Book Description
We've all heard the reports—the great housing boom that has fueled premium prices and sellers' dreams is slowing down. The real estate market may experience ups and downs like any other, but it's not likely to implode spontaneously. With proper planning and a little knowledge, homeowners, investors, and other stakeholders can avoid disaster and in fact profit on their properties regardless of what the market does. Beyond the Bubble takes a balanced look at what drives changes in real estate markets and how these changes affect property owners and investors. Readers will learn:
* the history, nature, and dynamics of market `bubbles'
* how to anticipate a coming downturn and act accordingly
* the regional nature of real estate market conditions
* differences and similarities in residential and commercial markets
* other profit strategies when selling is difficult or impossible
* how to analyze the market using facts, not hype
Thorough and well-reasoned, Beyond the Bubble will help property owners maintain a strong and level foundation for their financial futures.
Customer Reviews:
Learn How to Handle Real Estate Bubbles.......2007-08-14
The authors examine the components of real estate bubbles and provide useful guidance in detecting changing conditions to determine when a bubble is present. The book provides readers with a roadmap to become aware of the key factors affecting real estate prices and learn how to predict real estate price increases and decreases.
According to the authors, there is neither a single real estate market in the United States, nor a single bubble due to regional differences. Certain markets will remain hot because of the location, climate, jobs, etc., while other cities may experience declines due to excess speculation and price increases (for example, Florida and California).
The five phases of a bubble and the history of bubbles are described so that readers can understand what to look for. The four signs to recognize that a real estate market is about to change are fleshed out. They include: activity of development and inventory available, speculation increasing near the top, market statistics turn negative, and lending statistics become ominous. The authors also describe bubbles by property type (residential, retail and commercial). Moreover, the ten key factors to consider when making an objective decision about a real estate purchase that you are interested in is covered in detail.
Other topics covered in the book are how to use real estate in your investment portfolio, using options on real estate, how to profit in rising or falling real estate markets, and limited partnerships, REITS, ETF and REITs
Anyone considering buying a house, especially in an inflated market should read this book before making a move. Knowledge is power, especially in real estate negotiations.
Great Book.......2007-06-27
Great Book. very informative. Puts things in plain language and easy to understand.
Only wish I had read it sooner.
If you're an investor, get it, read it and highlight parts of it.
Book Description
"Underneath the hilarious anecdotes, the elegant epigrams,s and the graceful turns of phrase, Kindleberger is deadly serious. The manner in which human beings earn their livings is no laughing matter to him, especially when they attempt to do so at the expense of one another. As he so effectively demonstrates, manias, panics, and crashes are the consequence of an economic environment that cultivates cupidity, chicanery, and rapaciousness rather than a devout belief in the Golden Rule." - From the Foreword to the Fourth Edition by Peter L. Bernstein, author Against the Gods and The Power of Gold
Praise for previous editions of Manias, Panics, and Crashes
"Classic....Manias, Panics, and Crashes is a durable guide to meditation: wise, witty, and practical. It is a template against which to measure the latest financial crisis-whatever and whenever that happens to be." - David Warsh, the Boston Globe
"Definitive." - Floyd Norris, The New York Times
[Manias, Panics, and Crashes] is a scholarly account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries." - Richard Lambert, Financial Times
"What long has been the best history of financial pathologies is now even better. The reader who absorbs Kindleberger's lessons will be prepared to foresee and navigate the financial crises that surely lie ahead. Like a true classic, Manias, Panics, and Crashes is both timely and timeless." - Richard Sylla, Kaufman Professor of Financial History, Stern School of Business, New York University
Customer Reviews:
A classic book on financial bubbles from an exceptional scholar.......2007-10-01
Kindleberger was a professor of economics at MIT, and a deep scholar of the history of financial bubbles and subsequent crashes. He proves with many examples that growth in the supply of credit is a fundamental factor in bubble development, stengthening associations of this type categorized by Hyman Minsky. While Kindleberger's writing is sometimes redundant, his amazing grasp of the details of financial history, numerous examples, and deep understanding more than compensate for this minor limitation of style. This book has been through 5 editions and is an indispensable reference; it is also a fascinating read. It should not to be missed by any serious investor, nor any student of financial manias and panics.
Writing after crashes is easy.......2007-09-04
Many causes for financial crashes. All have more or less the same pattern. A lot of publication appear after a crash, who will write before the crash?
This book gives good insight into financial chaos.
If you like investments, you need read this book. Now!.......2007-07-10
This book is exceptional.
After read it you will see the market, the history, and... Specially the warnings, with other eye.
Kindleberger wrote an excellent book about Manias, about Panics, about Crashes, about HOW keep alert!
Don't panic... just read it.
[...]
A History of Financial Crises by Kindleberger.......2007-06-10
This is heavy reading even for an academian, if I'm not mistaken. It goes on-and-on citing the details of finacial crises in history going back several centuries. There's no question that Mr Kindleberger's research is majestic. For any student that is exploring historical materials on finance, this book woould be a great source. One of the hardest part of this book is to sort out useable information for the average person that wants to be an alert investor.
John Casey
Northville, MI., 48167
Economic history.......2007-04-17
History always has lessons to teach us. In addition to comments by Golden Lion from Utah, I believed this book really spoke poignantly about the "adjustment process" of global or local market imbalances and the possible causes.
The causes are elaborated in many different examples from the Dutch Tulip crash to the dot-com crash. Signs of the excess liquidity, overly generous expectations of future demand, and other general characteristics are drawn from these events.
In the economic case where A has caused B, then B has caused C, and so on. If Z is a market crash, one cannot blame Y for losses. The book writes that its the cumulative effects of A-Y that has caused this, and more likely the pin-prick that pops a "bubble" is normally from a totally unexcepted source. To me, this was the greatest take away point -- naturally after every market crash we attempt to learn from our follies. However, the market has also learned and adapted, such that the next market failure is caused by a different set, but the same symptoms are similar to A-Y.
