Currency Books

I cannot say enough good about this product. I have been reading reviews on others quarter collecting albums and had settled on buying this one, then they ran out of them. I was really upset, but because of my procrastination, they got in a new shipment by the time I was ready to order something else. I am so glad I chose these. I have 3 children ages 13, 10 and 6. Each one of them loves these albums (I bought one for each of them and got mine free with amazon's special offer). My 10 year old is really enjoying the geography of it. The 13 year old loves that she has her own album and has a great head start on filling it. The six year old is thrilled to be collecting her own quarters and can easily "load" the quarters into their spots all by herself. Mom (me) is thrilled to get such a wonderful album for such a great price. Check out the measurements on this, it's really a nice big book. It has the state seal in each quarter placement spot and has additional information about each state on the outer pages. It also has spots for the not-yet-issued 2009 coins. Please know that after much research, I really found this to be the best one out there. Enjoy!

This collector map is great - short desciptions of each state including District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Nortern Mariana Islands - all U.S. territories. When my son took it for show and tell, the velcro closure didn't hold up with all the kids handling it, but was easy to glue. Overall great for kids to learn about the U.S. as well as having a worthwhile collection.

I love this quarter map at the first sight when my friend showed me hers. I kept collecting the 50 state quarters last year, and I thought it would be fantastic if they have a holder. The map looks very nice with the quarters. And it had introduction to each of the states, which makes it even better.
And it was cheap to buy 4 products for only $24 + free shipping. I will buy more if there's any. It should be a good gift.

Good,easy to keep all the 50+6 quarters on an US map.It's useful for remebering the position of every states.
But my orders had been canceled twice,so I feel so depressed about the amazon and the seller.

My grandchildren will receive these State Quarters Collector Maps for a gift after the series has ended.

This book goes into detail about the mystical FED. It confirms things you suspect and things you have concluded, but never talked about. I enjoyed this book and think it would benefit anyone to read.

Yes, OMG! What an education. We really are a nation of financially uneducated, brainwashed, sheeple. This book makes it perfictly clear why today's world and economic events "are as they are", and where we are headed as economic surfs. This book is clear and easy to understand. It should be required reading for everyone. Buy this and read it, you will be furious at our government leaders and want to know more about how all of this very real world wide economic fraud will chage your life. Follow the Yellow Brick Road!

You will need a spare copy, and perhaps more due to the overwhelming desire you will experience to spread the message of this book upon reading it. This urge became overpowering to me in the early chapters, and still remains as my original copy is out on loan.

The truth that is exposed by Ms. Brown is beyond a call to action, or the most powerful civics lesson you will ever come across. The story here, masterfully told, lies at the very heart of the concept of freedom. Inane acceptance of the status quo will most certainly lead to the end of the freedom experiment. It is evident that our Revolution was never won, and that the powers of despotism, oligarchy, and plutocracy live on, confident that we all have become weak in our collective ability to discern truth in a world of smoke and mirrors. This weakness has been enabled by those standard human frailties; greed, self-absorption, apathy, and of course ignorance. All of these deficiencies can be reversed, some reversals more painful than others, and they must be if we are to dig ourselves out from our present state of affairs. The course of correction requires tools, and first on my list is "Web of Debt".

I feel a deep sense of gratitude to Ellen Hodgson Brown for taking on this subject. It is not the fast track to the best seller list, and there will be no invites to appear on Charlie Rose. This effort expresses a powerful desire to put light on truth, and in so doing send a line of hope to the embattled principle called freedom.

I've been interested in the general topic of this book--our flawed and corrupt money creation/banking system and the albatross on the back of our society it represents--for a while now. Until reading this book, educating myself mostly involved absorbing the doom and gloom reality of the situation.

The best part about this book, as one reviewer already mentioned, is not Ms. Brown's immaculate analysis and presentation of the profound absurdity and utterly unnecessary folly of our current predicament. It's her optimistic proposal of an excellent, rational solution to monetary reform that could ultimately get us as close as possible to a utopian society, and in any case represents the system our founding fathers truly had in mind.

This book was the lynchpin for me that completely laid bare and clarified my thoughts about our f*cked up money system as it exists today and the fundamental, structural flaw(s) it inflicts on an otherwise prosperous and benign world, and the miserable consequences of its continued existence--then shows us the way out.

