic system will produce unsustainable levels of inequity find that they cannot ignore Piketty’s…His book challenges both mainstream economists’ faith in untested mathematical models, as well as radicals’ resistance to subjecting Marx’s economic theory to rigorous testing. New research from the Fed shows incomes of the richest Americans are bouncing back strongly after the crisis while average incomes have fallen…In essence, French economist Thomas Piketty ’s contention that wealth breeds wealth--and that increasing inequality is part of capitalism’s inherent structure, rather than an occasional condition--looks largely correct, at least since the early 1990s. Piketty demonstrates in terrifying detail, with painstaking statistical research, that free-market capitalism, in the absence of major state redistribution, produces profound economic inequalities. When the rate of return on capital exceeds the growth rate (which [ Piketty ] says is what happened until the beginning of the 20th century and is likely to happen again as growth slows), then the money that rich people make from their wealth piles up while wages rise more slowly if at all. This past July, I felt compelled to read Thomas Piketty ’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century after reading several reviews and hearing about it from friends. [A] sweeping study of wealth in the modern world… Piketty makes his case with three centuries’ worth of economic data from around the world organized in a trove of detailed but lucid tables and graphs. He still uses formal economic theory but regards economics as a sub-discipline of social science, alongside history, sociology, anthropology and political science and prefers to characterize his work as political economy rather than economic science. Thomas Piketty ’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century delivered a well placed kick up the backside to complacent mainstream economics. The book is important, first and foremost, because it brings together a vast trove of research by Piketty and others on the evolution of income and wealth over two centuries. Thomas Piketty ’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century shows how privateers use privatization, debt creation and capital inflation as a mechanism for rent extraction, with catastrophic consequences for public services. Thomas Piketty ’s Capital in the 21st Century is arguably the most important popular economics book in recent memory. Piketty ’s great achievement, and one possible reason for the enthusiastic reception of his book, is his effective empirical demonstration of a fact long denied by neoclassical economics and its champions throughout the world: markets, when left to their own devices, do not provide individuals with rewards that are proportional to their efforts and contributions towards producing goods and services, nor do they ensure the most optimal distribution of those goods and services. Instead, they tend to concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands, giving rise to what Piketty calls a system of ‘patrimonial’ capitalism in which a few major players derive disproportionate benefit simply by virtue of possessing high amounts of capital… As a work of economic history, and a source of data, it effectively demolishes mainstream myths about the ability of markets to combat inequality, reward effort and innovation, and deliver the greatest amount of good to the greatest number of people.
Reviews
"This is a classic - truly a life changer in the way I now think about capital."
"Amazing work here, changed the way I think about inequality and how to approach it."
"I am learning so much from this book."
"Important book, even if long and complex."
"Good info comparing the US to Europe on upward mobility and politics as the primary cause of our inequality."
"While I do not necessarily agree with all of its conclusion, I found it Best discussion in at least 30 years on how capital functions in modern economies particualry for non economists."
"Good book but the same could have been said in half the words."
"Only economics course I've ever taken was Econ 100 so I found this book both informative and fascinating."
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Best Economics Commercial Policy

Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump
Immediately upon publication, Globalization and Its Discontents became a touchstone in the globalization debate by demonstrating how the International Monetary Fund, other major institutions like the World Bank, and global trade agreements have often harmed the developing nations they are supposedly helping. His book clearly explains the functions and powers of the main institutions that govern globalization--the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization--along with the ramifications, both good and bad, of their policies. In recent years, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization have promoted world financial stability, prosperity and free trade, yet Stiglitz wonders why so many revile these organizations' programs to the point of rioting in the streets. Stiglitz shares inside information from cabinet meetings when he served on Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and from his years as chief economist at the World Bank, divulging debates in Washington's conference rooms, naming names and raising his eyebrows at those who refuse to question certain IMF policies' repeated shortcomings.
Reviews
"Still, I found his coverage and insights into events that now seem like ancient history, that is, the transition of Russia from communism to (mafia) capitalism, and the East Asian financial crisis of the late `90's to be fascinating. ), and when the government devalued, after the "Big Boys" got their money out at very favorable rates, then the poor are saddled with the obligation to pay off the loan. It is enough to give capitalism a bad name (and it has in such countries)! Another key point that the author makes concerns Adam Smith, who started the wonderful "invisible hand" of the marketplace business, but also clearly identified market failures. Numerous times he is straightforward in his critique, such as: "The billions of dollars in Cayman Islands and other such centers are not there because those islands provide better banking services that Wall Street, London or Frankfurt; they are there because the secrecy allows them to engage in tax evasion, money laundering, and other nefarious activities. Only after September 11 was it recognized that among those other nefarious activities was financing of terrorism." Numerous redundancies, numerous inane reminders that farmers need to buy seeds, and tautologies like the following: "A real and effective banking system requires strong banking regulation.""
"This should be considered a companion book of a trilogy to those wishing to learn from highly educated, directly-experienced and politically objective experts - those who have "been there, done that" - who reveal to us the inner workings of world politics and why it is so ineffective and counter-productive the way it is currently being managed. Incredible as his story is, it also dovetails precisely with what these other authors - a Nobel prize winner, a counsellor to the Secretary of commerce and special economic envoy to Japan, and a New York Times journalist- have consistently and convincingly presented as the same story and delivered as a remarkably similar conclusion from their different perspectives."
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Best History of Greece

Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment
He consults and quarrels with Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Christine Lagarde, the economists Larry Summers and Jeffrey Sachs, and others, as he struggles to resolve Greece’s debt crisis without resorting to punishing austerity measures. "Timely, fascinating and important" -- Evaggelos Vallianatos, Huffington Post. "Varoufakis’s account has the narrative drive of a rollicking detective novel .... very good, very readable, and ought to be on all the important “notable books of the year” lists." An extraordinary account of low cunning at the heart of Greece's 2015 financial bailout . [Varoufakis is] a motorcycling, leather jacketed former academic and self-styled rebel who took pleasure in winding up the besuited political class . ―John Kampfner, The Guardian " Adults in the Room is a book that anyone interested in modern European politics should read. It is a devastating indictment of [the] current state of Europe and a fascinating inside account of the logic of reformist politics and its limits and why it keeps going anyway . He delivers a truly shocking anatomy of an apparatus bent on perpetuating its own bad logic and excluding alternatives." ―Adam Tooze, Shelby Cullom Davis Chair of History and Director of the European Institute at Columbia University, and author of The Deluge. Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and the cofounder of an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, that is campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe. After teaching for many years in the United States, Britain, and Australia, he is currently a professor of economics at the University of Athens.
Reviews
"It is a work that people will turn to when they try to understand what on earth happened during our time: a riveting, compelling history of a critical act in the self-inflicted decay of European civilisation. On its own this was not significant, but as he explains in the book, it would in turn have triggered a cascade of defaults that would have undone Mario Dragi's program of Quantitative Easing. If he had, he could have forced the Troika to work with Greece on a sensible program, rather than watch them impose one which will lead to Greece becoming Europe's Somalia."
"Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (boy, does that title ever feel inadequate given the impact he had and has!). Varoufakis is not unkind or unsympathetic to him - which should come as a big surprise to anyone who bought into the mainstream media reporting of the time, which often presented the 2015 negotiations as a cock fight between Varoufakis and Schäuble. But the mainstream media were/are not uninvolved in the Greek crisis, they have a role to play, too, in a system that, like the Soviet Union in the late 80s, will deny basic economic and political truths and pretend that all is well until the very moment of its collapse."
"The "I know I'm wrong but don't you dare say so" attitude, so forcefully portrayed and so minutely detailed in this book, is one of the reasons why larger and larger numbers of Europeans vote against what they regard as a lying, rotten, despotic establishment."
"It is a MUST READ to understand politics in Europe in the past ten years."
"A rare look at politics on a personal level, this book helps us outsiders see how things happen."
"Very well written book which explains a lot about what has happened to Greece and why."
"Excellent case of Truth telling!"
"Wonderful, very informational writing."
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Best Global Marketing