On the negative side, I wished that the latest version did a little better job at editing down the redundancies. For example, the Japanese real estate collapse in the early 1990's was used 5-7 times in different parts of the book -- in many cases, the underlying story was retold, even verbatim. I would disagree with one of the reviewers, that one needs an advanced degree to understand this book, however, an appreciation for economic theory is helpful, particularly monetary policies and capital markets. It does not require up-to-date knowledge of the stock, currencies, or bond markets.
Nevertheless, a good book to keep and re-read every few years. Always worth remembering our past mistakes and trying to create an edge.
Book Description
In An Engine, Not a Camera, Donald MacKenzie argues that the emergence of modern economic theories of finance affected financial markets in fundamental ways. These new, Nobel Prize-winning theories, based on elegant mathematical models of markets, were not simply external analyses but intrinsic parts of economic processes.
Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, MacKenzie says that economic models are an engine of inquiry rather than a camera to reproduce empirical facts. More than that, the emergence of an authoritative theory of financial markets altered those markets fundamentally. For example, in 1970, there was almost no trading in financial derivatives such as "futures." By June of 2004, derivatives contracts totaling $273 trillion were outstanding worldwide. MacKenzie suggests that this growth could never have happened without the development of theories that gave derivatives legitimacy and explained their complexities.
MacKenzie examines the role played by finance theory in the two most serious crises to hit the world’s financial markets in recent years: the stock market crash of 1987 and the market turmoil that engulfed the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. He also looks at finance theory that is somewhat beyond the mainstream--chaos theorist Benoit Mandelbrot’s model of âwildâ randomness. MacKenzie’s pioneering work in the social studies of finance will interest anyone who wants to understand how America’s financial markets have grown into their current form.
Customer Reviews:
A plausible case.......2007-08-29
Many financial analysts and financial journalists have pointed to quantitative trading and the subprime mortgage markets as being the major cause behind the extreme volatility in the financial markets in the summer of 2007. This book therefore seems fitting for this particular time in financial history, if only at a bare minimum to educate the reader about the use of mathematical modeling in financial analysis and financial engineering. As the subtitle of the book indicates, the author's main thesis is that the use of mathematical models can actually change the dynamics of the markets themselves, moving them possibly to territories even more uncertain that they were invented to describe. Quantitative trading, now done by most of the major players in the financial markets, is dependent of course on mathematical modeling, some of which uses highly sophisticated reasoning patterns and artificial intelligence. Most of these models are proprietary, and therefore one cannot ascertain their efficacy in the acquisition of wealth for the organizations that deploy them. However, with a little pertinacity one can acquire a good understanding of their workings by studying the academic literature.
Some of the predominant models in the public domain are discussed in this book, mostly from an historical perspective but the author inserts some of the relevant mathematics in its appendices for the more mathematically sophisticated reader. In general the author makes a plausible case for his main thesis, but at times his conclusions are based on mere anecdotes, and he makes the typical mistake of imputing power and influence to individuals that is unsubstantiated. It is very tempting, especially among those individuals or institutions that are involved in trading, or even responsible for innovations in the same, to believe that they are the cause for some of volatility in the financial markets. But such claims, even if they seem reasonable or intuitively clear, must be substantiated with careful statistical analysis, which can be time-consuming and difficult, and few individuals it seems are willing to devote themselves to such a project. The author though is aware of this, for he states very early on in the book that historical sources may not be sufficient to allow one to decide if the influences are real. In addition, he cautions the reader to "look not just at what participants say and write but also at whether the processes in question involve procedures and material devices that incorporate economics."
The author labels the idea that economics as an academic project is actually part of economic processes the `performativity of economics', which he further breaks down into subclasses that serve to clarify the distinctions he wishes to make. One of these is more of a passive notion, called "generic" performativity, which is used to describe the participant's use of economic theories or data without emphasizing their effects on economic processes. If such effects take place, this is called "effective" performativity, which is then specialized to "Barnesian" performativity. The latter is used to describe the situations where the practical use of economic theory makes economic processes resemble what they are described to be by economic theory. Barnesian performativity is to be contrasted with `counterperformativity' where the actual use of economic models makes economic processes not resemble their description by these models. The author discusses how to detect Barnesian performativity, but warns of the difficulty in proving that movements in prices are following certain model predictions.
But aside from the qualitative/historical emphasis that the author makes in this book and the small number of unsubstantiated claims of model-market influence, the reader will take away a better understanding of such topics as the capital asset pricing model, the Black-Scholes-Merton model of option pricing, the Modigliani-Miller theory of capital structure, a description of Levy processes and their role in econometrics, and most interestingly, a different explanation for the demise of Long Term Capital Management. All of these topics, coupled with the intellectual honesty and literary skill of the author, make this book a highly interesting contribution to the financial literature.
An Insightful Look into Finance's Twin Roles.......2006-12-19
Both the science and the art and practice of finance have experienced phenomenal growth since the 1970s.
As a science, finance has evolved from a descriptive outpost on the economic frontiers to become of that discipline's central topics. During the same period, the financial markets changed from what often seems today like sleepy outposts of liquidity into dynamic centers for financial engineering. In the 1970s, the world was being introduced to commodity hedging and options trading. By the early part of the 21st century, derivatives contracts totaling more than $273 trillion were outstanding worldwide.
Donald MacKenzie, a sociology professor at the University of Edinburgh, argues in An Engine, Not a Camera, the trends are connected. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, he argues the emergence of economic models were an engine of inquiry rather than a camera to reproduce empirical facts. As the science of finance became authoritative, the markets were altered. These new, Nobel Prize-winning theories, elegant mathematical markets models, were more than external analyses. They evolved into intrinsic parts of the financial process.
Beginning with a discussion of the work of Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller, the Capital Asset Pricing Model and Random Walk, MacKenzie takes the reader on a journey through the development of the Black-Scholes-Merton model, The Crash of 1987, Long-Term Capital Management and the Russian government's default in 1998 to bind the threads of his thesis.
Detailed, astute, well-written, and with much of the technical detail relegated to the appendices, this book weaves economics, financial theory, economic sociology and science and technology studies into an essential read for anyone with a serious interest in the financial markets.
