The world of money is being transformed as households and organizations face changing economies, and new currencies and payment systems like Bitcoin and Apple Pay gain ground. What is money, and how do we make sense of it? Money Talks is the first book to offer a wide range of alternative and unexpected explanations of how social relations, emotions, moral concerns, and institutions shape how we create, mark, and use money. This collection brings together a stellar group of international experts from multiple disciplines—sociology, economics, history, law, anthropology, political science, and philosophy—to propose fresh explanations for money's origins, uses, effects, and future. Money Talks explores five key questions: How do social relationships, emotions, and morals shape how people account for and use their money? How do corporations infuse social meaning into their financing and investment practices? What are the historical, political, and social foundations of currencies? When does money become contested, and are there things money shouldn't buy? What is the impact of the new twenty-first-century currencies on our social relations? At a time of growing concern over financial inequality, Money Talks overturns conventional views about money by revealing its profound social potential.
"In the dark, bewildering, trap-infested jungle of misinformation and opaque riddles that is the world of investment, JL Collins is the fatherly wizard on the side of the path, offering a simple map, warm words of encouragement and the tools to forge your way through with confidence. You'll never find a wiser advisor with a bigger heart." -- Malachi Rempen: Filmmaker, cartoonist, author and self-described ruffian This book grew out of a series of letters to my daughter concerning various things-mostly about money and investing-she was not yet quite ready to hear. Since money is the single most powerful tool we have for navigating this complex world we've created, understanding it is critical. "But Dad," she once said, "I know money is important. I just don't want to spend my life thinking about it." This was eye-opening. I love this stuff. But most people have better things to do with their precious time. Bridges to build, diseases to cure, treaties to negotiate, mountains to climb, technologies to create, children to teach, businesses to run. Unfortunately, benign neglect of things financial leaves you open to the charlatans of the financial world. The people who make investing endlessly complex, because if it can be made complex it becomes more profitable for them, more expensive for us, and we are forced into their waiting arms. Here's an important truth: Complex investments exist only to profit those who create and sell them. Not only are they more costly to the investor, they are less effective. The simple approach I created for her and present now to you, is not only easy to understand and implement, it is more powerful than any other. Together we'll explore: Debt: Why you must avoid it and what to do if you have it. The importance of having F-you Money. How to think about money, and the unique way understanding this is key to building your wealth. Where traditional investing advice goes wrong and what actually works. What the stock market really is and how it really works. Why the stock market always goes up and why most people still lose money investing in it. How to invest in a raging bull, or bear, market. Specific investments to implement these strategies. The Wealth Building and Wealth Preservation phases of your investing life and why they are not always tied to your age. How your asset allocation is tied to those phases and how to choose it. How to simplify the sometimes confusing world of 401(k), 403(b), TSP, IRA and Roth accounts. TRFs (Target Retirement Funds), HSAs (Health Savings Accounts) and RMDs (Required Minimum Distributions). What investment firm to use and why the one I recommend is so far superior to the competition. Why you should be very cautious when engaging an investment advisor and whether you need to at all. Why and how you can be conned, and how to avoid becoming prey. Why I don't recommend dollar cost averaging. What financial independence looks like and how to have your money support you. What the 4% rule is and how to use it to safely spend your wealth. The truth behind Social Security. A Case Study on how this all can be implemented in real life. Enjoy the read, and the journey!
In The Smart Money Method, the stock-picking techniques used by top industry professionals are laid bare for investors. This is the inside track on how top hedge funds pick stocks and build portfolios to make outsize returns. Stephen Clapham is a retired hedge fund partner who now trains stock analysts at some of the world’s largest and most successful institutional investors. He explains step-by-step his research process for picking stocks and testing their market-beating potential. His methodology provides the tools and techniques to research new stock ideas, as well as maintain and eventually sell an investment. From testing your thesis and making investment decisions, to managing your portfolio and deciding when to buy and sell, The Smart Money Method covers everything you need to know to avoid common pitfalls and invest with confidence. Unique insight is presented in several specific areas, including how to: • Find stock ideas • Assess the quality of any business • Judge management’s ability • Identify shady accounting and avoid dying companies • Value any business to find bargain shares • Navigate the consequences of COVID-19 And throughout, there are real-life investing examples and war stories from a 25-year career in stock markets. The message is clear – you can beat the market. To do so, you need to learn and apply the insider secrets contained within this book.
A comprehensive guide to talking about money in every aspect of your life, including at work, with friends and family, and in relationships, from the author of the Broke Millennial series. Let's face it--talking about money is always awkward. In this user-friendly and approachable guide, finance writer Erin Lowry helps take the stress out of these tricky conversations. With scripts, tips, and troubleshooting advice, she takes you through every possible money talk scenario, including: • how to tell your friends you can't afford the same lifestyle they can • how to ask your parents if they can afford retirement and if they'll need your support as they age • how to talk to your coworkers about your salary and negotiate with your boss • how to broach the subject of a prenup with your fiancé Lowry arms you with all of the financial knowledge you'll need in order to get the most out of each interaction, whether that's with your friends, your spouse, your employer, or your mom. It's time to demystify our money and hash out these tough topics with the important people in our lives, and this helpful book will make it all much easier.