This book will undoubtedly provide every rational, thinking person with a brand new window through which to view the world. Understanding our dysfunctional and corrupt monetary system and how it shapes our society connected the dots for me in a way nothing else has and created an amazingly clear "big picture" that fundamentally changed my perception of just about everything. It also made most left vs. right/liberal vs. conservative political issues and arguments irrelevant since it pretty much overarches and transcends them.

I wholeheartedly agree with the majority of the reviewers here that it's one of, if not THE most important book you'll probably ever read. Get it any way you can and feed your head. Then spread the word to anyone else who will listen. It doesn't matter whether Amazon has it in stock since you can do like I did and buy the eBook version directly from the author's website: webofdebt.com. Given the timeliness of the material and the fact that the author does an excellent job of updating/revising the text and website to reflect the current financial meltdown as it's presently unfolding, that's probably the best method of purchase anyway.

If you agree with the author's general diagnosis and especially her proposed solutions, and believe like I do that she is correct in her assertation that a financial meltdown such as the one we are currently witnessing is the best chance to implement changes, then NOW is the time to act. First step: educate yourself....

Ellen Hodgson Brown has proven herself an absolute genius! I specialized in foreign languages in university, but economics was one language I really had no interest in, until recently, when I was awakened to the mass corruption governing our world and ultimately our lives. This book explains clearly and in an easy-to-understand manner WHO controls our money supply, who and what forces are and have been responsible for or behind the rise and fall of various currencies over the past decades, and why ours is going to be next. She also shows us a way OUT of the global economic crisis we now find ourselves in and proposes a number of possible and legitimate alternatives to the corrupt fractional reserve banking system that is sinking the American people deeper and deeper into debt, impoverishment, and enslavement. There ARE other alternatives! There IS a way OUT, but it is NOT, I'm sorry to say, the gold standard that so many people, most notably Mr. Griffin, author of "Creature from Jekyll Island", are hailing as the ultimate solution to our economic woes. Gold and silver backing didn't prevent the Great Depression! Gold and silver are just as open to manipulation by the people who CONTOL it! It's the fractional reserve system and the banks creating money out of NOTHING, and then charging US for it, that are to blame!

The original money used by the colonies was NOT backed by gold, and those were times of unprecedented prosperity! We were prosperous because we printed our OWN MONEY! That's the key! Gold and silver backing will do nothing until we get rid of fractional reserve banking!

To sum up, I have learned SO much from this book! I learned more from reading this one book than I did in all my years of public school education! This is a MUST-read for ALL who are interested in securing our release from the Web of Debt that currently has entangled us all.

This is the Red Book of coins need you say more. Got to love this book it just keeps getting better every year.

This is probably the best book for coin collectors who have a limited background and no one they feel they can trust. It gives an honest opinion based on recent coin sale prices and conditions.

The one part that I feel they could have given more value for your money is a more thorough description of coin condition with more pictures and examples, that said, I recomend this book to anyone (most all dealers have one on their premises whether for your benefit, or to help them in a sale, it says something). Lastly, the price is right. I would always recomend checking the price of spot metals before any purchase.

We are beginners in the hobby of coin collecting. "United States Coins"
is a great help and we recommend it hightly.

I've relied on older editions of the Official Red Book for information about various coins that I've seen. Having been a coin collector since I was a child, I decided to purchse this book to see what information has changed or been updated. From time to time, I've found unexpected coins in my change and I enjoy being able to look them up to see what they are, what historical period they might represent, etc. It also helps me understand this country's history through its coinage.

This book was just what I was looking for. I have a coin collection that I want to sell and needed to find out the current market value. Easy to read, nice spiral binding.

The book is awesome. Even dumb like me eager to move forward from pages to pages. Really good start for dummies :)

This is the book that every Forex trader new and experienced should have in their library. I have been trading on an off for a couple of years and learned more by reading this book in a couple of weeks than I learned reviewing info from dozens of sources. The authors are outstanding and experts in their field and I now am better armed to do battle in the forex market.

this book explain what currency exchange is. it also does not get into detail of how to read a currency charts.

Far better for someone starting in currency trading than other, more expensive books. Especially since this one does not try to sell you on the authors' system at $100 per month!

Cheap, easily read, more thorough than any other introduction I've seen. Not the last book you'll ever need, but definitely the best choice for your first. Everybody says to pair it with technical analysis for dummies, but nobody mentions economics for dummies. By all means get all 3, but if you only want 2 go with economics for dummies. It will leave you much more enlightened about fundementals than Technical Analysis for dummies will do for you with technicals. And unless you're going to go all the way with TA, don't go there at all. You're better off just trading news.