Amazon.com
It's not often--or maybe ever--that a book steeped in emerging-market economic theory reads like a thriller. But And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) has cliffhangers and plot twists equal to a detective's tale, as Paul Blustein chronicles the spectacular rise and fall of Argentina's economy at the turn of the 21st century. The book has its flaws, of course, including the author's insistence on using goofy metaphors from the overripe Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita (from which the book takes its awkward title). But by and large, Blustein, a staff writer at the Washington Post, tells a cynic's tale of greed run amok on a massive scale.
While policy wonks at the International Monetary Fund had much to do with Argentina's implosion, Blustein also holds the country's own government responsible. Conventional wisdom says that the influence of the world's investors keeps everyone in line--a key tenet of the pro-globalization argument--but in practice, Blustein writes, "foreign funds numbed Argentine policymakers into minimizing the perils of their policies. The effect was similar to a dose of steroids, giving the economy a short-term boost while insidiously increasing the risk of a breakdown in the long run." From that point on, only devastation lay ahead for many average Argentineans, who could no longer remove savings from their banks, and for international investors, who saw their returns vanish in a flash. Blustein effectively makes the case that Argentina wasn't a rare example or a perfect storm of problems, but--bearing "striking parallels" to Enron and other financial scandals of the era--a preview of more meltdowns to come. It's a compelling cautionary tale well worth telling. --Jennifer Buckendorff
Book Description
The dramatic, definitive account of the most spectacular economic meltdown of modern times exposes the dangerous flaws of our global financial system.
In the 1990s, few countries were more lionized than Argentina for its efforts to join the club of wealthy nations. Argentina's policies drew enthusiastic applause from the IMF, the World Bank and Wall Street. But the club has a disturbing propensity to turn its back on arrivistes and cast them out. That was what happened in 2001, when Argentina suffered one of the most spectacular crashes in modern history. With it came appalling social and political chaos, a collapse of the peso, and a wrenching downturn that threw millions into poverty and left nearly one quarter of the workforce unemployed.
Paul Blustein, whose book about the IMF, The Chastening, was called "gripping, often frightening" by The Economist and lauded by the Wall Street Journal as "a superbly reported and skillfully woven story," now gets right inside Argentina's rise and fall in a dramatic account based on hundreds of interviews with top policymakers and financial market players as well as reams of internal documents. He shows how the IMF turned a blind eye to the vulnerabilities of its star pupil, and exposes the conduct of global financial market players in Argentina as redolent of the scandals-like those at Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing- that rocked Wall Street in recent years. By going behind the scenes of Argentina's debacle, Blustein shows with unmistakable clarity how sadly elusive the path of hope and progress remains to the great bulk of humanity still mired in poverty and underdevelopment.
Customer Reviews:
Superb book - reads like a fiction, hits like reality!.......2007-10-10
This is a short book, easy to read and boy, does it deliver! An account of Argentina during it's economy's heyday and the fall, this book is a fascinating read. It starts off with a brief review of Argentina during the late 1800s and early 1900s but jumps right on the main topic after that. The author explains in extremely lucid prose (no finance knowledge required whatsoever) how the economy was fueled by international funds and how it went bust. Excellent examples, and written like a thriller ... 5 stars all the way!
A wonderful look at how an economy collapsed.......2007-07-09
This book seeks to understand how and why Argentina sank into financial chaos in the early 2000's. The book looks at the role of the IMF, US treasury, private markets, and the Argentinean government in the overall downfall of the country. The author writes very well about his subject and has a good understanding of international economics. The IMF is not completely vilified as it is in many of the current financial crisis's and although it shares a large amount of the blame the book hands it out equally. There is quite a bit of conspiracy theory and engaging in theories behind the IMF and Wall Street as well as the Bush administration. The author acknowledges in most cases that these are conspiracies but they did not really need to be discussed. The most interesting part of the story has to do with the role that the markets played in Argentina. It is an interesting foreshadow for the future of emerging markets and looking at the self fulfilling prophecies of debt and equity. This book deserves its credit for focusing on real issues without engaging in much ideology or theory. If you want to understand how financial markets are impacting areas overseas this is a great book to start with.
Objective chronicle of a nation's collapse.......2007-06-10
This book examines the economic history of Argentina from the early 20th century to 2004, with an emphasis on the time period from 1989 to 2002. The focus is on the financial sector of the economy, and how actions by the government and international financial institutions first ballooned Argentina's economy over a decade, and then collapsed it in just under 2 years. The point of view is from the top, as the book follows multiple important figures throughout this time, including officials at the IMF, officials in Argentina's government, and financial bigwigs in the US and Europe, both public and private.
The author is quite objective and impartial, and lays blame all around. The IMF gets some blame for not being more forceful in getting Argentina to change its ways. International banks and lenders get blame for contributing willingly to the financial bubble of the country. And the Argentinan government gets blame for refusing to consider floating its currency, devaluing it, or restructuring its debt before it was too late. Unfortunately, it was the citizens, mainly poor and middle class, of Argentina who took it in the pocketbooks. All in all a great book, with equal emphasis on economics, public policy, and historical analysis. I highly recommend this book.
Another Winner from Blustein.......2006-10-15
Paul Blustein may have have created a new genre: the real-life financial crisis thriller. Having dissected the Asian financial crisis in "The Chastening," he now turns to Argentina in "And the Money Kept Rolling in (and Out)." The book tells the fascinating story of how Argentina, after being lionized as the poster child of free market reform in the early 1990s, became hooked on foreign debt that ballooned far faster than its ability to service it. The outcome was default and financial ruin in 2001-02, with vast economic hardship for the Argentine population.
As in "The Chasterning," Blustein's narrative is clearly-written and based on in-depth interviews with decision-makers in government, the IMF, and the financial community. He takes aim at perverse institutional incentives and herd-behavior among investors who poured money into Argentina long after it was clear that the country couldn't pay its bills. This profligacy encouraged an attitude of policy-complacency in Buenos Aires that made the final reckoning all the more painful for foreign bond-holders and Argentines alike. Highly recommended.
Economics of Debt.......2006-09-18
This was a very interesting book about the IMF and its dealing with Argentina. Argentina has had a colorful past of financial blunders including one in 1890 which almost brought down Barings Bank when it defaulted on its bond payments. So it was not surprising when Argentina bankrupted again.
