5 comments about Day Trading the Currency Market: Technical and Fundamental Strategies To Profit from Market Swings (Wiley Trading).

1. In my search for good FX trading books, I found no good book yet, and this book is no exception. This book is poorly written, has no consistent flow, and it does not lead the reader anywhere. Just few areas I found somewhat interesting like correlation between pairs, and volatility as a function of time of the day, and that is why I gave it a rating of 2. Otherwise, 1 will be enough. Someday someone may write a good FX trading book that really respects the intelligence of the reader. Not all FX retail traders are losers!



2. I just finished reading this book and after reading more than a dozen of books on forex and day trading I must say the book is a waste of money. Most of the topics in the book are covered superficially and the few trading strategies presented are poorly documented and contain errors.



3. I found that this book was great for somebody getting into Forex Trading from day trading with equities. However, I would not suggest this book for beginners. I loved the history of Forex, and the book was great in terms of advice although she does often use terminology with no explanation of what it is e.g. nonfarm payrolls. If you want a book that moves slowly, this is also not a good choice. Do read this book with a good forex dictionary or access to the internet as you will need to look stuff up. Overall I liked this book alot as it was my first Forex book but I have read tons of books on stock and options trading. Best part is, that with the bear market now Forex trading is a much better option.



4. This book was the first one I purchased about currency trading.
   In short, this is the most useless book I've ever read. It does not teach the reader anything on this subject. 5% of useful info that's in the book one can grab from the web. Really, it's just a waste of money. And the price for this book is just outrageous. I'm planning to donate mine to the local library.



5. There seems to be a lot of forex books out there. When some people want to get rich on forex others exploit the opportunity by selling books the traders. This is such a book.
   
   The book deals with both technical and fundamental analysis. Both parts are covered on a very superficial level. That is what happens if everything is included in one fairly slim book.
   
   The book contains some bits of information, because the author seems to be knowledgable. But the overall impression is not very strong. This might be a decent book if you knew absolutely nothing about forex. But then again, with the Internet around you don't need a book like this one.

5 comments about Keeping the Books: Basic Recordkeeping and Accounting for the Successful Small Business (Keeping the Books).

1. This is an excellent book that teaches you to chart: where you would like to go on your business journey; where you are; and what you need to do to adjust your journey towards your profit goals.
   
   Long before reading this book, I had asked an Accountant the difference between fixed and variable assets - he really didn't answer my question. In fact, he seemed to be annoyed that I would ask such a question.
   
   But this book gives the answer in a very succinct description, with supporting information.
   
   Above all, this book walks the small business owner through:
   1. Record Keeping;
   2. Business Accounting;
   3. General Ledgers;
   4. Financial Statements; and,
   5. Taxes.
   
   And this is definitely a resource to keep referring to, until you have mastered the process of growing profit.



2. This is one of my two favorite accounting books for small business owners. The other is "Small Business Accounting Simplified" by Daniel Sitarz. These books present a lot of the same information, but they have slightly different perspectives on small business accounting and I think both viewpoints are useful and complimentary. Establishing your accounting system is serious business, so I would consider purchasing both. It's a small investment considering how important and time consuming this area could be for small business.
   
   With that said, this book will help you to understand the basics of accounting and the advantages and disadvantages of various methods of keeping your books. It is very streamlined, practical and will help you to get your books together quickly using the easiest system that is appropriate for your business.
   
   This is a very non-intimidating book and first time business owners will really like it. The other book I recommended above by Sitarz is more involved and may be something you want to get down the road. If you are a very small business, this book may have all you need and you may appreciate that it lacks some detail that might be unnecessary.
   
   Both books that I mention are adequate to get a small business up and running. However, if you are not a numbers person by nature or have an aversion to accounting, this might be the best place to start. As part of my livelihood I do small business consulting and this title and the one I mentioned in the first paragraph are the two books I most often recommend for a new small business.



3. This book has been a great guide tool.
   Helps you understand what you should have for your business even if you have no accounting experience. Very step by step and leads you in the right direction to follow up and increase knowledge.



4. This book is good for the basics in bookkeeping. The blank sample forms were useful for me.



5. Great resource and training tool for bookkeepers. Easy to understand and covers a wide range of information that is very useful for bookkeepers and accountants.

5 comments about In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington.

1. Robert Rubin traces his climb up the ladder in Wall Street and Washington DC and explains his role in significant national crises. He describes how he makes tough decisions after pondering the probabilities in the face of bewildering uncertainties. On page 48 he remebers how his grandfather was wiped out by the Florida land bust in the 1920s. A memory like that you would think would be barrier against complacency creeping in. But maybe not, unless there is another expalanation for why Citigroup put so much money into subprimes, while he was there in a position of power, and thus make it possible for the government of Abu Dhabai to come to the rescue and gain influence in such an important American Bank (what about national security?). As a public service Robert Rubin should generated a second edition of this book to bring to light the Tough Choices involved in betting those massive amounts on subprimes.
   
   The author reveals that he leans in the direction of anti-anti-big-government (see page 160). He places more faith in government control than the power of the "invisible hand". Unlike Alan Greenspan's book "The Age of Turbulence" this book does not contain a satisfying broad vision of our capitalistic economic system.



2. An excellent account of the behind the scenes finance world at the Clinton White house but the author who worked there. he reveals all the comings and goings of 'maing things work' from a fiduciary standpoint. Good book



3. The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New WorldOn Money and Markets: A Wall Street Memoir
   
   Robert Rubin's book, "In an Uncertain World," is excellent reading for individuals managing their own pensions and other financial assets. This book, Alan Greenspan's book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," and Henry Kaufman's book, "On Money and Markets," certainly rank among the best in the last few years regarding insight into how the global economies work and interact. This book also addresses insight into properly assessing global risk in general and assessing how to consider risk in marking to market for various fixed income securities.
   
   Rubin's experience and insight in finance at Goldman Sachs and as U. S. Secretary of the Treasury is difficult to match by most financial experts.
   
   All persons managing money would find their time well spent reading, marking, and frequently referring to this excellent and thought provoking book.



4. This book is by former President Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin. Robert Rubin, was previous to his role at Treasury, co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, a position he rose to through the ranks over about twenty years. His specialty was risk arbitrage, involving multimillion decision making on placing bets or investments on whether or not a merger or acquisition would ultimately go through (or close) or not.
   
   No matter what you think of President Clinton or his administration. Robert Rubin was a key decision maker in the economic sphere. He participated and directed policmaking in the Asian financial crisis and financial crisis in Latin America, etc.
   