Product arrived in a timely manner and was what I was looking for except that it did not mention that the holder had spots for states for both minted cities. I wish it had mentioned that in the description. It was a very good deal! :)

This isn't fancy, but it works quite well for holding our collection. It has places for quarters from the Philadelphia mint as well as the Denver mint. Sure makes you pay a bit more attention to your change!

I really liked this product. It is nicely made, and provides a lot of interesting information about each state. Some of the quarters were hard to get in, but if you push against them with your thumb, it works well. And once the quarters are in, they don't fall out, unlike with other folders. I would definitely recommend it to others.

This has to be my favorite coin folder yet. It has a slot for both P and D mintages and the coins fit into the slots perfectly (unlike the presidential coin folder by whitman.) I highly recommend it. :)

This is a well made product but I didn't realize that it was for the state quarters that come from BOTH mints. I would have been happy with one that held only one set of coins but that is my fault for not reviewing the product details closely enough. If you want to collect the coins from both mints (Philadelphia and Denver respectively) this is a good product. I am new to this so I don't know if there are other folders that allow you to get the coins out or to adjust them once they are in the slots, but this one makes it very difficult to adjust the coins once they are in.

For anyone that is looking to enter the world of currency trading and investing, this book is a must-read. After reading this book, I acquired a solid basic knowledge of this area of financing. Burrell starts with the history of currency and banking, and finishes with procedures that will help you to analyze the market, as well as yourself.

The first chapters explain currency trading and the history of the banks and other financial giants that have an affect on the currency market. I felt the urge to skip these chapters due to dry subject matter and a lot of abbreviations, yet realized that this information would help me to understand how these financial giants affect the financial world. The remaining chapters involve terminology and the actual processes needed for analyzing the markets. Burrell also explains the present online trading and investing practices, as well as the pitfalls to avoid. The final chapters explain how currency trading can affect a person, and some things to consider before entering into this area of trading and investment.

Not being financially proficient, I was impressed with Burrell's writing. Her way of teaching was simple enough, yet was written respectfully as far as the level of vocabulary that he used. The information that Burrell provides is useful and to the point. This book is not for casual reading; it is meant to be studied. I would recommend this book for people wanting to learn the basics when contemplating entering the world of currency trading.

The Complete Guide to Currency Trading & Investing discusses currency trading as well as introduces the reader to currency trading products and markets. This trading guide flows seamlessly from one topic to the next. The manual on trading starts out by describing the major currency markets and electronic trading strategies. Jamaine Burrell gives an excellent description of currency trading fees. The author explains that fundamental analysis and technical trading indicators influence the currency market. A prospective customer can check the firm's regulatory record with the National Futures Association for trades based in the United States or with foreign regulatory agencies if the trader is based outside the United States.

Each currency trade is based on a pair of currencies that will be traded. The first currency is the currency bought (the bid/buy price) and the second is the currency sold or the ask price). Currency trading is a thinly-regulated, twenty-four hour international securities market. Forex is a very large foreign exchange electronic market. The National Futures Administration overseas the future markets. The role as well as the history of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Fed is described. Foreign regulators are listed and described as well as the types of currency trades that are prevalent in overseas currency markets
The guide describes Forex trading platforms and foreign exchange market conditions. The guide explains how political and economic indicators shape currency markets. The types of trades are defined and described. There are spreads, forwards, options, foreign exchange and swaps. Jamaine Burrell warns the novice currency trader against trading forwards, futures since they are not as closely regulated. These types of currency trades are most frequently associated with fraud. The Complete Guide to Currency Trading & Investing: How to Earn High Rates of Return Safely and Take Control of Your Investments

Avoid the most common mistake of not being prepared and develop a currency trading strategy. Burrell's book educates the reader on the tools you need to become involved in currency trading and investing while avoiding making the mistakes of an unprepared and inexperienced trader. The book has a good introduction into the world of currency and uses terminology that will help you understand the market and make you sound like a pro who grasps trading techniques.

Burrell's book shows you how to notice entry and exit points to maximize gains and minimize losses when trading with the major currencies of the world. Knowing what influences the market and what banks have the most power is crucial information that will help you succeed in currency trading, as well as understanding the importance of spotting fraud contracts.

This book explains technical analysis, the three different foreign exchange systems, and trading mechanisms while informing the reader of the advantages and disadvantages. It will help you pinpoint your plan by understanding how to interpret currency charts, their patterns, and reports. You will understand the different types of accounts and how to register and activate them. This book can be helpful if you are pondering the idea of being a currency trader, or if you are already pursuing currency trades and are searching for another strategy.