Not only does this book have the inner workings of the IMF with regard to Argentina but it also contains some short stories of average people and the catastrophies that befell them because of Argentina's currency devaluation. I found it interesting that because Argentina guaranteed an exchange rate between its currency and the dollar that a lot of people had taken out loans in dollars which proved to be disasterous when the peso was devalued.
All the information about the behind the scenes action of the IMF was very insightful as to the inner workings of global financing of emerging nations. The author did a good job bringing home the facts and helping the reader get to know the players in both the IMF and the Argentine government. In summary this was a good lesson on the economics of what debt can do to a country.
Book Description
Roughly once a year, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. treasury secretary and in some cases the finance ministers of other G-7 countries will get a call from the finance minister of a large emerging market economy. The emerging market finance minister will indicate that the country is rapidly running out of foreign reserves, that it has lost access to international capital markets and, perhaps, that is has lost the confidence of its own citizens. Without a rescue loan, it will be forced to devalue its currency and default either on its government debt or on loans to the country's banks that the government has guaranteed. This book looks at these situations and the options available to alleviate the problem. It argues for a policy that recognizes that every crisis is different and that different cases need to be handled within a framework that provides consistency and predictability to borrowing countries as well as those who invest in their debt.
Customer Reviews:
One of the best...........2007-02-24
I don't know where to begin with this review, but I just wanted to say this is one of the best books on the subject and anyone interested in global economics and markets should read this book.
Book Description
"History shows that people who save and invest grow and prosper, and the others deteriorate and collapse.
As
Financial Reckoning Day demonstrates, artificially low interest rates and rapid credit creation policies set by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve caused the bubble in U.S. stocks of the late '90s. . . . Now, policies being pursued at the Fed are making the bubble worse. They are changing it from a stock market bubble to a consumption and housing bubble.
And when those bubbles burst, it's going to be worse than the stock market bubble . . .
No one, of course, wants to hear it. They want the quick fix. They want to buy the stock and watch it go up twenty-five percent because that's what happened last year, and that's what they say on TV."
—Jim Rogers, author of the bestseller Adventure Capitalist
from the Foreword to
Financial Reckoning Day
Advanced praise from bestselling authors
"An investment book that will not only enlarge your investment horizon, but also make you laugh and thoroughly entertain you for a few hours."
—Dr. Marc Faber, author of the bestseller Tomorrow's Gold
"Financial Reckoning Day is . . . in the category of scintillating sex or good vision, something to be savored and enjoyed-before it is too late."
—James Dale Davidson, author of the bestseller The Great Reckoning and The Sovereign Individual
"A powerful and insightful vision . . . each paragraph stimulates a new rush of thoughts that fills in gaping holes in the investor's understanding of what has happened to their dreams . . . while prepping them to confront any new confusion that may arrive."
—Martin D. Weiss, author of the bestseller Crash Profits
Download Description
The investor's guide to surviving a slowing economy
Financial Reckoning Day is a "big picture" investment book that skillfully illustrates how the American economy is following in the footsteps of the Japanese economy, which fell into a long, soft "slow motion" deflationary depression brought about by two irresistible forces-its aging population and a structural reaction to the greatest financial boom in its history. With the U.S. market in a downturn, investors are looking for answers to why this is happening and what they can do to protect their investments. Financial Reckoning Day will provide the answers to those questions. Written by a team of well-respected financial professionals-whose publications and newsletters reach a quarter million investors each week-this book shows readers how the economic megaboom of the 1990s will inevitably be followed by a megabust in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Many believe that depressions are artifacts of financial history, not features of the future. Financial Reckoning Day shows why these events are a real possibility and discusses the dangers they pose to investors around the world, arguing that popular democracy, aging populations, and bad economic theories doom Western economics to bear markets, and falling consumer spending for years to come. More importantly, it shows readers how they can survive and thrive during such events.
William Bonner is President and CEO of Agora Publishing, one of the largest financial newsletters published in the world. Bonner is the creator of the Daily Reckoning, a contrarian financial newsletter. There are now more than 450,000 readers and the newsletter has received praise from numerous publications including Money and Worth magazines.
Addison Wiggin is Managing Editor for the Daily Reckoning financial newsletter.
Customer Reviews:
It's all in Adam Smith.......2007-08-12
The authors of this book come close to identifying and pinpointing what the major cause of financial bubbles is and the disasterous impacts that affect large portions of the general population when they pop.
They correctly give the first half of the story when they quote(p.238) Adam Smith's assessment that aggregate savings is a necessary ingredient that is vitally important in order to maintain aggregate economic growth over time once an optimal capital stock has already been accumulated in the present while the prodigal and other misbehavior destroys the possibility of economic growth.Smith,however,goes on to clearly identify what he means by misbehavior.Misbehavior occurs when the private commercial banks and investment banking houses on Wall Street take the savings of the population and waste and destroy it by making loans to projectors(J M Keynes' speculators-chapter 12,General Theory,1936)and imprudent risk takers(Keynes's lender's versus borrower's risk discussion in chapter 11,GT)instead of making the loans to the " sober " people who will invest it in starting new businesses and /or expanding existing businesses.The loans can't be made to speculators who will use the loans to leverage their speculative financial behavior.The private equity firms and hedge funds are using the capital markets to distort and manipulate the assets,liabilities,and equity of American business firms and corporations in order to use them to back an ever increasing number of new financial instruments, such as derivatives,lease-backs,sub prime loan backed bonds,etc.,that will create financial returns irrespective of any real increased productivity from the firms that are taken over by the debt financed leveraged buyouts.
What, then, is Smith's solution ? It is to prevent the problem from arising in the first place!! Fix the rate of interest on bank loans at a low rate marginally above the prime rate permanently in the long run.Cut off all loans to projectors,prodigals,and imprudent risk takers.Make sure the loans get into the hands of productive people and not Wall Street speculators.See Smith(Wealth of Nations,1776,Modern Library (Cannan)edition,pp.296-340 in general and pp.339-340 specifically) .Follow the wisdom of Adam Smith and you will not have to worry about days of financial reckoning and/or surviving the next " soft" depression of the 21st century.Brussee's book on this problem would also be a good choice as he ties the problem directly to the investment banking houses on Wall Street,although he is not aware of the fact that Smith spotted this potential ,general problem well over two hundred years ago.