The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From The Crowd
In The 1-Page Marketing Plan, serial entrepreneur and rebellious marketer Allan Dib reveals a marketing implementation breakthrough that makes creating a marketing plan simple and fast. With it you'll be able to map out your own sophisticated marketing plan and go from zero to marketing hero. Whether you're just starting out or are an experienced entrepreneur, The 1-Page Marketing Plan is the easiest and fastest way to create a marketing plan that will propel your business growth. It gives the small and medium sized business the ability to dominate their market. It went from startup to four years later being named by Business Review Weekly (BRW) as one of Australia's fastest growing companies - earning a spot in the coveted BRW Fast 100 list. Allan is passionate about helping businesses find new and innovative ways to leverage technology and marketing to facilitate rapid business growth.
Reviews
"I have read a lot of marketing books and remained hopeful when I purchased this one that perhaps I would find a book worth reading. My MBA marketing courses didn't teach me as clearly as this book did."
"I love the way Allan writes, no hype, to the point, with some humor thrown in."
"Highly recommended for anyone who is looking to front their business and stay relevant in today's business environment."
"I wish this book was available 10 years ago so that I didn't have to go through a lot of trial and error."
"I am a huge fan of great books, and this one is definitely a great one!"
"I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is struggling to put a marketing plan in place for their brick and mortar or online business."
"This book delivers what it promises in a grat way."
"Great book."
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Best Foreign Exchange

A Complete Guide To Volume Price Analysis
I make no bones about the fact that I believe I was lucky in starting my own trading journey using volume. However, combine these two forces together, and the result is a powerful analytical approach to forecasting market direction. All they had was the ticker tape, from which they read the price, and the number of shares traded. In other words, Volume Price Analysis (VPA), short and simple. It is not revolutionary, or innovative, but just simple sound common sense, combined with logic. Hi - my journey into the financial markets was prompted by a desire to make sense of the jargon filled replies I usually received when asking any financial adviser, the simplest of questions. This prompted my desire to learn, and since then I have been involved in every aspect of trading and investing for over seventeen years. To explain complex subjects and concepts surrounding the financial markets, in a clear and simple way.
Reviews
"This narrative enhances Richard Ney's work of forty years ago."
"I feel the book worth reading especially on the sections that describing specialists' behaviors."
"I feel that the format does a great job of teaching how to use specific candle stick patterns without getting bogged down into additional confusing and un-necessary information. Most authors would have busted this information up into three or four separate books and charged a lot more."
"The book explains the basics of candlestick along with the influence of volume to provide clues on where the market may be headed next. I then thought this was great for displaying large charts to actually find out their size would fit in a much smaller standard book. I would give a 3 stars for that because it is a crucial part of the book where everything is put together and the chart quality makes it hard to follow."
"Many traders dont use volumen as a tool in reading charts, Anna explains how to use this excelent indicator to confirm the market movements."
"Excellent presentation of using and interpreting volume in our technical analysis."
"VPA trading is a remarkable and refreshing guide that highlights the so evident and necessary analysis that is missing in nearly all trading principles books !"
"As I am looking for a methodology/strategy to become consistency on my trading journey, lucky that I have found this book from Anna Coulling!!!"
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Best Exports & Imports

Private Label Empire: Build a Brand - Launch on Amazon FBA - The Perfect Home-Based Business to earn $1000 to $20000 per Month (Amazon FBA, Amazon FBA ... Physical Products, Private Label, FBA)
PRIVATE LABEL EMPIRE will give you all the information required to help you on your way to building a HUGE business. Tags: Amazon Private Label FBA, FBA, Private Label FBA, Amazon FBA, Amazon FBA Secrets, Sell on Amazon, Physical Products, Private Label, FBA, Private Label, Home-Based Business, Amazing Selling Machine, Fufillment by Amazon, Private Label FBA, Selling on Amazon.
Reviews
"I was thinking about paying for the ASM course, but this book is a summary of their steps."
"Excellent point made in this book that are shaping my thinking and helping me get to the next level."
"This was a quick read very informative with specific actionable information and insight."
"Learn how to make extra money in your spare time."
"Short and to the point."
"I thought this was a great ebook."
"Good read I found the book details on exact steps."
"A well researched book on how to start private label business."
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