The Foreign Exchange Market is where world currencies are bought and sold, serving as the largest financial trade market in the world with an estimated $1.9 trillion generated per day. While not everyone understands the ins and outs of currency trading and investing, this complete guide will explain to readers how this economic machine works and impacts their success rate with their personal investments.

Serious investors know they must diversify their portfolio, but rarely consider currency trading. This book navigates the Foreign Exchange Market and futures markets, providing basic information for novice traders to help them notch up their investments and enjoy not just a financial gain, but an information gain, as well.

The book starts out simply addressing currently trading, including the G8, Central Banks, the International Monetary Fund and the role of currency traders. With not enough information out there on this subject, novice traders will be encouraged to find detailed information about Central Banks, ranging from how to peg the U.S. dollar to the role of the Maastricht Treaty, the Bank of Japan and foreign currency like the Euro, the Yen, the British Pound and the Swiss Franc.

Novice traders will glean valuable information about the Foreign Exchange Market and trading. They'll learn about click and deal trading, retail platforms, paper trading, micro accounts and the common forms of trading: spot trading, forwards trading, options trading and futures trading.

It's important to know the lingo involved in trading and this book shares the terms and definitions of common speak used in this field, as well as the mechanics of the Foreign Exchange Market. The appendix of this book provides pertinent and valuable information for those readers wanting to learn even more about this subject, such as Web sites and charts.

I opened this book with no idea what to expect as I was not familiar with the idea of currency trading. But in the first chapter I was provided with a detailed description of what currency trading is - trading of world currencies on the Foreign Exchange Market (Forex), the largest financial trade market in the world.

Following a brief introduction to various international currencies, I was educated as to the major financial entities that influence the market greatly, including some that were familiar to me such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In detail, the book educates readers on how the viability of the U.S. Dollar comes into play in more than 90% of all currency trading. With a true global look at the many ways currency can be traded and how one can put into place many trading avenues, its understandable how one can make a living as a currency trader. The book examines various types of trades on the Forex as well as brokers, dealers and accounts.

This would be a great reference tool for anyone with some sort of a financial background, but a little difficult to follow if you have never been exposed to the financial arena.

While useful and informative and, indeed, a must if you buy coins, this book is quite outdated. Since the price of gold and silver have gone up considerably and change daily, the effect on coins is intense in many cases.

There are several sites online where you can get more up-to-date information. Yet having this handy is a good idea. I like having something near my work area and in my hands so I can quickly look up the information I want. Then I can follow that up by going to one of the Web sites.

-Susanna K. Hutcheson

This handbook (The Blue Book)provides a good target price representing dealer's cost for all the US Coins listed in the corresponding retail value Red Book. Invaluable reference tool for quick evaluation of a seller's coin price markups for the casual collector who doesn't need up to the minute price changes. Use it with the Red Book to establish a range for buying and selling.

The Bluebook is an invaluable reference when you are selling coins (along with the Redbook when buying) since it tracks what coin dealers pay for coins. You need to keep in mind that in a "hot" market prices change rapidly which can make the Bluebook "dated" fairly quickly. In any case it does provide a baseline indicating what others have received for coins in specific grades over the past several months giving some indication of what you should receive from a coin dealer.

If you are interested in what you can expect to pay for a coin you want to buy then use the Redbook which tracks the amount dealers charge for coins in specific grades.

The difference between the Redbook and Bluebook indicates the monies retained by dealers for the value they add to collector's trades. So, if you are trading collector-to-collector with no dealer involved, the two references can serve as the high and low bar for the negotiation process.

Easy to use
Contains all information you need to assess any coin
A wise purchase

This book is nice to use when you are wanting to sell one of your coins. It would be a better book if it would come in spiral bound so that it is easier to use.

MV=PQ (and other variations)

Monetary History of the United States is one of the greatest and most historic economics book written. Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize in economics for this masterwork. It revolutionized economics. The only other book that is better is The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. I highly recommend both books.

At the time Monetary History was published, monetary economics had fallen out of favor because of the Great Depression. Economists had thought that monetary forces were ineffective as stimulating the economy in a severe downturn. The phrase "pushing up on a string" became famous. That led to the belief that government intervention of fiscal policy was always needed to keep the economy stable.

Friedman and Schwartz proved beyond a doubt that monetary forces contributed greatly to the Great Depression, contributed to the strong recovery under Franklin Roosevelt from 1933-1937, and caused the recession of 1937-38.