Bill Bonner - king of "doom & gloom" newsletters.......2007-07-07
His source of income is promoting "doom & gloom"
newsletters and writing an ocassional book such as this one.
He recommends buying gold silver & digging
yourself a hole in a ground to live in.
"The Sky is Falling!" = "Risk can't be transfered!".......2007-01-26
But Bonner and Wiggans did manage to pluck a subscription to their newsletter from you.
Chicken Little was in the woods one day when an acorn fell on her head. It scared her so much she trembled all over. She shook so hard, half her feathers fell out.
Chicken Little: "Help! Help! The sky is falling! I have to go tell the king!"
So she ran in great fright to tell the king. Along the way she met Henny Penny.
"Where are you going, Chicken Little?"
"Oh, help! The sky is falling!"
"How do you know?"
"I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears, and part of it fell on my head!"
"This is terrible, just terrible! We'd better hurry up."
So they both ran away as fast as they could. Soon they met Ducky Lucky.
..................
So they ran with all their might, until they met Foxy Loxy.
"Well, well. Where are you rushing on such a fine day?"
Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey (together) "Help! Help!" It's not a fine day at all. The sky is falling, and we're running to tell the king!"
"How do you know the sky is falling?"
"I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears, and part of it fell on my head!"
"I see. Well then, follow me, and I'll show you the way to the king."
So Foxy Loxy led Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, and Turkey Lurkey across a field and through the woods. He led them straight to his den, and they never saw the king to tell him that the sky is falling.
But Bonne and Wiggans did manage to pluck a subscription to their newsletter from you.
Their first before Empire.......2007-01-07
This is Bonner and Wiggins' book just before Empire of Debt. There is repetition betw. the two and if I were you I'd get Empire and not worry about this one. That said, the authors are spot on about the mess we American's are in and in for.
Financial Reckoning Day.......2006-11-12
An easy to read book. I like their irreverend, somewhat cynical style of describing the current financial and politcal situtation our country is in. Just like their previous book the content is well researched. However just like their previous book this book has the same glaring ommission: a clear vision from the authors about how we could possibly remedy the situation.
Book Description
The scientific study of complex systems has transformed a wide range of disciplines in recent years, enabling researchers in both the natural and social sciences to model and predict phenomena as diverse as earthquakes, global warming, demographic patterns, financial crises, and the failure of materials. In this book, Didier Sornette boldly applies his varied experience in these areas to propose a simple, powerful, and general theory of how, why, and when stock markets crash.
Most attempts to explain market failures seek to pinpoint triggering mechanisms that occur hours, days, or weeks before the collapse. Sornette proposes a radically different view: the underlying cause can be sought months and even years before the abrupt, catastrophic event in the build-up of cooperative speculation, which often translates into an accelerating rise of the market price, otherwise known as a "bubble." Anchoring his sophisticated, step-by-step analysis in leading-edge physical and statistical modeling techniques, he unearths remarkable insights and some predictions--among them, that the "end of the growth era" will occur around 2050.
Sornette probes major historical precedents, from the decades-long "tulip mania" in the Netherlands that wilted suddenly in 1637 to the South Sea Bubble that ended with the first huge market crash in England in 1720, to the Great Crash of October 1929 and Black Monday in 1987, to cite just a few. He concludes that most explanations other than cooperative self-organization fail to account for the subtle bubbles by which the markets lay the groundwork for catastrophe.
Any investor or investment professional who seeks a genuine understanding of looming financial disasters should read this book. Physicists, geologists, biologists, economists, and others will welcome Why Stock Markets Crash as a highly original "scientific tale," as Sornette aptly puts it, of the exciting and sometimes fearsome--but no longer quite so unfathomable--world of stock markets.
Customer Reviews:
A Good Book--But No Longer Pertinent........2007-10-07
I could not enjoy this wonderful book with the knowledge that the unprincipled 41st and 43rd Presidents of the United States have negated all the time-tested principles of good investment strategies. I'm, Bob Miller, the creator of the FreeStockSystem.
2068.......2007-07-17
1 Lorenz Weather equations: The vertical axis is time, which goes from 0 to 5 in this plot. For each time, the third dimension in perspective show the probability distribution of the wind velocity v: the maximum of the initial bell-shape distribution corresponds to the best initial guess of what is the present state of the system. The width of the bell-shape curve quantifies the initial uncertainty of our observations: we perform an initial measurement of the wind velocity and we know that any measure has some uncertainty, here quantified by the probability that the true initial condition deviates from the best estimate corresponding to the peak. As the peak decreases in amplitude and widens this suggests increasing uncertainty in the value v.
2. "Regions of decreasing uncertainty may exist in chaotic dynamics." Increasing the forecast horizon does not always lead to a degradation of the prediction, in contrast to standard views on chaotic dynamics.
3. English mathematician F.P Ramsey proved that compete disorder is impossible. Every large set of numbers, such as an ensemble of financial price series or points or objects, necessarily contains highly regular patterns. The relevant question is then, to figure out how many stars, numbers, or figures are required to guarantee a certain desired pattern. How probable is it to find a certain pattern in a given set? 50 of the 400 week intervals since 1910-1996 were chosen at random. The terms of the fit parameters correspond with three crashes in 1929, 1962, and 1987. "The probability that the log-periodic component results from chance is about or less than one in twenty."
4. A crash is not the critical or singular point itself, but its triggering rate is strongly influenced by the proximity of the critical point: the closer to the critical time, the more probable is the crash.
5. The Law of One price, states that two assets should sell for the same price. If the price differs in two markets, a profitable opportunity arises to sell the asset where it is overpriced and buy where it is under-priced. "Clearly, a noise-free stock market with all information available occupied by fully rational traders of infinite analysis abilities would have a very small trade volume, if any." A significant number of traders exhibit rational behavior. Information is incomplete and stock traders have limited abilities with respect to analyzing the available information. The market becomes rational if there are many heterogonous agents working on limited information. Perfectly rational investing won out, not because it was perfect, but because it was useful. "The machinery behind market rationality is that each investor, using the market to serve his or her own self-interest, unwittingly makes prices reflect the investor's information and analysis." The irrationalities should be studied concerning how they aggregate in the complex, long-lasting, repetitive, and subtle environment of the market.