   The book is about his views on decisionmaking and the process of policymaking and is excellent. He discusses his view about "optionality" and the complexity of decisionmaking under uncertainty.
   
   The book is excellent and I highly recommend it if you are interested in decisionmaking, policmaking, economic policy, Wall Street, and leadership.



5. Now that the emperor has no clothes this will be a useful book for understanding the hubris of men like Rubin that led directly to the Panic of 2008. Self-serving from front to back.

3 comments about Standard And Poor's Fundamentals of Corporate Credit Analysis.

1. This book is long overdue. It typically takes a credit or corporate banking professional several years and several levels (analyst, senior analyst, associate/assistant vice president, and finally, vice president) to piece together the knowledge and analytical skills presented within this wonderful book. The book offers a comprehensive foundation in business, financial, and strategic analysis (among several other related topics) in a very easily digested and understood manner. I guess my only complaint is that I didn't have the opportunity to write it myself!! I would advise every credit or relationship management team leader to purchase this book for their entire team -- particularly for their analysts and associates (although... on second thought, perhaps everyone on the team should have a copy in their desk drawer.) Bottom line: Highly-recommended. AAA+++



2. I had the pleasure of working with one of the authors 15 years ago. But don't let that sway you. I truly appreciate the scope and effort put into this book. We will use it as an outline for how our analysts should approach analyzing a credit. Chapter 3 alone is worth the price of admission as the authors list the elusive "qualitative" factors that go into a credit rating, beyond what the ratios tell you it should be. While the book barely scratches the surface of certain analytical methods (the Merton Model got 1/2 a page), and it is written more for the layman or student, I still learned many things. And I've been in the business 20+ years. The prior reviewer, and many others will say they wished they wrote this book. I will too. I even briefly started my own version recently. But I first turned to S&P's ratings criteria as an outline. As such, the right people wrote this book. The authors fully used the vast resources and data mining of S&P. This certainly feels like a team effort. The telecom analyst wrote a piece on the rapid decline of telecom credits in 2000-2002, and other professionals added real life examples. The book organizes itself in the top down approach to analysis. It starts with sovereign risk, then moves to industry, then company business/competitive risk. It then highlights the ratios to look for, and also gives data on seniority and recovery values for specific levels of debt. It then uses these tools to analyze a fictional company. It ends with case studies that cover M&A, sovereign risk and other topical reviews that act as a real life summary to what you just learned. Highly recommended. Well done.



3. I did not like the book, since being in the industry for more than seven years i felt the book is basic. However it is a must read (Cover to Cover) for those who are in undergraduate in the field of risk management or finance. This books gives the introduction to financial model building. But this intro is so brief that it will be your imagination to make full use of it. However for new commers in this field or interested it is good to give it few hours.

4 comments about Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World without Redemption (Religion and Postmodernism Series).

1. Having read-or having attempted to read-a few of Mark C. Taylor's recent books, I was delighted to discover that this one, "Confidence Games" was both entirely different and more of the same. Where his always lucidly written, often provocative and sometimes esoteric reviews of contemporary science, art, architecture and fashion have often left me grasping for a conclusion, this book, "Confidence Games" delivers-BIG.
   
   If writing about the meaning of it all were a physical sport, I would hazard that this fleet-footed journey from the birth of money to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center is Taylor's marathon: a long, fast ride that covers as much ground as an old school Hollywood epic without the tin-eared dialogue.
   
   Throughout, Taylor deftly summarizes insights from celebrated economic and cultural thinkers of the last several centuries without getting bogged down in the dense foliage of history, all the while reminding readers that what paths may look today like a straight line are almost always a zig zag.
   
   What can you expect to get from this book? For many, it will be a pithy introduction to the incredibly complex financial world we have inherited. Others will likely nod their head as Taylor provides intriguing evidence for the parallels and connections between high finance and high art, God and Mammon, computers and contemporary culture.
   
   Like the best music, this book finds a deep groove early on and smoothly segues from pleasant chords to surprising riffs, never missing a beat even as the drummer gets wicked. This is clearly not summer or beach reading. But, given the often-cited consensus that 9/11 changed everything, a book like "Confidence Games" gives readers an unabashedly pleasurable opportunity to struggle with the very complicated questions that define the world in which we have found ourselves.
   
   Taylor's tenacity in pursuing "the meaning of it all" through the lens of money and markets provides us with the rare opportunity to see the big picture in sharp focus.
   
   Disclosure: Over a decade ago, I was a student of Mr. Taylor's and continue to correspond with the author on current affairs.



2. What gives money its value? Are financial markets truly linked to the "real" world? Professor Mark Taylor, who has been praised as an "awe-inspiring theorist of everything," explores these and related issues in this interdisciplinary book. Taylor attempts to show the links between economics, financial markets, money, postmodernism, complexity theory, media, art and religion. It's quite an audacious task, and although one might debate if he was successful, Taylor takes the reader on a thrilling intellectual journey.
   
   Taylor claims you can't study markets in isolation. Markets are embedded in society, so to fully understand them you must understand politics, culture, science, religion, sociology, and psychology. To do so, Taylor takes us on a tour of not only various academic fields, but also of places from Las Vegas to Times Square. Stops on this tour support his thesis, which is that money and markets are essentially artful confidence games.
   
   For example, he notes that in the 1987 movie "Wall Street," the character Gordon Gekko says "Money...is transferred from one perception to another." Taylor then recounts how Wall Street fueled the public's perceptions of Internet stocks during the late 1990s stock bubble. Financial journalists, stock analysts, traders, advisors, and company officials all promoted fledgling Internet companies with skyrocketing stock prices. Ambitious teenagers talked up the price of small stocks in Internet bulletin boards and then sold them at a profit. The NASDAQ market opened a glitzy new TV studio for business reports in the media saturated & neon-lit Times Square. Using these examples, Taylor makes the point that the financial markets and the media are clearly intertwined, and that just some misplaced trust in them can bring financial markets through a boom & bust cycle.
   
   Taylor also discusses money and how it gets its value. Prior to 1971, the value of the US dollar was backed by gold held by the US Treasury. Generally, a gold standard prevents governments from arbitrarily running the presses to pay debts, which reduces the threat of inflation & boosts investor confidence. But what backs the value of gold? In short, only our collective confidence in it. Gold's value is not intrinsic to the metal; it's purely mental, and based on communal faith and trust. Because of that, going off the gold standard was difficult mental and emotional step for some in 1971.
   