Monetary forces matter. Monetary History has never been effectively refuted, although Peter Temin did show that monetary forces were not the only cause of the Great Depression in his book Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression? The weakly regulated financial system collapsing so easily was partly to blame, as was the gold standard. The New Deal made the financial system stronger so it would not collapse again, and FDR removed America from the gold standard.

I highly recommend Monetary History. I also highly recommend Essays on the Great Depression by Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Great Depression is the ultimate riddle and they understand it.

I hated this book because it's hard to read. I don't like wading through sentences as long as paragraphs full of obscure words that require a dictionary nearby.

I just wanted to get a general understanding of money and the Federal Reserve from a source I trust and admire - Milton Friedman. I don't mind facts and figures but I resent writing that forces me into hard labor to decipher the meaning. I think good writing is communicating in the simplest way possible, not in trying to impress the reader with the author's vocabulary and ability to construct impenetrable, wannabe-sophisticated, long, compound sentences.

Don't get me wrong, I'm an engineer and I've got a decent vocabulary and fairly decent language skills.

I've found the books by Murray N. Rothbard to be much easier to read than this book though not as easy to read as I would like. I'm still looking for the perfect monetary history/economics book. I hope there's one out there somewhere.

Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz' A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 is an analysis and explanation of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Its conclusion, first published in the early 1960s, differs from the two main explanations that existed at the time.

Austrian Business Cycle Theory had argued that the Great Depression was caused by excessively loose monetary policy that fed an unsustainable economic boom during the 1920s, which eventually collapsed into depression. Friedman and Schwartz argued that instead it was excessively tight monetary policy following the boom of the 1920s that turned a run-of-the-mill recession into a depression. (For the Austrian explanation of the Great Depression, see Sir Lionel Robbins' The Great Depression or Murray Rothbard's America's Great Depression.)

Keynesianism argued that the Great Depression had been caused by insufficient consumer product demand and lack of investor confidence, and that government should compensate for this by increasing its spending and financing it with government debt. Friedman and Schwartz argued instead that the problem and solution were not so much a matter of fiscal policy as they were a matter of monetary policy. Government, particularly the monetary authorities, was the cause of the depression, not the solution. Stimulative fiscal policy as prescribed by Keynes would in the long run not lead to an increase in economic growth and employment, but only to an increase in inflation. (For the Keynesian explanation of the Great Depression, see John M. Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money or John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash, 1929.)

At the time of its publication, A Monetary History was not immediately accepted by the economics profession, which then was still dominated by Keynesian thinking. But when Keynesian theory could not explain the stagflation (recession combined with high inflation) of the 1970s, monetarism came to rule the day, and Friedman would go on to win the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Friedman and Schwartz's analysis has by now become the standard explanation for the Great Depression. In the very least, the book helped reestablish the importance of monetary over fiscal policy in the stabilization of the business cycle. Money matters, even if it is not the only thing that matters. In addition, the importance of the book was methodological, in that it emphasized the importance of the empirical testing of one's economic propositions. What makes the book so persuasive is the great lengths to which the authors go to sort out the causation behind the correlation-the causation, they found, ran from money to output and prices rather than vice versa or via a fourth variable.

A Monetary History is a classic work in the canon of economic literature. It is on occasion still reviewed in the literature (e.g. Journal of Monetary Economics, August 1994; Cato Journal, Winter 2004). It clearly is an academic work written for trained economists, making it perhaps less accessible to a general audience. But several highly readable summary versions of the book exist, such as chapter 3 of Milton and Rose Friedman's Free to Choose, and even a one-paragraph summary conclusion in Capitalism and Freedom (on p. 45 of the paperback edition), which was published around the same time as A Monetary History. Alternatively, ch. 13 ("A Summing Up", pp. 676-700) is reprinted in The Essence of Friedman.

I read the reviews and found them helpful, but the unnamed reviewer that attributed the Great Depression to causes totally other than this book cites, and bashed Friedman as "not having a leg to stand on" concerned me because it seems the reviewer missed the very point of the book. Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman and his co-author undertook the monumental work of tracing money supply for each year for nearly a century. In doing so, they did the staggering amount of work required to show all of us something very powerful. To say they don't have a leg to stand on is disconcerting because it seems to indicate a review without a reading, or at least understanding. Obviously the Great Depression was the result of of complex interactions within the economy. What Friedman tries to do is show us the EMPIRICAL evidence for interaction between a contracting money supply and a worsening economic situation, and a steady money supply and a bettering economic situation. The Great Depression may have come about because of arrogant decisions and cascading failures, and those who decided to contract the money supply evidently were a very important trigger. I can say "evidently" because Friedman's research gives us the chance to observe the evidence for ourselves. To have advanced our knowledge of economics in a practical way, to have given useful facts for fending off depressions, is a gift. That's why this book will remain a watershed work in the history of economics.