6. What makes a share in a company valuable? It is earnings, which provide dividends and its potential appreciation, which gives rise to capital gains. Goldstone modes are the zero-energy infinite-wavelength mode fluctuations that attempt to restore broken symmetry. Value today is equal to its expected value tomorrow discounted by the discount factor. In the bubble component, there is not dividend! The bubble is playing the role of the Goldstone mode. "The bubble price can wander up or down and, in limit where it becomes very large in absolute value, dominate over the fundamental price, restoring the independence of the price with respect to dividend." Goldstone modes appear spontaneous since it has no energy cost, the rational bubble can be spontaneous without any dividend. There is a competition between the increasing growth of the company and the decreasing impact of dividends further in the future due to the effect of the discount factor. The increasing growth of dividends tends to raise price. Dividends are reduced to a risk-adjusted growth rate. When the risk adjusted growth rate becomes equal or larger than the discount rate, the fundamental valuation formula becomes meaningless. The price is the sum of all future presently adjusted dividends. Speculative phases are often stopped by successive increase of the discount rate. 1929 (3.25% to 6%), 1990 in Japan ( 2.55 to 6%)
7. The Crash Hazard rate quantifies the probability that a large group of agents place sell orders simultaneously and create enough of an imbalance in the order book for market makers to be unable to absorb the other side without lowering prices substantially. Cooperative behavior results from imitation. "Our working hypothesis is that agents tend to imitate the opinions of their connections." "A crash occurs when order wins. In stable markets buyers and sellers balance out each other, normal times are when disorder wins. When the imitation strength K gets close to a special critical value Kc, a very large group of investors share the same opinion, a may act in a coordinated way, an abrupt drop in price, infinite slope K/Kc, a crash occurs. "New demographic, technological, or economic developments prompt spontaneous innovation in financial markets and the first wave of investors and innovators become wealthy. Then imitators arrive and overdo the new techniques. In the ensuing crises, latecomers lose big before regulators and academics put out fires."
8. Log-periodic equation: Flp(t)=A2 +B2(tc-t)^m2*[C*Cos(w*log(tc-t)/T))]. Decimal year 365 days=1.00 year, Oct 19, 1987 = 87.800 or 1 day=.00274
9. Oct 19, 1987: A2=412, B2=-165, tc=87.74, C=12, w=7.4, T=2, m2=.33 Oct 1929: A2=61 B2=-0.56 Tc=29.84 C=0.08 W=5 T=3 M2=0.63
10. For a few weeks after the crash, a exponentially decaying sinusoidal function emerged. For a few weeks after the crash, a single dissipative harmonic oscillator, with a characteristic decay time of about one week equal to he period of the oscillations.
11. "The concept that emerges here is that the organization of traders in financial markets leads intrinsically to systemic instabilities, which probably result in a very robust way from the fundamental nature of human beings." "The global behavior of the market, with its log-periodic structures that emerge as a result of the cooperative behavior of traders, is reminiscent of the process of the emergence of intelligent behavior at a macroscopic scale that individuals at the microscopic scale cannot perceive."
12. It is estimated that the 25 companies that make up one-third of S&P500 index of market capitalization earn roughly half of their income from non-US sources. Oct 1987, to carry the bull-run, the market need to sustain corporate earnings, if not the cycle of rising prices would wither, concern over earnings may have been the straw that broke the camels back.
13. Bubble pathology: a. The bubble starts smoothly with some increasing production and sales or demand for some commodity in an otherwise relatively optimistic market. B. The attraction in investments with good potential gains leads to increasing investment with leverage coming from international investors. Price appreciation occurs. C. This in turn attracts less sophisticated investors, leveraging is further developed which leads to the demand for stock rising faster than the rate at which real money is put into the market. (earnings) D. At this stage, the behavior of the market becomes weakly coupled or practically uncoupled from real wealth. E. As price skyrockets, the number of speculative investors decreases and a period of nervousness starts until a point when the instability is revealed and the market collapses.
14.Pollution: Life expectancy, which the best overall index of the pollution level, has improved markedly as the world population has grown. Food: There is compelling reason to believe that human nutrition will continue to improve into the infinite future. Land: The amount of agricultural land has increased substantially, and is likely to continue to increase where needed. Natural Resources: Natural resources will progressively become less costly, hence less scarce, and will constitute a small proportion of our expense in the future. Energy: The long-term impact of more people is likely to speed the development of cheap energy supplies that are almost inexhaustible. Standard of Living: per capita income is likely to be higher with a growing population than with a stationary one. Human fertility: the contention that poor breed without constraint is wrong. Population growth: Even though the population for the world is increasing, the density of population on most of the world's surface will decrease.
15. Parabolic Trend to get the (a,b,c coefficients of the Log peridocity function)
a. Create a Price Y column and input a range of prices then sum the prices into a variable called SumY
b. Create a time interval called X representing a numeric value. For example (1..n) and sum these values with the label SumX
c. Count the number of price values and store in a variable called n
d. Xmean=X/n
e. Create a column labeled x where x=X-Xmean values
f. Create a column labeled x^2 where x^2=x*x and sum values into a variable SumX^2
g. Create a column labeled x^4 where x^4=x*x*x*x and sum values into a variable SumX^4
h. Create a column labeled x times Y=x*Y and sum values into a variable Sumx_times_SumY
i. Create a column labeled x^2_times_Y=x*x*Y and sum into a variable Sum_x^2_times_Y
j. Solve for coefficients a,b,c where
Equation 1: SumY=a*n+c*Sumx^2
And
Equation 2: Sumx^2*SumY=a*Sumx^2+c*Sumx^4
And
Equation 3: b=Sumx_times_Y/Sumx^2
k. Solve for c using substitution of values into Equation 1 and Equation 2. Here's how. Multiple equation 1 by sumx^2-1, canceling the a coefficient and solving the c coefficient value.
