 | The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow
Buy new: $14.96 / Used from: $6.32 This history of JP Morgan gives the background for all that is happening now. His description of the bond trading in the late 1920s sounds very much like the mortgage backed securities trading that brought down the world financial house in 2008.
|
 | A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing (Revised and Updated) by Burton G. Malkiel
Buy new: $12.89 / Used from: $9.34 Here is a primer on stock markets, the price of stocks and the story of previous panics. It is a classic written by a values investor and an advocate of the wisdom of the market.
|
 | The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm by Robert F. Bruner
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $10.07 This little book explains the role of JP Morgan in the Panic of 1907 and also how the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was an underlying cause.
|
 | The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
Buy new: $10.87 / Used from: $5.60 This new history of the Great Depression describes the errors made by Hoover, who contrary to myth, was an interventionist with policies much like those of Roosevelt who followed him. The fact that some of the current proposals before Congress resemble the errors of Roosevelt makes this extremely timely and sales of the book have climbed again since last summer.
|
 | Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis
Buy new: $10.40 / Used from: $1.58 This entertaining history of the 1980s and the S&L scandals is worth reading although less pertinent to the present crisis tan some of these other books.
|
 | When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $3.97 I'm reading this book now. This is the story of the collapse of Long Term Capital Management 10 years ago. It should have been the warning needed to avoid the present crisis. The reliance on mathematicians and physicists to design financial derivatives should have been curbed after that experience.
|
Listmania!