Friedman and Schwartz(1963)did a great deal of worthwhile data compilation.The problem(an identical problem occurs in the 1956 work of Philip Cagan) occurs when they attempt to fit the data to the standard quantity of exchange equation MV=PO,where M is the supply of money(Friedman always selects MI to be equal to M),V is the velocity,P is the price level,O is real GNP(GDP),and PO is nominal GNP(GDP).The correct specification of the equation of exchange is M(Vw)=PO,where w is defined on the unit interval between 0 and 1.w is Keynes's measure of the weight of the evidence or Ellsberg's (rho)measure of the confidence a decision maker has in the information set he will use to calculate the probabilities of different outcomes.Friedman is a lifelong adherent and advocate of the Ramsey-De Finetti-Savage subjective approach to probability which argues that ,while the existence of vagueness(J M Keynes's weight of the A Treatise on Probability(uncertainty of the General Theory) or Ellsberg's ambiguity)is undeniable,it can't be modeled in a decision theoretic context.Only risk,represented by a normal probability distribution and its mean+ or- 3 standard deviations,can be operationalized.Friedman's section 4 of chapter 12,titled "Expectations about Stability ",discusses exactly what Savage called vagueness,Keynes called uncertainty,liquidity preference being a function of uncertainty AND NOT RISK,AND ELLSBERG CALLED AMBIGUITY.Friedman has no variable in his model to deal with it.He admits this on the second paragraph of p.675.Friedman's analysis abstracts from the role that expectations,confidence,uncertainty,and the flexibility of money(Keynes's liquidity preference)play in the demand for money .All of the Friedman-Schwartz analysis needs to be redone using the correct specification of the equation of exchange.Friedman's existing specification only holds in the special case where w=1.0,i.e.,that there is no uncertainty,ambiguity,or vagueness. MV=PO is a correct specification of the equation of exchange only if risk,measured by the normal probability distribution's standard deviation(or the standard deviation divided by the mean),is the only decision theoretic variable.All current forms of the equation of exchange ignore ambiguity and/or uncertainty and conflate risk with uncertainty.The equation of exchange has been misspecified from Hume to Friedman and Lucas.Only Keynes correctly derived a generalized equation of exchange.Keynes's analysis is contained on p.209 and chapter 21 of the GT.Lucas has already admitted that his framework of analysis breaks down completely if Keynesian uncertainty or Ellsbergian ambiguity prevents him from using his normal probability distribution.The massive 50 plus years of statistical analysis by Benoit Mandelbrot of data from all financial markets(stock,money,commodities,futures,currencies,bond) provides overwhelming empirical support for not using the normal distribution.Keynes,of course,would agree that, if the only decision theoretic variable of consequence is risk(Mandelbrot's mild risk),velocity would be stable or predictable.The fact that velocity is not constant or predictable means that Friedman's monetarism is only a very special case of Keynes's general theory,which,in terms of Mandelbrot's definitions,deals with mild and wild risk.Friedman can only deal with mild risk.

This book has two problems.

One. It was originally written in 1989-1990. Sometimes the author mentions something like, "We might attack Iraq because of its aggression towards Kuwait." Then you realize that you are taking your strategy cues from something almost 20 years old.

Two. The theory of this book could be summarized very quickly in a few pages, and the rest of the book is not very interesting. The idea here is that change happens, and though you might not be able to predict exactly what is going to happen, you can think about all the things that might happen, and develop contingencies and ideas for dealing with those possible future events. Meanwhile your competitors, who have not done such planning, are shocked and unable to react in any meaningful way, because they do not even have an outline of a contingency plan.

Now you know what you need to know about it, and I just saved you the time of reading this book. You're welcome.

This book is excellent!! This book makes understanding the future almost as easy as a carnival card reader. This book isn't a book of prophesy. It is a book that teaches you how to formulate your own prophesy for your unique situation.

