Book Reviews – Page 20 – The Aleph Blog

Book Review: Priceless

Posted on 9 July 2010 by David Merkel

I really enjoyed the book Fortune’s Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street (review forthcoming), so when I learned the William Poundstone had written a new book, I went out and bought it.

This book, Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It), covers rationality in decision making, and how markets and marketers take advantage of the deficiencies in rationality in average people.

There are many in the investment community that admire behavioral finance, and many who say that it might be true, but where are the big profits to be made from it?

This book doesn’t cover behavioral finance per se, but it does cover its analogue in pricing and marketing.? In a negotiation, the first person to put a price on the table tends to push the final price agreed to closer to his price.? Leaving aside no-haggle dealerships, why do car dealers post high prices for vehicles?? Because only a minority does the research to understand what the minimum price is that a dealer will accept.? The rest pay more, often a lot more.? Personally, I do a lot of research before I buy a car, and it helps me spot dealer errors in pricing.

The book is replete with examples of how there is no “fair” way to price things out.? What are the proper damages for a jury settlement?? The attorney for the plaintiff is incented to come up with the highest believable amount for the jury, because they will render a verdict less than that.? Make the ceiling as high as possible, and the plaintiff will get more.

We call placing the first price on the table “anchoring,” because it pulls the final result toward itself.? The book is filled with experiments dealing with anchoring.

The book also spends a lot of time on the “ultimatum game,” where a person gets $10, and must offer some of it to a second person, but if the second person turns him down, the first person gets nothing.? The main lesson here is that pride is stronger than greed.? Yes, it can be construed as a question of fairness, but when someone gives up money to deny money to someone else, it is not fairness but envy.? Why pay to make someone else worse off?? To teach him a lesson?? What an expensive lesson.

Much of this book was a walk down memory lane for me.? I discovered Kahneman and Tversky in the Fall of 1982, and I found their ideas to be more cogent than much of the “individuals maximize utility” cant that was commonly heard from most professors teaching microeconomics.? People are far more complex than homo oeconomicus.? Small surprise that most tests of microeconomics as a system are not confirmed by the data.

Kahneman and Tversky showed via a wide array of examples that the decisions people make are affected by the way they are presented to them.? People can be manipulated in limited ways in order to affect the decisions that they make.

The book deals with many marketing tricks, particularly the powerful word, “free,”? and how it dupes people into buying something to get something for free.? For another example, why companies sell really expensive items that few will want, because people will buy the next most expensive item with greater probability, versus less expensive items of the same class.

Book Review: Confidence Game

Posted on 12 June 201012 February 2011 by David Merkel

This book review is special to me.? I don’t often get quoted in books, but in this book I get quoted on page 98.? Here is the quotation:

When I asked an insurance analyst whether he thought the credit rating companies would ever rethink MBIA’s top rating, he was skeptical.? “For Moody’s [or Standard and Poor’s] to put a bond insurer on negative watch (indicating a rating cut was being considered) could have extremely negative ramifications” for the entire bond insurance business, said David Merkel with Hovde Capital Advisors in Washington, DC.? “It’s a bit of a confidence game.”

Confidence Game indeed.? I did not see the phrase elsewhere in the book, but I may have missed it. If I inadvertently titled the book, I am honored.

I do not remember talking to the author, Christine Richard, but what she quoted was broadly representative of half of my view on the financial guarantee insurers.? I believed that it would be very difficult for the rating agencies to downgrade the financial guarantors, because they were such a large part of their AAA ratings, and because they would lose money in the short run from doing so.? Though it was written a year later, this article at RealMoney reflected my views.

In the short run, I viewed the rating agencies and financial guarantors as co-dependent.? The rating agencies? would protect the guarantors for as long as they could, and after that, the bottom would fall out, and it would become a “free fire” zone.

All in all, over the next five years I wrote over 30 times about the financial guarantors.? Here is a sample of that (in rough chronological order):

Again, my view was that the financial guarantors would eventually be downgraded, but that the rating agencies would delay it for as long as they possibly could.? That is what happened.

Now, as for Bill Ackman, he was prescient; he saw the problems early — way too early.? As I said about Markopolous and Madoff, it is usually a mistake to obsess over something that is manifestly wrong, but that you can’t affect.? Ackman spun his wheels for years over MBIA, and he was right eventually.? Many other men would have given up, but not Ackman.? And part of that is the nature of shorting; it is normally supposed to be a tactical discipline rather than a strategic one.? There are few companies that one can short into the ground, and Ackman almost went that way with MBIA.