In What Money Can't Buy, renowned political philosopher Michael J. Sandel rethinks the role that markets and money should play in our society. Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we put a price on human life to decide how much pollution to allow? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning admission to elite universities, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In his New York Times bestseller What Money Can't Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes up one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets? Over recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. In Justice, an international bestseller, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy, he provokes a debate that's been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?
Why do businesses contribute to political parties? Is money a universal language? Do business contributions to political parties convey different messages in different countries? This book answers these questions based on intensive case studies of Australia, Canada, and Germany, as well as data from other countries. Business money does talk politics. In liberal Australia and Canada, the competitive short-term focus of firms generated substantial demand for private goods that could help firms develop an advantage over their rivals. Thus, business financing of parties conveyed a pragmatic message: in exchange for small but certain financial benefits, contributing businesses expect, as a reciprocation, to receive special consideration of their lobbying efforts. Australia's left-right party system created an awareness of policy risk, which motivated ideological payments, but there was no ideological bias in business financing of politics in centrist Canada. In Germany's co-ordinated economy, the most important policies for firms tend to be the public goods defined, championed, and delivered by their business associations. In this context, the pragmatic motivation for contributions to political parties is weak. The combination of consensual political institutions and constrained parties means there is a very low risk of major policy change from election to election. So, there is also little interest in ideological financing of political parties. If money talks, what does it say? places business financing of political parties in the context of debates about political corruption and offers advice on political reform. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu http://www.ecprnet.eu The Comparative Politics series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.
Imagine one day you went to a cash-machine and found your money was gone. You rushed to your branch, where a teller said that overnight people had stopped believing in money, and it all vanished. Seem incredible? It happened, and it could happen again. Twilight of the Money Gods is the story of economics, told not as the science it strove to be, but as the religion it became. Over two centuries, it searched for the hidden codes which would reveal the path to a promised land of material abundance. While its prophets, from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, concerned themselves with the human condition, its priesthood gradually grew remote from its followers, until it lost sight of their tribulations. Today, amid a crisis of faith in their expertise, we must re-imagine an economics for a new era - one filled with both danger and opportunity.
"The challenge is, how do we get somebody 126 years old to get it up?" This was Sam Zell's unique way of saying hello to a large gathering at the Los Angeles Times shortly after taking charge of Tribune Company. "I'm your Viagra, OK?" Even for Sam Zell, one of the greatest contrarian investors, buying Tribune Company was a risky and controversial move. Many saw the purchase of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times by a man who had made his fortune in cargo containers, real estate, fertilizer, and plumbing to be a sign of the coming media apocalypse. Maybe they were frightened by Zell's nickname, "the Grave Dancer." The move didn't seem to make sense for Zell either. Why would an epithet-slinging, motorcycle-riding scrapper-who had started with nothing and worked his way up to a $5 billion real estate fortune-be interested in a declining media company (it would have been another story if Zell had taken over Playboy, issues of which Zell had bought and resold for profit to friends around town when he was a teenager)? Ben Johnson has the answers in this fascinating biography of a uniquely colorful mogul, who is fond of blunt declarations and bold business moves. Johnson also tells the real story of Zell's adventure at the Tribune, that feverish year between his purchase of the ailing company and its declaration of bankruptcy. Between the story of Zell's rise to astounding riches and previously untold details of his conflicts with his employees and investors, Money Talks, Bullsh*t Walks will keep readers alternately laughing and on the edge of their seats. The Quotable Sam Zell "If you're the biggest kid on the block, you can throw your weight around. Of course, I never was the big kid, but I've made up for it over the years." "The true test of an entrepreneur is someone who spends his life constantly testing his limits. The definition of an idiot is someone who has reached their goals." "I don't do business with anybody who's not afraid, and I won't hire anybody who is confident to the point where fear is not very close to the surface. I've often said that fear and courage are cousins and very closely related." "Extremism in the pursuit of opportunity is not a vice. If you've seen me step over the edge, it's only to get you to take a few steps toward the line." "The eleventh commandment is Thou shalt not take oneself seriously." "The best thing to have in the world is a monopoly, and if you can't have a monopoly, you want an oligopoly. I'm more than willing to leave all the rest of the highly competitive world to everybody else." "To create an enormously successful corporation that provides both opportunity and sustenance for employers today and a future for them tomorrow, that's the challenge. That's what everybody should be talking about. Not my f*cking language because it doesn't matter." "I think it was Confucius who said that 'Money talks and bullshit walks."