   Taylor also discusses the sociologist Georg Simmel and his work on the philosophy of money. Simmel's view was that economic exchanges are a form of social interaction, albeit interactions that are turned into quantitative, rational, impersonal ones. He thought that the flow of money shows the relationships between people. Thus, money derives its value from to what one can exchange for it in these social interactions, and its value is just socially constructed.
   
   Taylor goes on to discuss multiple views of the economy. He cites Friedrich Hayek's view that the economy is a vast, distributed, complex information processing system, in which prices are used as signals to coordinate peoples' actions. He also discusses modern complexity theory, which views the economy as a dynamic, complex, adaptive system, with self-organized emergent group behavior that transcends any individual person. In both these views, the economic "invisible hand" guides peoples' actions worldwide, and is seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent. This description, Taylor poignantly notes, is very similar to descriptions of God; in fact, Adam Smith's original view of the "invisible hand" was influenced by Calvinism and had God in mind. Thus, God is not dead as some have claimed; he has simply been reborn as the market.
   
   These are just a sampling of topics discussed. Overall, I thought the book had many thought-provoking ideas (& a few bad ones, honestly). It was rich in detail and well researched. But also I thought it could have been structured better to bring out the main points - it was easy to lose the main points amongst the thicket of details about Babbage, Bauhaus and the bond market. Nevertheless, I thought the good outweighed the bad, so I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in viewing financial markets and the economy from a new perspective, that of a humanities professor and cultural critic.



3. This is obviously, from the Title, a very contemporary review (April 27, 2008) of Mark Taylor's "Confidence Games," which was published in the fall of 2004. Since July of 2007, financial markets in the United States are going through the longest and most rattling crisis since the Great Depression, when measured by the extent of the mortgage crisis (10% of the mortgages are "upside down" - with projections of from another 10-20% to follow) and the degree and nature of interventions by the Federal Reserve and central banks in Europe. The collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns in under a week (Wed. March 12th- Monday, March 17th, 2008) was the dramatic punctuation mark upon the shakiness and utter incomprehensibility of the new financial architecture both to the general public and the Beltway elite. It was a run against a major bank, but without the public lining up in the streets for withdrawals. Instead, the run occurred due to loss of confidence by unspecified major players operating in the spectral electronic spaces described so well in Taylor's book - years in advance. We are still waiting, the public and investigating Congress, to find out what really happened.
   
   Today, as the press and public increasingly ask how this could have happened, even "wise men" such as Robert Rubin from the Clinton era "Committee to Save the World" are being questioned for their roles in and understanding of the still unfolding calamity.
   
   This reviewer thinks it is important to credit those who, however far removed from mainstream press consideration, saw the dangers early and clearly in the brave new world of our financial markets, built between 1980 and the late 1990's, the era of de-regulation and free market worship - and idolatry. Now Taylor's book is breathtaking in it's scope and interdisciplinary reach, not easy reading, but given the breadth of what he covers, it deserves a much wider audience.
   
   I direct readers' attention, in light of contemporary events, particularly to Chapter 5, entitled "Specters of Capital," just about 25 pages long, which should be required reading on Wall Street, in Congress, and in the world of journalists, such as they are, especially the ones who question and write about our presidential candidates.
   
   Here is the essense of Taylor's findings on the fruits of decades of "financial engineering," or, as I like to call it, our "new financial architecture."
   
   Page 152: "Contrary to expectation, the strategies and new financial instruments designed to avoid risk often end up creating greater volatility and thus actually increase risk."
   
   Page 166: "Derivative investments are not only highly speculative but are also off-book, i.e., they do not show up on balance sheets. Moreover, derivatives are highly leveraged; in some cases they require little or sometimes even no capital up front. Throughout the 1990's, the derivatives market continued to grow until, in 1998, it had a nominal value of $70 trillion, eight times the annual Gross National Product of the United States." (Note: by 2008, the notional value is in the hundreds of trillions of dollars).
   
   Pages 176-177: "With the attitudinal shifts about borrowing and debt and new government policies encouraging the creation of the new financial products computers and networks make possible, a collateral crisis became unavoidable...With Wall Street leveraged at 25:1 it might have seemed reasonable at least to extend margin rules to derivatives. But policies tended in the opposite direction. In his testimony before Congress in 1995, Alan Greenspan actually proposed completely eliminating all margin requirements....Indeed even the mortgage market changed in the 1990's. In their ongoing effort to make something out of nothing, financial engineers ended up transforming something into nothing; the ground virtually disappeared from beneath the real estate market. The securitization of mortgages through the creation of Mortgage Backed Securities and Collaterilized Mortgage Obligations led to pyramiding schemes in markets that once seemed secure."
   
   On page 178 is a graphic of the Mortgage Market illustrating the layers and distance of investors from the actual real estate mortgages themselves - with collateral being used three times. Taylor, quoting author John Geanakoplos, nails the events of July 2007- to the present right on the head: "'Mortgage pass through securities offer a classical example of pyramiding. Pyramiding naturally gives rise to chain reactions, as a default by Mr. A ripples through, often all the way to D.'" (Page 179).
   
   Just after this quote, Taylor comments: "At this point it becomes difficult to deny that the confidence game has become not only a casino but is actually a house of cards."
   
   I don't think that much more needs to be said about whether our troubles could have been anticipated; they were and very clearly. This review writer knows that it was possible. He gave Taylor's book and warnings central "booking" in his own essay, "Fiscally Responsible, or Ingredients for an Economic Katrina?" The date? February, 2007.
   
   William Neil



4. I am always skeptical of books that try to integrate trends in economics and finance with other disciplines because they tend to be written by experts from the other disciplines with only a facile understanding of economics and finance. The result is that they simply appropriate simplistically and selectively from the complex history of economic events to serve their argument. I was pleased, therefore, to discover right from the introduction of this book that Taylor has made some important and even profound observations on the human condition and its direction in the beginning of the 21st Century. Nonetheless, the book contains significant flaws that, upon reflection, seem unnecessary. Taylor's central argument does not depend on the errors in fact and interpretation that he makes throughout the body of the book.
   
   Taylor is a professor of religion with a deep understanding of philosophy, art history and, naturally, religion. In the mid-1990s he formed an internet-based education company, and in that process developed some real-world experience of modern financial markets. He augments his experience with some thorough study of modern finance and economics, though as becomes clear in the later chapters of the book, finance remains his weakest subject.
   
   Taylor observes that the rapid growth of interconnection throughout the world creates evolving networks that grow in complexity exponentially and unpredictably. In my view, this is the most defining characteristic of our age - not simply because increased complexity makes the world more difficult to understand, predict and navigate, but because the complexity frightens and confuses people, giving rise to fundamentalist movements throughout the world (and George W.'s presidency) as people react against the complexity by trying to force simplistic models onto their world views.
   