But when you are right, you are right, so long as your funding base sticks with you.? Ackman had loyal investors, because the gains took years to manifest.

As for the author, she has carefully balanced the words of Ackman versus the words of others in the situation.? She has done an admirable job of being neutral while still portraying the victor fairly; would that the heads of MBIA talked to her more.? Sadly, they come off as a bunch of hacks who don’t understand that their models relied on a highly liquid economy, with rising housing prices.

I recommend this book highly.? If you want to buy the book, you can buy it here:? Confidence Game: How a Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street’s Bluff.

Who would benefit from this book

Most average investors could benefit from the book.? It would tell them that economic systems that rely on third-party appraisals are inherently fragile.? They can be gamed by those with a concentrated interest for a time, until reality catches up with them.

Full disclosure: Janet Tavakoli told me I was quoted in the book, so I asked the publisher for a copy to review.

Book Review: The Great Reflation

Posted on 27 May 2010 by David Merkel

One quick note for readers before I begin: I passed my Series 86 exam with an 88% score.? I did better than I expected.? Now I am studying for the 87 — my how interesting it is to study law… BTW, the next book I am reviewing is Confidence Game.

The Great Reflation

I wish I had written this book.? Of course, Tony Boeckh has resources that I don’t, given his prior connections to the Bank Credit Analyst.? When I subscribed to the Bank Credit Analyst, I always prized their insights.

The Great Reflation follows many themes that I discuss regularly:

Are we facing inflation or deflation?? Inflation of the currency or goods prices, and deflation of assets?
In the bull phase, liquidity is a synonym for willingness to borrow.? In the bust phase, illiquidity is a synonym for inability to sell assets to pay off debts.
Public borrowing has been substituted for private borrowing, with an attendant increase in sovereign risk.
Whether there are central banks or not, economies go through credit cycles.? Because the Fed facilitated this cycle, the debt bubble is bigger, and the cleanup will be huge.
Deleveraging is needed to restore prosperity, but there will be years of pain before that starts, assuming that the politicians are willing to see it through.
In the short run, the US has avoided a deeper crisis because of their ability to borrow.? This sets the stage for a larger crisis later.
Acting to reflate assets after a bust sets the stage for a new bubble.
Asset allocation is tough when interest rates are low, and there is no obvious desirable safe asset class.? Be nimble, and react to changes in valuations driven by emotions.
Even in crisis times, stocks can be valuable investments; one merely has to get the fundamentals and timing right.
Bonds are easy — think about interest rate risk, credit risk, and inflation risk.
He is bearish on the Dollar over the long term, but it could be the best of a bunch of bad developed market currencies for a long time.
Gold might be a bubble, or it might go considerably higher.? He favors the bubble argument.? Same for commodities.
Real estate prices won’t do anything amazing, good or bad.
America is in decline.? Can it recover?? (It has a lot of advantages, but unless the average American citizen is willing to sacrifice and clean up his own life, the answer is no.)
This will lead to a decrease in American influence abroad.? That will lead to a less stable world.

In his chapter on stocks, and his chapter on bonds, and chapters on other asset classes, the author hands out a wealth of knowledge on how to analyze fundamentals, sentiment, and technicals of asset classes.

He also comes to the conclusion that I do, that there are no easy asset allocation decisions here, and that one should diversify widely in order to preserve assets.? Also, he concludes that there is no easy endgame for heavily indebted nations, and that there will be a reckoning, though whether that means inflation or deflation is impossible to tell in advance.

I enjoyed the book and would recommend it highly.? My only misgiving is that there wasn’t much new for me in the book, but it was very well presented.

If you want to buy the book, you can buy it here:? The Great Reflation: How Investors Can Profit From the New World of Money

Who would benefit from this book

Most average investors could benefit from the book.? It would give them a deep feel for the difficulties that we are now in.? It would tell them that there are no easy solutions, and that broad diversification is warranted, together with nimbleness to profit from volatility.

Full disclosure: The publisher e-mailed me, and I requested a copy.

Book Review: No One Would Listen

Posted on 13 May 201012 February 2011 by David Merkel

This is a book about Harry Markopolos, who is the author of this book.? He talks about how he attempted? for years to expose the fraud that was Bernie Madoff.