The author has a unique way to do this. He urges readers to seek keys. These keys are things in the environment which indicate other things will occur. The average reader after finishing the book will change their way of looking at the world. Through his explanation of how to make a scenario you learn how to gather information from unknown sources and focus on what is important. It is like an unveiling of magic keys to the world. These keys aren't of course magic but something new. The newness opens minds.

The book is dry in places but I think everyone will enjoy this book.

Heard THE ART OF THE LONG VIEW, written and read
by Peter Schwartz.

The book's subtitle caught my attention: PLANNING FOR THE
FUTURE IN AN UNCERTTAIN WORLD . . . I thought to myself,
"Wouldn't that be a great thing to do?"

Schwartz, one of the nation's leading futurists, actually
answers my question--showing how it can be done through
the use of scenario-building . . . this enables managers to:

* "invent and then consider, in depth, several stories of equally
plausible futures" so that they can make "strategic decisions
that will be sound for all plausible futures."

I liked the examples that were given, including many from his
work at Royal Dutch/Shell . . . the one describing the thought
behind a new natural gas field offshore from Norway helped
make the whole scenario concept much clearer to me . . those
involved at the time had to consider whether the U.S.S.R. would
continue to be an enemy of Western Europe and not ship
its own low-cost natural gas to that market.

This informative book was first published in 1991 and revised
in 1996 when it came out in paperwork . . . I'd be curious
to see a 2008 edition.

This book, written by Peter Schwartz, probes readers to take the time to map out their future, whether personal or business, by way of "scenario building." Too many of us go on expecting (or hoping) for things to just fall in to place- optimists! Schwartz, who worked for Shell during the energy crisis in the 70s, uses his experiences of using scenario building to teach the reader how to plan major decisions in their organizational and/or personal future. This craft isn't about predicting the future, but rather a way to formulate the probability of events and construct plausible futures that allow people to consider different futures so the can be prepared.
One thing that I did like was his idea of "reperceive." People are reluctant to see how the world really is and concoct this fantasy of how the world works, and in most cases it is just that, a fantasy-world. Before individuals plan for the future, they have to first "reperceive" it or "question their assumptions about the way the world works, so that they can see the world more clearly."
The negative points about this book had to do with how out of date it is. Written in the late 80s, I couldn't get past the many references to old technologies and political and economical events to be able to enjoy the book. In attempts to forecast the year 2005, scenarios are built on events and political situations of the 80s which makes for very boring reading because it entails a lot of detailed events that happened before I was born. While this future is not totally wrong, it is pretty generalized- anyone who is that vague about the future would be on point.
In all, this book was okay. It didn't knock my socks off- but it did bring back fond memories of the Sony Walkman.

This is one of the books on the Navy's recommended reading list, which is why I picked it up. The author is touted as one of the world's leading futurists. I'm not sure how one gets the title of leading futurist, but I'm guessing it's not because of his accuracy or success in predicting the future. It's actually funny, because in his book he puts forward three possible scenarios for the world in 2005, none of which hit the mark. Of course, there are portions of all three which ring true, which is probably the biggest thing I learned from this book. If you want to be a leading futurist, the first rule is the same as that of any other fortune teller. Be vague! The second rule is: hedge your bets. Give lots of different possibilities.
This book is strikingly out of date, coming before the internet, wireless communications, the global war on terrorism, etc. One would think that a leading futurist might have predicted some of these in 1991, but he did not. He also displays a lot of the pessimism that was rampant in America in the 1980s, when Japan seemed to be the way of the future and America destined for decline. Mr. Schwartz missed the Japanese economic stagnation as well, in spite of being a leading futurist. He tends to let his political views seep through a little too much, his bitterness and hatred of Ronald Reagan and everything he did is palpable and Reagan is continuously cited as the cause of many of the nation's and world's ills.
I would say that the most valuable part of the book would have been the sources he used to glean upcoming trends and changes before they were generally known to the public. Unfortunately, they like the rest of the book, are sadly out of date. Many of the periodicals are no longer being printed, wiped out by the power of the internet. Without that, the book is really reduced to a process for creating some stories of the future, but without a glimpse of the major changes that are coming these stories, like Mr. Schwartz's views of the 21st century, will fall very short of the mark and will not be of much use to planners.

Amazing to read, how differently managers actually approach what is basically the same job: Make money in capital markets. One cannot live without stop loss limits, while another dislikes them a lot. One is riding trends, another one is contrarian. one loves to read research and newspapers, and travel, another one finds none of that of any use. But all of them claim to be successful. How comes? I'm just halfway through, and have a couple of hypothesis. Keen to see, which can be tested and falsified in the course of the second half.
Good inspiring read anyway for all with some knowledge of capital markets.