   In Confidence Games, Taylor develops this point much more completely. Observing developments in religion, art, physics and economics, Taylor shows how unified or dualistic explanatory models fall short in practice because they never account for the feedback loop that occurs when the object influences the subject, or the effect influences the cause. A straightforward physical example occurs when physicists try to model more than two bodies in motion, only to discover that the reciprocal influences of each body on the others creates highly sensitive nonlinearities that become impossible to model precisely. More to the point of the book, theoretical models of market equilibrium and stock prices do not incorporate the feedback loop of investors influencing each other, which can create unpredictable valuations and extended periods well outside of reasonable ranges for rational valuation.
   
   A better explanation for systems with multiple interrelated participants comes from models of complex adaptive systems, generally used by biologists to understand the behavior of groups of organisms struggling to survive and responding to both endogenous and exogenous influences. This is a consistent theme throughout the book and argued convincingly.
   
   Taylor applies the complex adaptive system model to religion, art and economics to show how each of these disciplines have internally generated feedback loops that influence their respective developments, but also how each discipline influences the others, creating a model that allows us to better understand developments in each of the subjects than we would have by analyzing each independently. For me, this argument is the most enjoyable and profound part of the book. I learned that the concept of the "invisible hand" was first used by Calvin to describe how God influences human affairs. Also fascinating was the drawn out parallels between "value" as it comes to us from either God or money. Parallels between God and gold go back to the origins of money, and the abstraction of money from gold into paper and digital currency in the last century track questions about moral absolutes and the secularization of religion. Taylor observes that "Both religion and financial markets are, after all, confidence games." (p. 122). Otherwise said, the value is a function of the confidence we have in the whatever we are valuing, be it from a religious or economic framework.
   
   Within this argument Taylor raises the question if perhaps the financial markets and market value have supplanted God as the true arbiter of value in modern times. According to market purists and the Efficient Market Hypothesis, markets are omniscient and by their very nature judge the value of almost everything, directly or indirectly. Taylor convincingly shows how art cannot escape market valuation and in modern times, no longer tries to distinguish itself from commercial products. Later in the book Taylor dismisses this question by arguing that market values are rarely in equilibrium, and thus are not omniscient. However, I think this is a subject that could be carried forward profitably (no pun intended).
   
   The massive commercialization of the world, abetted by globalization and the complex networks described in the book, in my view stands in stark contrast to the ambivalent relationship that religion has generally had with money. Until modern history, "value" as it is broadly understood when applied to people or ideas, was primarily the domain of religion. Insular and largely homogeneous societies had relatively static distributions of wealth with the aristocracy seeking to justify their prestige in religious terms. Modern societies, in contrast, are much more heterogeneous and have more dynamic allocations of wealth. Confronted with alternative religious views with differing value judgments, financial value among many societies becomes the universal arbiter of value without, or at least with less, dependence on religious or moral affirmation. In many cases the traditional relationship between money and religion is inverted as evidenced by the rise of mega churches that lead their congregants to believe that their church will help them to become financially successful. For these churches, the value of their religion becomes dependent on financial values whereas the reverse was true historically (think about the divine rights of kings!).
   
   And if financial value is perceived to be the primary universal arbiter of value, hasn't money replaced God as he-she-it was traditionally understood?
   
   I sensed while reading Confidence Games that Taylor saw his argument progressing in this direction, and stepped away from it. If so, that could explain the otherwise disappointing weaknesses in the body of the book.
   
   First, the book was clearly written for an audience knowledgeable in philosophy, religion and art, but with a sketchy understanding of finance and economics - which is not surprising as this was clearly Taylor's starting point when he stepped into the world of finance in the 1990s. Consequently, much of the body of the book is a primer on theories of modern finance, valuation, the loss of the gold standard, the relative values of currencies, the growth of securities markets, derivative markets, and computer driven trading. While I was impressed by the accuracy of Taylor's factual descriptions of these developments, his interpretation of them revealed the shallowness of his understanding. In contrast to his descriptions of the developments in religion and art where he was fully equipped to step back and observe the changes dispassionately and with a long-term view, when Taylor observed recent developments in finance his view was generally politically biased or simply demonstrated an incomplete understanding of the subject.
   
   For example, throughout his discussion of finance he creates an artificial distinction between real value and "spectral" value to differentiate between real value and value that has no foundation. While I wouldn't dispute his point that market valuations can rise irrationally, trying to draw a subjective line at a fair valuation independent of the market is impossible. For Taylor, it appears that any increase in market values since Volker shifted to a monetarist policy in 1979 is spectral in a pejorative sense, which is absurd. What's more, is the value of a machine or agriculture fundamentally different than the value of a service or information? Can't the valuation of both hard and digital assets rise and fall irrationally? It is a strange position for someone who has made a career as an academic and ultimately profited by selling his knowledge and teaching skills through an internet company. Does he think that his "product" is inferior to the produce he buys at the grocery store? His position makes little sense.
   
   Taylor is clearly uncomfortable with the deregulation trend that began in the 1970s and argues that the increase in volatility and financial turbulence is a function of this deregulation. However, he never clearly links the deregulation to the financial crisis, or, to the extent that the link is self-evident, never discusses the motivation for the policy change or the possible benefits that were derived. Sometimes, he simply doesn't understand the facts. For example, he writes:
   
   "The financial economy was roaring but the productive economy was sagging. When the economy entered recession in 1981-82, it became apparent that the very [Federal Reserve and deregulation] policies that were creating record profits in the banking industry were also sowing the seeds of a crisis that began with S&Ls and quickly spread throughout the entire system. In 1980, there were 4002 S&Ls; three years later, 962 had failed. Multiple factors contributed to this collapse. A drop in real estate values in the Southwest created problems for savings and loan associations, which had recently ventured into unfamiliar investment territory. In addition to this, the policies of many lending institutions during boom times returned to haunt them when the economy slowed. With inflation and interest rates rising rapidly, banks encouraged many property owners - especially farmers - to borrow more money to cover operating expenses. The logic was as familiar as it was flawed: borrow now at lower interest rates, pay back later with cheaper money. The only way people could do this was to leverage their land. But as the economy fell into recession and interest rates did not adjust quickly enough, property owners could not meet their debt obligations and defaulted on their loans. At the same time, the value of their land was declining, thereby decreasing the value of their collateral. As matters worsened, debtors' problems quickly became creditors' problems. (p. 139-140)."
   