The book takes the following form (from my view of how the author sees it):

How he came to a quick conclusion that Bernie Madoff was a fraud.
How he tried to convince others of that view, especially those that were feeding more money to Madoff.
Two journalists took his side and wrote about Madoff in 2001 or so, but to no avail.
Trying to come up with a similar strategy that would work, though it would return much less than Madoff’s supposed returns, and finding few would invest in it.
Fruitless wranglings with the clueless SEC.
Finally, in 2009, Madoff blows up.
Vindicated, he talks to the media, Congress, and anyone who will listen.
He excoriates the toothless SEC, and proposes better ways to root out financial fraud.

That’s the book in a nutshell.? But stylistically, the book harps on how no one would listen.? Well, duh.? No one did listen, or the book would have been over sooner.

People are not Vulcans.? They aren’t logical.? Most don’t think; instead, they mimic.? “If it works for him, it will work for me also.”

That was the case with Madoff.? He maneuvered many sheep into position to be fleeced, and worse, they begged for the privilege to be his clients.

There were many red flags flying:

No independent custodian
No independent Trustee
Small Auditor, incapable of auditing such an enterprise.
Returns were too smooth for being so high.
The asset size was to large for the markets supposedly employed.
Even front-running profits would not be enough, were Madoff to do that.
No profit motive.? Other managers with lesser track records charged more.
Marketing was by invitation.
Investors were sworn to secrecy.
And more, read the book.

Markopolos saw all of this, and ten years before it all blew.? All that said, I came away less than fully impressed with Harry Markopolos.? When I counsel people in trouble, I often tell them, “Don’t let the one who troubles you define your life.? You should be living for more than to see the one who troubles you punished.”? Markopolos triumphed here; good for him.? But many people in similar situations become fixated on seeing the enemy punished, and ruin their lives, focusing on punishing another, rather than doing good themselves.? There is a proper humility that should come to many of us when we can’t prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt, where we must give up.

My view is that Markopolos should have given up earlier, even though he succeeded in the end.? I have known too many people who have destroyed their lives on similar quests.? Good for Harry that he succeeded, but it was more likely that he would have ended up destroying his life.

And do I need more proof than that he had a plan to kill Madoff if Madoff threatened to kill him?? Throughout the book, there is no indication that Madoff would try to kill his enemies.

This was a book that needed a strong editor.? Much as I liked it because I appreciated the tale of the rise and fall of Madoff, someone needed to grab control of the narrative, and make it less personal for Mr. Markopolos.

Then again, if that had happened, the book would have been better written, but less colorful.? Hearing the off-color remarks of Mr. Markopolos is entertaining, if off-key.

With all that I have said here, I strongly recommend the book.? The best part of the book, though the least graphic, is the last chapter, where he recommends solutions, all of which I think make eminent sense.

If you want to buy the book, you can buy it here:? No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller

Who would benefit from this book

Most average investors could benefit from the book.? What it would point out to them is that if something seems to good to be true, it usually is, and that they should do their own due diligence.

Full disclosure: The publisher e-mailed me, and I requested a copy, if they had an extra one.

Book Review: Who Can You Trust With Your Money?

Posted on 8 May 201012 February 2011 by David Merkel

The author of this book has been through the ringer.? As one who advised people to be careful in their investing, she found that her husband had been stealing from his investment clients.? Shades of Madoff and his sons.

She uses her ex-husband as an example of what to avoid in investment advisors, and adds in data from the Madoff scandal.? She then moves on to be more generic in what investors have to look for in order to avoid being cheated.

The book moves on to explain financial planning, and understand:

Certifications
Compensation and Fee Structures
Formal Communications
All the parties that affect pooled investments
How to choose an advisor
Red flags
How to employ an advisor
How to maintain the relationship
How to deal with minor and major failure in the advisor relationship.

She covers all of it.? It is very basic, and not flashy.? The juiciest part of the book is the troubles she had with her ex-husband.? The rest is all business, which isn’t bad, but it could have benefited from counterexamples to explain why this is the right way to do things.

Quibbles

The book has an exciting start, and it is all business after that.? That is not horrible, but could have been more done to motivate the important aspects of protecting investments through citing more case examples.

If you want to buy the book, you can buy it here:? Who Can You Trust With Your Money?: Get the Help You Need Now and Avoid Dishonest Advisors

Who would benefit from this book

Most average investors could benefit from the book.

Full disclosure: This book arrived in my mailbox; to the best of my knowledge, I never requested a copy.

