Nick Nick Szabo's long essay: Shelling Out: The Origins of Money
Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
21–30 of 211 posts
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#22The short answer is this.
Wall Street exists to profit by skimming money off society, like a predator waiting for gazelle to approach a watering hole.
The Chinese government produced an excellent short film on this that was shown on airlines about 5 years ago. At the end was a warning to the USA not to devalue the dollar (to wipe out Chinese holdings.) :)
Silicon Valley VC's also do that, by skimming 2/20 (or more) from institutional investors with no downside risk to the VC.
The long answer - it will take you decades to study and learn. Do some reading and watch NBR.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#23Money: The unauthorized biography by Felix Martin discusses money as social technology and its history https://www.amazon.com/Money-Unauthorized-Biography-Coinage-...
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#24Since I'm mainly interested in risk and volatility, this list might be a bit biased but here we go: A random walk down Wallstreet Options and volatility pricing, by Natenberg Why stock markets crash, by Didier sornette Manias, panics and Crashes by Aliber and Kindleberger Debt: the first 5000 years
I studied it, got the cfa designation, worked in the field.
Yet to see a better, more accurate or more succinct treatment than "A Random Walk Down Wall St" by Malkiel. Can't recommend it enough. Readable. Required knowledge.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#25Unfortunately only in German language:
Bernard A. Lietaer: Das Geld der Zukunft
Bernard A. Lietaer: Mysterium Geld
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#26Debt: The First 5000 Years
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#27Oil 101 by Morgan Downey is one of the worst-edited books I've ever read, yet the amount of knowledge contained in that book is astonishing. The petroleum markets are vital to the financial system, as we saw on Monday when oil over-supply catalyzed a downward move in global equity markets.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#28The Economist Guide to Financial Markets by Marc Levinson
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#29For a slightly different take, Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. I would read some of the more direct recommendations here and then read Taleb to remind you that not everything is predictable or easily explainable.
The entire Incerto book series by Taleb (which includes Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan) are awesome and they are talking about big catastrophic events like the current one. This pandemic is a classic Black Swan event: it's a surprise, it has a major impact and lots of experts will try to say that it was easily foreseeable in hindsight.
It's not a black swan, a pandemic was long on the horizon (think SATS, MERS, Ebola, ...).
Just to add: I found taleb pretty opionated and had trouble distinguishing his own opinions from facts/theories.. I'd not recommend his books.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#30Actually - any college level book. There are tons, they're cheap on ebay, look for pearson or mcgraw hill. If you're creative, you can probably find a epub/pdf.
But even the DK Eye Witness have a good idea - how business works, how money works.
Financial system, economics, monetary policy become very simple with pictures, and even easier on an spreadsheet. Even more so is how many people don't know how much the government does in collecting statistics to analyze and examine the health of the economy - The BLS https://www.bls.gov/ is a great resource and once you have a basic understanding (or know healthy or "safe" numbers) you can explore other country economic numbers and see if they make sense (or not!) e.g. https://psa.gov.ph/ for Philippine Statistics.
Contemporary Financial Management is great -
Accounting Princicpals are also great (can you read a PL sheet? Do you know GAAP? How about Compliance regulations?)
Just "money" is one piece of the puzzle - money is a tool and that tool has been transformed into different pieces that fit what we do finance in life -
A basic book would be rich dad, poor dad - it's quite cliche but it's a good introduction to "wealth" and assets vs liability == net worth.
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tl;dr I ranted, I can go on - the DK Eyewitness books are a good starting point and then you can dig deep - but mostly it really runs quite simple for most things and then gatekeeped by interesting vocabulary.
How Money Works: The Facts Visually Explained (How Things Work) Hardcover – March 14, 2017 by DK (Author) . How Business Works: A Graphic Guide to Business Success Hardcover – 2015 by Dk (Author)
The Economics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained Paperback – February 6, 2018
The Business Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained Paperback – November 20, 2018
How Business Works: The Facts Visually Explained (How Things Work) Hardcover – April 14, 2015
DK Eyewitness Books: Money: Discover the Fascinating Story of Money from Silver Ingots to Smart Cards Paperback – June 14, 2016