   This lengthy paragraph is indicative of the weaknesses of Taylor's tutorial on modern financial issues. First, it is not clear at all clear from the passage how the Federal Reserve and deregulation policies contributed to the failure of 962 S&L's. Of the factors cited (drop in real estate values, S&L moving into new investment territory, policies of lending institutions, increasing inflation and interest rates and aggressive lending practices going into a recession) only increasing inflation and interest rates can be arguably tied to the Fed's policies. S&L's did eventually move into new investment territory due to a change in banking regulation, but not until the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982, which preceded the more memorable S&L crisis of 1988-89, not the crisis described by Taylor here.
   
   Secondly, of the "multiple factors" mentioned, the most prominent factor in the collapse of S&L's during the 1981-82 recession is overlooked entirely. When the Federal Reserve restricted the money supply in 1979 to control inflation, not only did it drive up short-term interest rates to record levels, but it also caused long-term interest rates to decline rapidly - a fact never mentioned at all. This interest rate environment (generally referred to as an inverted yield curve) caused S&L's primary liability, savings accounts, to become more expensive, and their primary asset, real estate mortgages, to pay out at lower rates. S&L's that had not prepared for this interest rate risk lost money rapidly and often failed.
   
   Finally, there's no recognition of the long-term benefit of Volker and the Fed's decision to control inflation in 1979 by restricting the growth in the supply of money. Many economists credit this decision with creating the conditions for much of the economic growth that followed for a generation, not just in the U.S., but throughout the world where central banks learned from Volker's success and followed his lead. While many experts may disagree on various points here and there, no mainstream economist, irrespective of political leanings, disputes that Volker's decision was beneficial in aggregate.
   
   Taylor's description of the S&L crisis is not an isolated weakness. Whenever he discusses deregulation, changes in financial institutions or the financial crises of the last 25 years, the logical construction of his arguments are weak, he commits errors in fact or omission, and he fails to present the corresponding benefits of the policies that he links to the argument. While not evidenced in the passage above, sometimes the weakness is simply an inexplicably pejorative comment as on page 172 when he refers to the derivative markets in the mid-1990s as "spinning out of control" because the notional value of the contracts was greater than that of stocks and bonds. Do we know that this is bad? If so, it is not supported elsewhere in the book. And if the derivative markets were spinning out of control in the mid-1990s, then we are still waiting for them to unravel because the notional value of derivative markets today are substantially more than they were then. Still spinning uncontrollably I guess.
   
   But in conclusion, I still believe that this is a very important book that raises important long-term questions that should be taken further. Understanding "value" and the cultural implications of how we ascribe value go to the very heart of the human condition. Taylor's discussion of this issue in Confidence Games lays the groundwork for this topic in a manner that only a deeply insightful and broadly educated person could. Furthermore, the weaknesses of the book do not impact the strength of the larger argument other than by association.

5 comments about Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System (Second Edition).

1. This book is not for the casual reader. However, we do recommend it strongly to anyone interested in understanding the relationship between global politics and international economics. Our consulting staff uses it often when discussing pricing policies and long-range financial planning with experienced and sophisticated exporters. John R. Jagoe, Director, Export Institute.



2. Barry Eichengreen's book Gold Fetters is a classic on the Gold Standard and the Great Depression. The cover of this one claims that it will become a classic on the international monetary system. While it's good, it certainly isn't a classic. It's a great book, but spoilt by its lack of breadth.

   Globalizing Capital is full of details and gives readers a terrific account of how mainstream exchange rates were managed (or weren't) in the period from 1870 to 1997. Each of the four main chapters is self contained (1870-1914, 1918-1944, 1944-1973, 1973-1997).

   Globalizing Capital has two broad threads. Firstly, the only periods in recent history when exchange rates have been stable have occurred when there have been a) high levels of international co-operation or b) periods when governments have been able to choose between high capital mobility and extending democracy. Trying to court both the masses and international traders has often been the trigger for banking and currency crises.

   The second theme is the choice between fixed and floating regimes. The world nowadays is characterised by instantaneous communications and highly mobile capital. Small countries can chose to float and large groups with deep interlinks can form monetary unions, but the rest are faced with increasingly unpleasant choices. As capital becomes more mobile, the choices faced by those left in the middle will become even more perilous.

   While the theoretical line is flawless, the content isn't. Globalizing Capital is extremely G7-centred and gives little if any indication that there was a world outside the North Atlantic until Japan emerged in the 1960s. There is little mention of the history of colonial currency boards prior to Hong Kong in the early 1980s, no attempt to tackle the issues thrown up by recent debt crises in Latin America and nothing on transition countries in Eastern Europe and Asia who dispensed with central planning and multiple exchange rates in the 1990s.




3. This is a great book for readers who like economic history. In just 200 pages, Eichengreen tells the history of the modern international monetary system, from the classical gold standard of the late 19th century to the Asian financial meltdown of the 1990s. He writes clearly and his narrative never gets bogged down in historical arcana or mathematical abstractions. The book is a great example of how complex economics can be made comprehensible to ordinary readers if the writer sticks to the big picture and uses simple language.
   
   Eichengreen's basic idea is that the rise of democracy made it impossible for central banks to continue to pursue exchange rate stability at the expense of all other economic objectives. That doomed the gold standard and made inevitable a world of floating exchange rates, even though that world would have been unthinkable to most central banks and finance ministries prior to the 1960s and 1970s.
   
   I knocked off one star only because Eichengreen is very U.S./Europe-centric. He barely discusses Japan let alone the developing world. Huge events like the rise of OPEC and the Latin debt crisis of the 1980s are hardly mentioned. For that reason, his book never addresses the way that dependence on international capital flows now constrains policymaking in developing countries almost as much as the gold standard ever did.



4. a short and sweet book on the history of monetary system, packed with facts and some founded opinions. he did it again



5. This book has two central premises:
   
   1. It's easier for national governments to keep their currency's exchange rate in check when they don't have to worry about voters.
   
   2. International monetary arrangements have a way of coming unraveled if any of the parties has an incentive to back out of the arrangement; this is an instance of what's called a "coordination problem" (the prisoner's dilemma is the classical coordination problem). Consequently, the only way to keep such arrangements working is to tie nations together, in such a way that any nation's backing out of the arrangement would harm it.
   