Book Review: Buffett Beyond Value

Posted on 6 May 201012 February 2011 by David Merkel

Another Buffett book?? Why do we need another Buffett book?

We need another Buffett book because Buffett is a complex guy, and not easily corralled into simple explanations that he himself does not provide.? This book attempts to explain Buffett as a growth investor, rather than a value investor.

This distinction is important.? Value investors cling to Buffett because of his success and his pedigree.? He is the leading successor to Ben Graham, and arguably, the man who protects Graham’s reputation.? He is an able proponent of value investing, the best example of that being his Appendix to “The Intelligent Investor,” called “The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville.”? There he argues that value investing is superior to other forms of investing — look at the excellent results of these =great value investors.

Now, I rejected the logic of the argument, because anyone can pick and choose a bunch of good investors with the same strategy, the same as Michael Covel did when He wrote “Trend Following.” Merely because you have found a bunch of successful investors with the same strategy does not mean that the strategy is itself successful.? There may be other factors in play.

Buffett the Growth Investor

What is neglected in understanding Buffett is his ability to analyze growth possibilities and the strength of management teams.? Once Buffett began to manage a lot of money, he realized that simple value investments would not be enough for him to buy, so he moved to [GARP] Growth at a Reasonable Price.? There is no surprise here.? There are a lot of investors scouring the markets for cheap deals, but those are typically small and unknown.? Big investors have to aim for larger companies that offer growth at a reasonable price.

The author understands the basics of Buffett:

Buffett is value plus growth.
Buffett makes money off of clever insurance underwriting.
Buffett makes money off of dull businesses that earn more than their cost of capital, like utilities and railroads.
Why holding cash is reasonable.
How Buffett views accounting issues, investor psychology, and market efficiency.
How Buffett views corporate governance.

Quibbles

The book reads more like the author’s view of how the world should be, while appealing to Buffett as a support for his observations.? Be that as it may, it is a book that I would moderately recommend.

If you want to buy the book, you can buy it here:? Buffett Beyond Value: Why Warren Buffett Looks to Growth and Management When Investing

Who would benefit from this book

It is a good overall book.? If you haven’t read a Buffett book, read this.? If you only understand Buffett to be a value investor, then read this book.

Full disclosure: I said I would review the book, and his publisher sent me a copy for free.

If you enter Amazon through my site, and you buy anything, I get a small commission.? This is my main source of blog revenue.? I prefer this to a ?tip jar? because I want you to get something you want, rather than merely giving me a tip.? Book reviews take time, particularly with the reading, which most book reviewers don?t do in full, and I typically do. (When I don’t, I mention that I scanned the book.? Also, I never use the data that the PR flacks send out.)

Book Review: Higher Returns from Safe Investments

Posted on 5 May 20105 May 2010 by David Merkel

This book gets a mixed review from me.? If I were reviewing it 14 months ago, when everything was in chaos, I would have given it a better review.? There are time to take credit risk, and times not to.? There are times to extend maturity, and times not to.? There are times to seek inflation protection, and times not to.? There are times to invest abroad, and times not to.

This book takes a view of income investing that is correct for average credit markets, for the most part.? But average credit markets rarely exist.? Few investors possess the fortitude to go through the nadir of the credit cycle, and ride it into the next cycle.

With high yield, he offers a simple stop-loss strategy.? Good.? But he should offer something similar on preferred stocks and dividend-paying common stocks, which are riskier than high yield bonds.

The chapter on writing covered calls is simplistic, but the truth is that most of us are simplistic with covered calls — we look for free yield, and often gain losses greater than the income received.

The book gives simple and reasonable descriptions of various bond types, and other income oriented assets.? In general, it understands the relative riskiness of all of them, with exceptions noted above.

The title is a great title, but I would have loved to have seen a different book that would have taught people to analyze yield spreads, and getting people to think when there is enough compensation for the risk involved, and when there is not.

If you want to buy the book, you can buy it here: Higher Returns from Safe Investments: Using Bonds, Stocks, and Options to Generate Lifetime Income

Who would benefit from this book

If you don’t understand income investments, this book could be useful to you, and the book is not long.? It is an easy read.? In general I don’t agree with the way the book is designed, but if you have a lot of self-discipline, the book will prove useful to you.

Full disclosure: I said I would review the book, and his publisher sent me a copy for free.