l. Substitute the c coefficient value into equation 1 and solve for the a coefficient value
m. Substitute values for Sumx_timesY and Sumx^2 into Equation 3 and solve for the b coeffient.
n. Plot the curve using the Y and x columns and a new column called Yprime where Yprime=a+b*x+c*x^2
Very convincing.......2007-07-07
Buy low and sell high: In trading stocks this cliché is obvious, but its ramifications can be extremely painful for all those involved, as well as many who are not, especially when a large collection of traders act in concert and engage in massive sell-offs. Financial bubbles, stock market crashes, and out-of-control speculation have been the subject of countless books and research papers and dozens of Hollywood movies, and mathematicians, economists, systems analysts, and financial engineers have spent thousands of hours of time attempting to understand and predict financial meltdowns, all with varying degrees of success. Some of these researchers have argued that it is the large-scale, collective properties of the financial markets that must be understood if stock market crashes are to be predicted or at least anticipated quantitatively.
The author of this book, a geophysicist by training, is one of these and has taken the "buy low-sell high" strategy and some straightforward mathematical constructions to give an interesting and plausible explanation of why stock markets crash. Intuitively, traders synchronously try to buy low and sell high, and a "herding effect" results in a rapid sell-off that results in a market crash. This behavior is analogous to what one observes in physical systems that are close to a `critical point', where they can undergo `phase transitions' and their behavior as they near the critical point has been shown to be "universal" in the sense that quantities called `scaling exponents' can be calculated explicitly and measure the "universality" of the systems near the critical point.
Naturally the stock market crashes of 1929 and 1987 are ones that that will stand out in every reader's mind and ones that must be test examples for the author's assertions. He discusses these two examples and many others in enough detail that a convincing case is made. The techniques he uses however are out of the mainstream of econometrics, and no doubt some in this mainstream will there be highly skeptical of his conclusions. The physicist-turned-financial engineer however will be delighted, as there will be many familiar concepts and constructions throughout the book. There may be a few new ones to such a reader however, such as `algorithmic complexity' and `computationally irreducible'. The clarity of the author's writing and the many real-world examples that he employs makes the assimilation of these concepts and others much more palatable than would be the case in a standard mathematical monograph on the subject. In addition, the techniques he uses can be applied to areas of finance that are not discussed in the book, such as the mortgage "antibubble" in net credit losses for second-lien (HELOC) loans that began in the second quarter of 2006. And with respect to applications, the author is honest enough to note that he refrains from discussing many of them in detail since his involvement in them is strictly proprietary. Most refreshingly, charts, graphs, and tables appear throughout the book, as would be necessary in the validation of any algorithm or predictor in financial theory.
There are also many interesting "toy models" in the book that enhance the didactic quality. One of these concerns the dependences that can occur in successive price variations. The author constructs a model where there is zero correlation but where one can predict the current price variation with an accuracy of over 50% by only knowing the variations in the past two days. This example serves as a good counter to the idea that the frequency distribution and two-point correlation function must always be non-zero in order to obtain successful prediction. The author goes on to use this example to show how "drawdowns", rather than the correlation structure, play the predominant role in measuring price changes. This example, among others, also illustrates the author's belief that the "standard" models in the financial industry have great difficulty in dealing with large financial crashes.
Although the author uses somewhat elementary mathematics in the book, its implications are profound. One will find for example discussions of log-periodic oscillations in hierarchical systems, the renormalization group, and complex fractal dimension. Central to the author's case is the concept of discrete scale invariance, which is a specialization of the continuous case, and which is manifested in real data by log-periodic oscillations. These should be viewed as corrections to simple power law scaling. The author discusses a few natural systems that exhibit log-periodicity, such as bats and dolphins, and in evolutionary biology. He also discusses other examples in mathematics such as the Newcomb-Benford law. Pre-crash stock market data is fitted to expressions that have log-periodic corrections to a pure power law and the validity of the fits discussed in great detail. The author's arguments are powerful and convincing, and the formalism that he outlines needs to be part of every financial analyst's toolbox.
why this stock market book should crash.......2006-11-09
After reading the book, I still didn't know why stock markets crash other than it's a greater than 3-sigma event. However, one doesn't need this book to find that out. Just a quick glance at any major stock market indices for the last 100 years indicates that crashes occur only rarely. But more to the point, how does one use any of the data presented by the author to develop a safer strategy for investing in the market? The author never once definitively enumerated the specific "a priori" signs, indications, or patterns indicative of an impending crash.
While the author presents diverse data and arguments as to why stock markets have crashed in the past, she never assembles them into an integrated and cohesive postulate as to why they really do. Nor does she take the data and extract information for predicting future trends. This book was written too early in the developmental cycle of any unified theory purporting to quantify any stock market behavior. Once I finished the book, I had this nagging feeling that this book was a "publish or perish" driven event.
If you must spend money on stock market investing, buy a simple and inexpensive book on stock charting or candlesticks or visit a John Murphy internet website. You'll have a better probability of determining a downtrend following a double top or a head and shoulder formation than you will predicting an imminent stock market crash based on any of the disintegrated data discussed in her book. And when all is said and done, who cares about why stock markets crashed? What any reasonable investor wants to know is what the market is going to do tomorrow, next month, next year, and between now and the time one retires. And that trend has always been positive in spite of the rare three-sigma events to the downside.
Worth the effort, but still..........2005-12-21
This is a very interesting book, with some intriguing propositions about the nature of stock market bubbles and crashes, but saying this there also seem to be some fundamental problems with the positions being taken. Perhaps the largest reservation I have with the arguments in this book is that they presume that financial markets are governed by the same kind of invariances as physical phenomena, which is the only way it seems to me that these arguments can be expected to hold. These assumed 'invariances' take the form of "fundamental prices," "efficient markets," and "rational expectations," the proofs for which are by no means established in anything close to the same degree as the Galilean local invariances to which they are being compared. I also found it difficult to determine whether the author does or does not advocate equilibrium theories of markets, which again are highly dubious assumptions in regards to actual markets (especially General Equilibrium assumptions, which have been definitively refuted at least as far back as 1968, with Roy Radner's "Competitive Equilibrium Under Uncertainty"). However, saying all this, the author does present an intriguing analysis of crashes being quantitatively different from the regular activity of stock markets, and he does provide some plausible techniques for perhaps discovering when these differences are present.
