Content tagged with “finance”

There are 45 item(s) tagged with “finance” on this site.

Other tags used by these items: business, economics, history, investing, tech, politics, biography, crypto, money, nyc, memoir, strategy, psychology, venture-capital, television, non-profits, failure, self-help, bill-gates, environment, accounting, world-war-one, project-management, crime, society, judaism, finances, productive, acronym, critical-thinking, interpersonal

Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
May 3, 2018

“Fantastic overview of the VC/angel process. Even if you’re on the other side – so, not investing, but looking at taking investment money – it gives you a good understanding of the entire process. If you do want to become an investor, the book is a little silly. It assumes you have hundreds of…”

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
August 7, 2021

“An interesting book, but also not what the title would suggest – the subtitle anyway. This was not an all-encompassing history of money and finance. The book starts with Jewish moneylenders in Venice, and then goes on to discuss the bond market, the stock market, real estate, etc. It’s basically a…”

Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
August 11, 2014

“A somewhat interest book that confirmed what I already knew – algorithms are taking over the world. The author recaps all sorts of industries where tasks are getting computerized, from medicine to the law to (of course) wall street. He’s very Gladwell-esque – full of anecdotes and illustrations….”

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
March 31, 2020

“An appalling, infuriating book about shocking hubris and dishonesty. The fact that Theranos managed to perpetuate their fraud as long as they did is frankly a little amazing. And all these people who so vigorously defended the company and denigrated its detractors simply HAD to know there was a…”

Bank Holding Company
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
August 21, 2022

“ This is a company that owns banks, but doesn’t necessarily do banking itself. There are a lot of laws and regulation around banking. A bank holding company – a ‘bancorp’ – operates under different rules than banks, which can make it easier for them to borrow money. ”

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
July 27, 2014

“This is a book that got written accidentally – in preparing to write ‘The Big Short,’ Michael Lewis realized he had enough material on country-specific bubbles to write another book. This is that book. Each chapter is a look at a particular country – Iceland, Ireland, Germany, California (almost a…”

Business Adventures
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
August 31, 2014

“I freely admit I read this because Bill Gates called it his favorite book. I’m not sure that I agree, but it wasn’t bad. It was written by John Brooks – a business writer for The New Yorker – in the late 60s. The book is a collection of 12 essays about business. One is a long recitation of what…”

Commercial Paper
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
October 13, 2024

“This is short-term, unsecured debt, issued by corporations to fund day-to-day activities. It’s normally effected by selling promissory notes at a discount. To ‘issue’ commercial paper means to ask for a loan, basically. Most buyers of commercial paper are banks and other financial institutions. So…”

Debt: The First 5,000 Years
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
November 3, 2019

“I didn’t get into this. I thought it was an examination of the financial type of debt, but it literally starts way back at the dawn of civilization with the idea of moral debt – ‘I owe you my life,’ and such. Then it progresses laboriously forward through a long period of human debt – slavery and…”

EBITDA
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
July 9, 2022

“It’s an acronym for ‘earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.’ By definition, this will always be larger than ‘normal’ earning figures, which subtract those four things. EBITDA measures the health of a company’s operating business , meaning the things it actually produces to…”

The First World War
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
July 11, 2021

“It is what it claims to be – a detailed history of WWI. Actually, I understand that this is the short version. The author is apparently one of the most renowned WWI scholars in the world, and has a three-volume history in the works, but he decided to make an easier-to-digest version. He approaches…”

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
August 1, 2014

“Michael Lewis could write about anything and it would be interesting. In this book, he tackles High Frequency Trading, and reveals just how absurd and unethical it is. Essentially, trading houses are using technical and ultra-fast communications to bet against their own customers. The entire thing…”

Hawala
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
May 29, 2023

“This is an informal, traditional method of money transfer which started in India and is common in Africa and the Middle East. In its simplest form, a Hawala network operates as a set of promises: ‘Can your friend Bob give my friend Ted some money?’ There are four parties to a Hawala transaction:…”

Hedge Fund
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 8, 2021

“This is a pooled investment fund where a group of people contribute money, and the total funds are invested with returns to be distributed. Shares in the fund can also be bought and sold. In these senses, it’s no different from a mutual fund. But there are some key differences: Mutual funds are…”

Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
May 3, 2021

“Very short book about the problem of the US federal budget. It’s not balanced, the deficit keeps growing, and so does the debt. The book details the two basic theories of balancing the budget (reduce spending or raise taxes), and a growing number of people who want to do both. It also lays out some…”

Stop Acting Rich: …and Start Living Like a Real Millionaire
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
April 22, 2014

“I quit this book about a quarter of the way through. I had read Stanley’s first book ‘The Millionaire Next Door’ about 20 years ago. As a friend told me, this is essentially the same book. The premise is simple: people who act rich, aren’t. People who really ARE rich often don’t act it. They live…”

Superhubs: How the Financial Elite and their Networks Rule Our World
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
June 12, 2022

“The book is about all the large-scale economic players and theatrics that happen behind the scenes. This is the world of George Soros and Long-Term Capital Management and Bilderberg and Davos and the IMF and the World Bank. It’s the world where billionaires make moves and countermoves that make…”

SWIFT Network
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 8, 2021

“This is the ‘internet for banks,’ basically. It’s a worldwide messaging system which banks use to exchange data and payment orders. If you need to transfer money from one bank to another, this message gets sent along the SWIFT Network. SWIFT technically stands for ‘Society for Worldwide Interbank…”

TARP
Section
Stuff I Looked Up
Type
Explanation
Date
September 13, 2022

“TARP – the Troubled Asset Relief Program – was the famous ‘$700 billion bailout’ that the U.S. government undertook in 2008 to try and stave off the mortgage crisis. The crisis that led to this program was the basis for the book (and movie) Too Big To Fail . Did the government lose $700 billion?…”

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
December 31, 2017

“Wonderfully written biography. Makes me want to read more Chernow. JDR was a flawed man, certainly. While an upstanding citizen in his personal life, he was a ruthless business, who destroyed his competitors with glee. Provoked some wonder at the line between the personal and professional. Can…”

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis – and Themselves
Section
Deane’s Library
Type
Book Review
Date
August 22, 2022

“This is the story of one week in 2008 – the week when Lehman Brothers was about to fail, and then almost everything went with it. It was the week that ended with TARP – the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package. And to be clear: this is 600 pages about that one week . It’s a nauseatingly…”