Book Review: Slapped by the Invisible Hand

Posted on 9 April 201012 February 2011 by David Merkel

In one sense, but not in every sense, this is the best book on the crisis.? I give Yves Smith credit for diving deep on economics and finance, and laying bare the intellectual bankruptcy there.? Simon Johnson and James Kwak did an excellent survey of regulatory difficulties in banking and more.? Barry Ritholtz probably wrote the best book, because he has a knack of combining informative and entertaining.

But what makes this book a winner is that he lays bare the root cause of the crisis: we need safe short-term liabilities in order to transact. Banks provide the short term medium of commerce, so that no one has to consider whether their dollars are changing in value month after month.

But when there are alternatives to banks that seem cheaper in the short run in creating stable securities, the banking system gets hollowed out.? That can be as simple as money market funds, or as complex as AAA structured securities that finance complex obligations.

At such a point, being a bank is not so valuable, and banks mimic the innovations in order to compete.

Though not an innovation, repo funding was a star of this crisis.? Repo funding is a short-term means of gaining liquidity through borrowing while offering high quality liquid assets as collateral.? It is very stable most of the time, but when liquidity gets scarce, the system as a whole can unwind.

The book focuses on “safe” liabilities: bank deposits, both before and after deposit insurance, repo funding, and AAA short securities from securitizations.? People want to keep their purchasing power safe.? But when the safety of any safe security comes under question, the system falls apart.

That is the nature of a systemic crisis.? What is previously regarded as safe is not safe.

I have one main policy recommendation as a result of this book — regulate the repo markets.? They were a main factor for contagion in this crisis.

I liked this book a lot, and recommend it.? I also like the title a lot, because the invisible hand does deliver negative consequences to those who act foolishly.? Punishment is needed for a capitalist system to survive.

Quibbles

Though it is a book, it is really five essays that have been sewn together with some extra copy in order to make it into a book.? Also, you don’t have to be bright to benefit from the book, but you can’t be dumb.

Who would benefit from this book

Anyone looking to understand the fundamental reasons behind the crisis will benefit.

If you want to buy it, you can find it here: Slapped by the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007 (Financial Management Association Survey and Synthesis)

Full disclosure: the author e-mailed me on a day where one of my favorite bloggers praised the book as the best book on the crisis.? So I said I would review the book, and his publisher sent me a copy for free.

Book Review: 13 Bankers

Posted on 3 April 2010 by David Merkel

Simon Johnson and James Kwak write a popular blog, The Baseline Scenario.? They have written a? very credible book on the crisis, which I have .? It covers all of the bases in a methodical way, and there was little with which I could find fault, and it does so without conspiracy-mongering, or name-calling, while still finding fault with a great many parties.

The intro to the book begins with the 13 bankers meeting Pres. Obama at the White House in March 2009.? (Thus the name of the book.)? The Obama Administration treats the bankers with kid gloves, because they are afraid of a crash in the banking/economic system.? But like the old saw, where if you owe the bank $1000 and can’t pay, you have a problem; but if you owe the bank $10 billion, they have a problem — the US government concluded that they had to protect the banks in order to protect the system as a whole.

Now, part of this stems from a false belief system, thinking that we had to bail out the banks — we didn’t need to bail out the banks.? We could have resolved them through a new Resolution Trust Company.? Rather than bail out holding companies, we could have let holding companies fail, and protected the few operating subsidiaries that people and institutions rely upon.? But part of this stemmed from the influence that large banks exercised over the US Government.? So many in the government benefited from campaign contributions from banks.? Many had worked for the banks and had friends there; many wished to work there eventually.

The book takes us back to the beginning of the US, and all of the arguments over whether we needed a central bank or not.? This is one of the few places where I disagree with Johnson and Kwak.? I don’t think we need a central bank, though we do need to regulate credit in order to avoid banking panics.? They view Jefferson as right in viewing large banks as being a threat to government sovereignty, but naive that a central bank was not needed, while Hamilton was more practical, but would not see the risk of political corruption.

Think of the Greenspan era, which was central banking at its worst.? The least little squeak during a recession would make Greenspan open up the monetary spigots, and he would keep them on well beyond when stimulus was needed.? Because of demographics, his actions did not lead to price inflation, but asset inflation.? Thus the bubble that we face now.? Extra dollars did not chase goods; extra debt chased assets.

They take us through the international crises of the ’90s which largely did not affect the US, but would sound familiar to us today.? We don’t think of ourselves as having aristocrats in the US, but major CEOs seem to play that role well.