   The first point gets us from the start of the gold standard until its end in the early part of the 20th century. (Depending upon how it's phrased, it seems like you could make a case that the gold standard ended in the 30's when Britain left it, or in the 70's when Nixon let the U.S. dollar float. I don't follow the details well enough to explain why you'd pick the one date over the other. More on this ignorance below.) And actually, the start of the gold standard in Britain was a pure historical accident, which takes up one of the more interesting paragraphs I've ever read.
   
   It's an application of Gresham's Law, and involves Sir Isaac Newton. Newton was the warden of the Royal Mint when Britain was on a bimetallic standard; it was using both silver and gold for its currency. A bimetallic standard is tricky to manage, because you have to set the relative price of the coins properly. For instance, suppose that on the open market, an ounce of gold is worth as much as 16 ounces of silver; gold and silver coins should then stand in approximately the same ratio. Suppose that the market price of silver then rises to 1/10th the price of gold. If the currency still stands at the old 16-to-1 ratio, then silver coins are worth more melted down into bars and traded for gold than they are as coins. Silver coins will systematically disappear and be melted down. If this ill-chosen exchange rate persists for too long, silver coins will disappear altogether from the market.
   
   I should note something up front here: I need to think more about the economic details of this argument. Why, for instance, wouldn't the melting-down of silver coins eventually self-correct? By melting down coins and taking them out of circulation, we reduce the supply of currency, so the value of each coin goes up; likewise, the rising supply of silver bars makes the value of each bar go down. Eventually, wouldn't the two balance out again?
   
   The answer is probably that it depends. If the difference between the commodity value and the coin value of silver is too large, all the coins could well disappear before the market has had time to equalize. One might then ask why the British government didn't continue producing more coins until the market worked it out -- or quickly realize their error and return to more sensible relative prices for gold and silver. As it happens, in any case, they didn't: they ended up accidentally with a monometallic standard. And that's how we got the gold standard: the lucky (?) confluence of a Newtonian mistake and British dominance in the 18th century.
   
   Another historical accident kept the gold standard working for a while: most people didn't have the right to vote, and those who did were wealthier than those who didn't. In a world run by (to modern eyes) undemocratic governments, it's easy to defend your currency's gold value: if an ounce of gold buys you $35, say, and the currency devalues so that it now buys you $40, the U.S. government can just spend as many dollars as necessary to bring the currency back into line. In a more democratic world, you need to use those dollars to support your people. In a less-democratic world, the dollars can all go toward gold.
   
   There's an important supporting fact about 19th-century less-democratic governments that makes this all work out: currency traders know exactly how the government is going to behave. Hence they have every reason to believe that the American government will keep the dollar right where it's always been. If the currency drops from $35/oz. to $40/oz., traders know that the government will make every effort to bring it back to the old level. They have no reason to bet on future currency drops; the only rational bet they could make is that the dollar would return to its old value. Consequently, the dollar *does* return to its old value.
   
   What if, instead, traders know that the government has other obligations toward its people? If it would cost a prohibitive amount to defend the gold standard, traders rationally believe that the government will let the depreciation stand, and they will bid the value of the currency down. Now there's an even *wider* gap for the government to make up, so traders know it's even *less* likely that the government will fix it. And so on down the drain. This is a "speculative attack." In fact Eichengreen gives an example of a *self-fulfilling* speculative attack, where countries with a perfectly healthy economy (low inflation, healthy balance sheet, etc.) nonetheless find themselves with a quickly depreciating currency.
   
   Governments can try other options to keep their currency under control. They can limit the flow of money: charge a hefty fee for every large bundle of dollars or gold that leaves the country, for instance. Other countries have to get involved to make this work: as capital gets more mobile, any country that locked down currency transfers would find itself with a massively depreciating currency as investors sold it and bought other, freer currencies. You can see why multinational agreements to lock down currency transfers would have a hard time sticking around: if I defect -- you lock down and I don't -- money flows into my country and out of yours. We need some way to tie our fates together if we're going to make this work. My understanding is that European monetary union -- the euro -- is precisely such a fate-tying mechanism: we give up flexibility in some areas of monetary policy in order to solve a larger coordination problem.
   
   Again a question of detail comes up: suppose the currency flows from a less-open to a more-open economy. For the sake of concreteness, let's say those economies are Germany and France, respectively. Money flows from Germany to France, so now one franc buys more deutsch marks. France doesn't want this exchange rate to rise *too* far, because now Germans can't buy as many French products; export-intensive French industries are harmed by Germany's capital constraints. So it would seem that France and Germany are already quite strongly linked by self-interest, even in the absence of any agreements on capital controls.
   
   I'm sure the answer to this, as well as to all my other questions, is within Globalizing Capital. My sense is that it is a book which can never be read, only reread. I'm really looking forward to rereading it.

1 comments about A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold (Peter L. Bernstein's Finance Classics) (Peter L. Bernstein's Finance Classics).

1. Prospective readers should note that this is not a new book. Rather, it's a repackaged reprint of one of Bernstein's earliest books (circa 1965). Fed Chairman Emeritus Paul Volker has written a shiny new introduction and Bernstein himself takes a few pages at the beginning to place his old ideas in historical context, but frankly the meat of the book is totally outdated. There is perhaps no area in economics that has seen more change over the past 40 years than monetary policy. Bernstein wrote this book before the demise of the gold standard, before stagflation, before the modern consensus on monetary policy. If you want to read Bernstein on gold, a much more contemporary treatment is presented in The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession (A caveat: I have not read that book yet, but include it only so the reader can be aware that there is an alternative.)

5 comments about Gold: The Once and Future Money.

1. I'm simply an average joe looking to preserve wealth from the coming inflation in the US dollar. This book did indeed help me understand central banking and how a gold standard can work. However, it contained way too many details with dates and years of various historical events.
   
   What I really wanted, was a book that could help me conceptually understand the commodity of gold in an easy to read format. All in all I appreciated the book and am glad I read it. Perhaps I would have enjoyed this more had I read "The Coming Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit from It" first as it did not dive into obscure details of historical events.



2. Good Insights But Unconvincing
   
   Fiat money serves three purposes: legal tender, token for exchange and store of value. The author seems to propose a money system pegged to gold and believes that it will serve to stabilize the value of the paper money as the value of gold is relative stable in the long run. The author argues that, under the new gold based money standard, the value of paper money can be maintained through adjusting the money supply, possibly by the central bank. The author also believes that a gold-based money system is better than commodity-basket based system or a currency board system exchange system. The author points out that there is an inherent conflict between a country's domestic monetary policy in terms of maintaining an interest target and its foreign exchange policy in terms of keeping a fixed exchange rate.
   