As a professional in the ETF business I highly recommend this book. After I read this book I gave it to my son as he recently graduated college and is planning a career on Wall Street-- It's that kind of book. Steven is well connected in the Hedge Fund world and this book is a testament to that. If you buy it to just read Jim Rogers section - your money will be well spent.

I am the trader who is managing EZ Stock Options . com. I have been researching, developing, backtesting, and improving winning trading strategies for the past 7 years. This book has no useful information for investors. It is just talking about how in general (no details at all about strategies) he has made money for Yale University by managing their fund. Don't waste your money and more importantly your time on this book.

Judging by the reviews here, you would think that you are buying the next great book in the mould of the 'Market Wizards' series by Jack Schwager. But, trust me, you will be sorely disappointed.

Drobny is a good writer and does ask some good questions of his subjects. But this is definitely NOT a collection of 'top hedge fund managers' or a collection of some of the 'greatest minds in global macro investing'. In fact some, like Andreas Drobny and Sushil Wadhwani are not even hedge managers. They are just academics and central bankers, in the author's own words.

Read it if you have been through most of the other good books out there and there are no other choices. The interviews with Jim Rogers (as always), Jim Leitner and Scott Bessent are entertaining. But there is nothing exceptional or eye-opening about any of these interviews. There is no shortage of hedge fund superstars in London or New York, so it would have been nice if Drobny had gotten access to some of them.

In short, there is more hype than warranted with this book. Get it from a library if you can!

MY RATING SYSTEM:

* - if you have to chose between torture and reading this book, then you might want to consider reading the book - although it depends on just how severe the torture would be.

** - if you've lost your job and have quite a bit of free time on your hands, and don't have anything else better to do, then you might want to consider reading this book; don't expect to learn much or really be entertained. It will however, help you pass the time until your death.

*** - meh...I'm indifferent. Reading this book will not alter your life in any significant way, yet it is not so horrendously dreadful that your taking the time to read it will be a complete waste of time.

**** - Good book to great book zone here. You should probably read this book if you have some spare time. This book could be interesting, entertaining, or informative.

***** - Outstanding book! Make time to read this book - you'll learn or be entertained or intrigued. The book might even be good enough to provide original or helpful insights into the world that we live in.

REVIEW:

Overall, while I found Inside the House of Money to be, at times, an interesting and engaging read, I did find that my perception of the value or interest of each of the interviews varied greatly throughout the book. I have not read the Market Wizards series or any of the other trader interview books that some other reviewers have mentioned as being superior to this book, so I can't really compare.

For me, the highlight of the book was quite likely the interview with Jim Leitner, with the interviews with Jim Rogers, Dwight Anderson and Scott Bessent also catching my interest. These interviews seemed to be more transparent in their discussions, more accessible, and more thought provoking than some of the others.

Generally, each of the interviews tends to hit on a few main areas: (a) how their careers developed and how they got into the industry; (b) that their main strategy is and some examples of good and bad trades they made; (c) some discussion of how they obtain/analyze information; (d) risk management/portfolio construction; (e) general views on the markets and areas they like/don't like; and (f) their thoughts on global macro as a strategy. There are a variety of different perspectives presented throughout the book, and while a couple of the interviews contained some basic technical finance lingo, most of the interviews should be easily understandable by readers with an understanding of economics and financial markets. Where is jargon, the author does a good job on including explanation boxes that clarify key terms and events to provide the reader with some background that helps clarify or put the interviewee's comments in context.

One of the interesting things that I picked up throughout the book is that there are a variety of different styles and techniques that are employed by these traders, and all are able to employ them in a way that achieves success. For example, some of the traders get research from investment banking research and sales groups while others avoid it. Some traders like to take vacations to clear their heads, others don't. Some traders find it valuable to visit the markets they are considering investing in, others find that doing so might make you more subject to making decisions based on anecdotal evidence.

I also enjoyed a couple tidbits that I picked up along the way. One trader mentioned the idea that being right at the wrong time is still being wrong. Also, the discussions of cost/benefit of managing money for others once you've established your skills and have accumulated enough of your own capital that you can trade for your own account.

In conclusion, I found the book interesting, but not captivating. I would have liked to have had more consistency in interview quality (some of the interviews didn't really seem to be that thought provoking or communicate that much of value to me). A decent read, but I'll take a look at some of the other trader books before I consider increasing my rating.