They catalogue the changes in policy that allowed for securitization, for swaps, for unregulated swaps, for increases in leverage, for decreases in regulatory oversight, and increasing influence over US policy by financial companies. Further, with the regulators outsourcing much of their responsibility for setting capital levels to the rating agencies, there was a further opportunity for failure, as the rating agencies rated novel securities for which they had no track record.

With sloppy regulators like the Office of Thrift Supervision, the stage was set for and a race to the bottom in lending standards.? In the short run, more lending promoted higher profits, but in the long run sealed the demise of many lenders.

The crisis hit, and the leverage that had been built up was unsustainable.? It rippled through many areas of the financial sector, hitting the firms that had cheated most the hardest.? Over two years, from February 2007 to March 2009, the first wave of the crisis shook the banks, and many failed.? Many smaller banks continue to fail, having no influence over the government.

Their solution to part of the crisis is modest, at least, more modest than I would pursue.? They suggest that the six largest banks be broken up.? Good, let’s do that.? They suggest consumer safeguards; yes, protect dumb people to some degree, but make them wear a scarlet letter “D.” (My thought, not theirs – you can’t have it both ways.? There should be stigma if you can’t protect yourself.)

It is a very good book and one that I would heartily recommend.

Quibbles:

You have to have average intelligence to read this book.? It is not a book that everyone can read.? Also, very few graphs.? No pictures.? That doesn’t affect me, but many other people have a hard time reading a book with little in graphics.

Who would benefit from this book:

Almost everyone would benefit.? It does a great job laying out the problems, and the solutions that they offer are eminently reasonable.? Again, you have to be willing to read a book where the words are big, the sentence structures are complex, and you already understand something about economics.

If you want to buy the book, you can buy it here: 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.

Full disclosure: I received a free copy of their book at the Fordham Conference, as did all of the other attendees.? I never promise to review a book that I receive for free, and I never promise a favorable review. That said, when I receive free books, if I have a lot of them (normal), typically I do triage and pitch the ones that look like losers.? I do a similar filtering when book agents e-mail me to review books.? I really only have time for good ones.

If you enter Amazon through my site, and you buy anything, I get a small commission.? This is my main source of blog revenue.? I prefer this to a “tip jar” because I want you to get something you want, rather than merely giving me a tip.? Book reviews take time, particularly with the reading, which most book reviewers don’t do in full, and I usually do.

Book Review: Monetary Regimes and Inflation

Posted on 27 March 2010 by David Merkel

I did not ask for this book, but I am glad the publisher sent it to me for free.? There is a lot of concern over inflation in the present era, but not a lot of structured thought about what drives inflation.

This book takes the long term perspective, and looks at the wide array of monetary arrangements, and analyzes which arrangements produced more or less price inflation.? The author shows that there is generally an inflationary bias in all currencies.? Currencies that are backed by precious metals tend to experience less inflation, but many governments using such currencies debase the metals or clip the coins.? That said, it does restrain inflation, because inflating a? metallic-based currency takes a lot of work.

To have significant inflation, one must have unbacked paper money.? The same is true of defaults in bonds.? In order to have a crisis, much debt must be issued relative to the assets and earning power of the companies.? The debt is not backed by sufficient repayment capacity, and thus there are some defaults.

A fiat currency in and of itself, is not sufficient to create hyperinflation.? Hyperinflation only happens when the government finances itself by printing money with abandon.

The book further distinguishes itself by explaining situations where foreign currencies come in to act as shadow currencies inside nations.? Further, the book describes how inflationary situations end.? One constant is that people quickly analyze where purchasing is declining, and seek stability through metals or relatively stable fiat currencies.

One strength of the book is that at the end of each chapter, the author summarizes all of the main points.? I recommend this book.

Quibbles

The book is not dry, but it has a distinctly academic feel.? Not everyone will take to the book easily.

Who would benefit from this book?

Economists would benefit from the book, and also those that like reading about the history of inflation.? Few things truly change in History; the names may change, but we make the same mistakes.

For those who want to buy the book, you can buy it here: Monetary Regimes And Inflation: History, Economic And Political Relationships.

Full disclosure: Though I get books for free from publishers, I burn time to read books in full, and write reviews that are balanced.? Those entering Amazon through my site and buying anything will end up sending me a small commission, but they will not pay more in order to do that.