Still, for this treatment, as for most treatments purporting to be able to statistically identify trends in as nonstationary an environment as the stock market, the feeling I keep returning to is the same one articulated by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner in his seminal paper "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" in which the question is asked "How do we know that, if we made a theory which focuses its attention on phenomena we disregard and disregards some of the phenomena now commanding our attention, that we could not build another theory which has little in common with the present one but which, nevertheless, explains just as many phenomena as the present theory?" (and this question was being asked in the context of the natural sciences, which as mentioned before are actually subject to local invariances, which are themselves not above suspicion...).
For a more realistic and grounded treatment of physics and finance, I would definitely recommend Dynamics of Markets by Joseph L. McCauley (who is coincidentally another reviewer of Sornette's book), as well as the writings of Giovanni Dosi, who is unique among economists for his emphasis on empirical support and verification of his theories and models. In addition, I would suggest that anyone interested in this book should also read "Comment on recent claims by Sornette and Zhou," which is a disclaimer by Anders Johansen, who was a recent collaborator with Sornette.
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The Politics of the New International Financial Architecture: Reimposing Neoliberal Domination in the Global South
Susanne Soederberg
Manufacturer: Zed Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Policy & Current Events
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ASIN: 1842773798
Release Date: 2005-01-13 |
Book Description
Recent years have witnessed a veritable epidemic of financial crises--from Mexico, through South East Asia, Russia, Brazil and now Argentina. The rich industrial countries, led by the United States, have had to respond. This book examines the G7's attempts over the past decade to re-establish rules and a degree of order in the world financial system through the creation of the Financial Stability Forum and the G20, which they are calling the New International Financial Architecture. Susanne Soederberg asks: Why has the New International Financial Architecture emerged? At whose initiative? What does it involve? What are the underlying power relations? Who is benefiting? And, will it really work? The author argues that this tinkering with the capitalist system will not achieve either sustained economic growth or stability in financial markets, let alone enhance the capability of developing countries to tackle the problems of mass poverty and social injustice.
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The Post-Bubble US Economy: Implications for Financial Markets and the Economy
Philip Arestis , and
Elias Karakitsos
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1403936498
Release Date: 2004-12-23 |
Book Description
The US is slowly recovering from the aftermath of the burst of the "new economy" bubble--which was one of the worst in monetary history. Philip Arestis and Elias Karakitsos examine the causes and consequences of the burst of the "new economy" bubble and investigate the impact on financial markets. The risks and long-term prospects for the economy and financial markets are also examined.
Book Description
Listen to a short interview with Philip T. Hoffman
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane
Financial disasters often have long-range institutional consequences. When financial institutions--banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, stock exchanges--collapse, new ones take their place, and these changes shape markets for decades or even generations. Surviving Large Losses explains why such financial crises occur, why their effects last so long, and what political and economic conditions can help countries both rich and poor survive--and even prosper--in the aftermath. Looking at past and more recent financial disasters through the lens of political economy, the authors identify three factors critical to the development of financial institutions: the level of government debt, the size of the middle class, and the quality of information that is available to participants in financial transactions. They seek to find out when these factors promote financial development and mitigate the effects of financial crises and when they exacerbate them. Although there is no panacea for crises--no one set of institutions that will resolve them--it is possible, the authors argue, to strengthen existing financial institutions, to encourage economic growth, and to limit the harm that future catastrophes can do.
Customer Reviews:
Valuable look at why some countries' financial systems work.......2007-08-03
The authors take a look at how financial systems develop, frequently under the spur of financial crisis. Their arguments are supported by many interesting historical examples. The book begins with a look at how crises develop, from government predation and/or asymmetrical information (the seller knowing more than the buyer for example). It then reviews how different political systems respond to crises.
They also show that a well functioning financial system requires the right level of government (enough debt to get a bond market started, but not so much as to encourage the politicians to steal to pay it off, as in Argentina), a large enough middle class to provide a market for financial products and to discourage too much theft by government (the poor have no assets, the rich can afford to set up their own financial programs), and how the costs of information tie this together. The book ends with a look at some current situations, particularly microcredit and the looming problems of pensions and health care for a rapidly aging world with a static or declining population.
Their analysis is more theoretical than Kindleberger's 'Manias, Panics, and Crashes' and is focused on the structure of financial systems and how crises change them (not on panics per se).
Their discussion on pensions theorizes that privatization can not work, but doesn't discuss current private pension programs (in Chile for example). And the discussion of the role of asymmetric information mostly ignores the role of public manias. The authors used Enron as an example as an example of asymmetric information (since management's financial reports clearly did not reflect reality) but a look at the published 2000 Annual Report shows that in 2000 Enron was only marginally profitable, with a return on average equity of 8.6 % and a return on assets of 1.8 %. Operating earnings for 1998, 1999, and 2000 were 4.4 %, 3.1 %, and 1.9 % of sales. Yet the high price for the stock was over 4 times book value and 40 times earnings. Clearly a combination of ignorance and insanity was involved (the ignorance extended to the media; Fortune magazine proclaimed Enron as 'the most innovative company in the world' without wondering how anybody so wonderful had such a lousy return on investment).
Overall an very interesting and valuable look at financial systems, and how they develop and change within a country.
Books:
- Business and Its Environment (5th Edition)
- Business and Its Environment (5th Edition)
- Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World's Most Difficult Problems
- Chaos and Order in the Capital Markets: A New View of Cycles, Prices, and Market Volatility (Wiley Finance)
- Constructed Wetlands in the Sustainable Landscape
- Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole
- Cracking the AP Economics Macro and Micro Exams, 2006-2007 Edition (College Test Prep)
- Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
- Crafting and Executing Strategy : The Quest for Competitive Advantage - Concepts and Cases (Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases)
- Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse (Lynn Sonberg Books)
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