   The question that is not clearly answered is how the supply and demand of gold, and therefore related fluctuations of gold price/value, affects the value of money and the equilibrium between money supply and demand. Equally important and not clearly answered is how a country using the proposed gold-pegged money can defense itself against currency attack by speculators. When there is sell-off of the currency, according to the author, the central bank needs to retire the excess currency (money supply) it took in from people for exchanging gold. This is to maintain the value of the paper money pegged to gold. Reducing money supply seems to push up interest rate and restrain economic growth. A large scale currency attack may also push up gold price as the demand of gold for exchanging the currency intensifies. To keep the pegging creditable, the central bank has to exchange gold for the currency when it is demanded. The central bank either has to keep a gold reserve large enough or buy/borrow gold from the market. To buy gold, the central bank may have to borrow foreign currency (hard currency) to do so, especially when its currency is under attack (weak). Then the problem is essentially no difference than the familiar one we have seeing for a currency-pegging exchange system except the author claims that the value of gold, in the long run, is more stable than all paper money including "hard currencies" such as the dollar, pounds, etc. The author claimed that if the central bank maintains its credibility, then it does not need to keep a large gold reserve. However, if the credibility is better or at least as good as gold, we wouldn't need a gold-pegging or any pegging system. The whole idea to have the money pegged on something is because that people believe the value of that "something" in itself is stable.
   
   As society has not find any universal stable measurement for "value" as we did for length and weight, we just don't have a stable media to store the value. Actually length and weight are only relatively stable under normal conditions on earth. The light of speed is probably the only constant in the universe we know so far. The value of gold, just like all other currencies and commodities, changes when the supply and demand fluctuates. It may be arguably more stable than other paper money. Nevertheless, it does not totally eliminate some major problems faced by the paper money. Plus, gold system may have its own problems. Is it immune from short-term speculations that could bring down a nation's economy?
   
   Overall, I found the book valuable in providing a lot of economic insights on historical events. But I found the argument for a gold-pegged standard as the solution unconvincing. The ultimate solution may be, when globalization reaches its summit, one world currency is created. Then there is no currency risk. Only business cycles need to be dealt with. Then the money does not have to be pegged on anything except people's faith in the stability and survivability of themselves and responsible management on money supply. When there are multiple currencies, good management of and consistency among policies of exchange, monetary, and fiscal seem to be the gold standard demanded.



3. The book starts and finishes strong--the first 100 pages or so and the last 50. But the middle gets very bogged down in intricate economic history with lots of minutiae. The author begins in the mercantile ages, perhaps the 1600s or thereabouts, and continues to the early 2000s. I was disappointed that the last few years were pretty much not covered, as that is what I'm most interested in. Discussion is not limited to the USA and covers the entire world. I think every economic event, significant or not, was touched on. Discussions of US presidents are mostly limited to Nixon, Carter, and Reagan.
   
   So aside from the start and finish of this, this is mostly a book of economic history. Maybe I was expecting something otherwise when I picked it up. I support the author's premise, and he seems very confident in it. I'm new to the gold standard and I plan to learn more about it. I ended up skimming the middle 200 pages or so as I could not bear to read them in depth anymore after entering them. I understand that history is important for lessons, but I prefer summaries of it. It's never been my strong point, and this book is littered with dates and years that have always been anathema to me.
   
   If you're new to the subject of the gold standard like me, this may not be the best initial choice. Or you might want to skip it entirely and instead seek other books or shorter articles online. This review might be somewhat useless, but if anything I would say to be mindful of the history in this book. Consider using Amazon's preview feature to see what I mean.
   
   *Wow, coincidentally it's unbelievable how much I'm in agreement with Average Joe. I also have "The Coming Collapse of the Dollar" on my reading queue.



4. This book is absolutely unbelievable vuluable and probably worth paying 1000$ for it (or should I say, 1 oz of gold!).
   
   Not only does it explain in details what the gold standard is, and how it has worked in the past, but it also gives a very good overview of the various currency systems used in the past, the various fallacies about currencies, gold, politics, economics schools, etc.
   
   It also reviews the history of our society through a different angle/lens. I feel like I understand the history now, and all the crises, wars, chaos that seemed to come out of nowhere has found a rational and sensible explanation. I had turned off my TV set and my radio receiver about 10 years ago, stopped reading the news papers and any other kind of useless noise, and all of the sudden, the world makes sense again.
   
   Unfortunately, ignorance is bless...
   
   Many thanks to Nathan Lewis for sharing his knowledge and wisdom. I just wish that the book was twice as thick, so that you could go into more details about the causes and consequences of the various policies and actions taken by the governments or the IMF, etc. because sometimes the short cuts you take are more than hard to follow and even though I think I was able to follow you, I would have preferred to be sure about it.



5. This is a great book discussing the reasons why Gold will be the ultimate monetary standard and why an individual should consider making gold a part of his personal portfolio. However, the people looking for an investment guide should look elsewhere. This is a history book discussing the possible future of the gold standard in America by historical example from the US and select countries.
   
   It doesn't take 400+ pages to give you reasons why to put some of your money into gold, but this kind of historical detail helps a potential gold buyer understand the yellow metal is not so much an investment as it is an insurance policy. This book reinforced my already skeptical leanings towards the Fed and US monetary policy. It also made me wonder what's being taught in high school history nowadays with respect to economics as it relates to the causes of war. The sections discussing the civil war and WWII in particular were great gap-fillers for me, and the authors explanation of the Japanese financial slump made perfect sense.
   
   Importantly, the author makes it clear on page 114-155 that he does not advocate a 100% gold-backed currency. That is, it is not possible and we should not be expected to back every last dollar with gold. Rather, gold should be part of the system to include a convertibility aspect. The strength of the gold standard comes not from digging up gold and burying it again in government vaults, but from the strength of the governments promise to uphold the integrity of the monetary system. A fixed reserve requirement would assist this promise tremendously. Currently, there is little to reassure anyone of the validity of the "full faith and credit" we now depend upon.
   
   The sections discussing IMF and the upheaval for which they are responsible should be required reading for all members of congress. The IMF is directly responsible for the Asian monetary crisis, the Balkan upheaval and countless other disasters and yet they escape blame every time. The author points out the IMFs hypocritical habit of meddling in less-developed countries with ridiculous and irresponsible policies that would be laughed out of the room in stable economies.
   
   Though the author picks apart nearly every US administration with regard to the dismantling of the gold standard, the book is refreshingly bare of the usual tin-foil-hat-wearer conspiracy theories - always a problem when reading anything about gold standards and monetary policy in general.
   
   There are two small negatives to this book: First, the look forward suggested by the author is highly unrealistic. I pessimistically think there needs to be outright economic collapse and perhaps even conflict before anything will budge bureaucratic inertia. Second would be the books length, but that's a small price to pay for a very worthwhile history lesson.
   
   Overall its a great read.

5 comments about Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History.

1. Milton Friedman is best known for his 2 monumental books: "Capitalism and Freedom" and "Free to Choose". Money Mischief is less well known, but equally great.
   
   Friedman provides a fascinating and easy to understand explanation of what "money" really is and how it works (or fails to work) in society. In addition to bills and coins, money can take the form of gold, cigarettes, or even large rocks. If this seems strange to you, read the book for a clear explanation. This book also provides the clearest explanation I have ever seen about the complex connection between money supply, growth, and inflation in an economy.
   
   Complete with fascinating real world case studies, I found Money Mischief impossible to put down.



2. Milton Friedman is a great teacher because he has the rare ability to explain complicated subjects in clear understandable language. This book in particular will give the reader insight into the mysterious world of money. At the end you will understand money so well that when you watch CNBC you will start questioning the actions of the Federal Reserve. I highly recommend this book. Also, be sure to youtube and charlierose 'Milton Friendman' for some great videos. We have lost a great human. R.I.P.



3. Milton Friedman is simply the best. So far I've read a couple of chapters and already am extremely enlightened.



4. Review by a non Nobel Prize winner:
   Dirty details of the progress of our United States Currency are the theme of this book. If you like the arithmetic to pop out as you look at text, and are one who likes absorbing and detailed accounts which provide tools for thought, you should like this collection of papers and essays on money. I did.



5. I will concentrate this review of Friedman's book on the the time period 1900 onward and cover Friedman's analysis in this book as it applies to the banking system set up in 1913 by the Federal Reserve Act.Friedman has an excellent discussion of the problems resulting from the attempt to introduce a bimetallic standard in the USA that occurred in the late 1870's and culminated in the 1896 election between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley that resulted in the defeat for bimetallism.He has a number of other interesting discussions on other episodes involving attempts to inflate the money supply,however defined.However,it is in his discussions of post 1913 monetary policy that he gives a misleading impression about the central bank's powers .The Federal Reserve System(FRS),consisting of the 12 Federal Reserve District Banks of which the New York Federal Reserve District Bank has by far the most power ,is not a government agency in the usual sense of the word.THe Federal Reserve Board chairman is not a member of the President's cabinet.The United States government has only partial control the FRS.The FRS is subject to no government audit.The FRS is subject to no government budget constraint.The FRS is a quasi public,quasi private entity.The set up of the FRS,both in 1913 and 2008, reflects the tremendous economic and political power of the private profit maximizing(sometimes sales maximizing)commercial banking industry.Time and again in this book(as opposed to his coauthored 1963 Monetary History of the United States,1867-1960)Friedman gives the misleading impression that the government of the United States controls the money supply(as defined by Friedman, which is M1 or M1A)or the FRS controls the money supply.This is very misleading.The Federal Reserve System controls ONLY the monetary base.This is defined as the amount of notes(Federal Reserve issued currency)in circulation,plus vault cash,plus the FRS mandated bank reserves,based on a reserve requirement that all member banks must meet.The FRS can impact the amount of reserves available by open market operations but can't force the banks to make the additional loans if the banks do not want to use the expanded reserves.The banks can refuse to make use of the added reserves and hold them ,for safety first or precautionary reasons,as excess or free reserves.This is precisely what happened in the United States in the 1930-1934 period ,in Japan in the 1994-2003 period,and what has been happening in the 2007-2008 period.Ben Bernanke,in his desire to bail out Wall Street and the private commercial banking system ,has made hundreds of billions of additional loans available at special very low interest rates to the banking system.No additional private commercial bank loans have been forthcoming.The money supply increases or decreases as the private commercial banking system decides to expand loans or decrease loans according to their own private decision making calculus based on profit(sales) maximizing criteria.If commercial banks do not wish to lend then it makes no difference what the FRS does with respect to the monetary base.It can expand the base all it wants to.Nothing will happen unless,as J M Keynes so aptly put it,confidence is restored to the economic system as a whole so that expectations,a function of Keynesian uncertainty and not Friedmanite risk(Friedman always used the standard deviation of a hypothesized normal probability distribution to denote risk), of the future become optimistic.

5 comments about The Soul of Money: Reclaiming the Wealth of Our Inner Resources.

1. A whole new way to look not just at money, but at life itself! Worth reading over and over again!



2. We as consumers are brainwashed into thinking we need more to be of value. This book brought to light the many ways we devalue ourselves and our gifts. I appreciate that Ms. Twist has given the tools to reformat our thoughts on this critical subject. Willetta S BaCote



3. Lynne....please make this an unabridged book on tape/CD! Not only could my blind boyfriend then readily access it, but I could listen to it in my car.



4. Lynne Twist challenges us to think about our culture of scarcity and "more is better" and the impact that has on our lives and our environment. She challenges us to evaluate the self-imposed value we place on money, the impact on our happiness and the power in using money in an intentional way to align with our values and life purpose. This book can be transformative if the reader approaches reading it with that possibility in mind. Highly recommended!



5. Are you in a life long struggle between money and the calling of your soul? Is money at odds with your most deeply held values, commitments, and ideals? Do you have an inner hunger to be authentic, to have a life of meaning, a life in which you can make a difference? If yes, then Lynne Twist's "The Soul of Money: Reclaiming the Wealth of Our Inner Resources" was written for you. As Deepak Chopra notes, "To anyone who wants to transform their lives and the world, I give this book my highest recommendation."
   
   Author Twist has found that there are striking commonalities across cultures in our basic human relationship with money and the way that relationship governs, dominates, and stresses our lives. In each culture, Twist has seen the powerful grip that money has on our lives, the wounds and hardship that it can impose, and the immense healing power of even the smallest amount of money when we use it to express our humanity - our highest ideals and our most soulful commitments and values.
   
   "The Soul of Money" offers a way to "realign our relationship with money to be more truthful, free, and potent, enabling us to live a life of integrity and full self-expression consistent with our deepest core values, no matter what our financial circumstances. The book is not about turning away from money or simplifying expenditures, or doing budgets or financial planning, although the wisdom gained will be relevant to all those activities. This book is about living consciously, fully, and joyfully in our relationship with money, and learning to understand and embrace its flow. It is about using the unexamined portal of our relationship with money to deliver a widespread transformation in all aspects of our lives."