Simple - money is a scam, only value for it is trust of other people. Keynesian economics sucks, globalism is evil.
Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
11–20 of 211 posts
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#12"Monetary History of the United States" by Milton Friedman.
It's tough sledding, but worth it. And by giving the history, one comes to understand how we got to where we are.
"Capitalism" by Reisman gives a solid theoretical foundation on topics like rent control, inflation, etc. I especially found illuminating its coverage of the 1970's oil crisis and how the root cause of it was price controls.
I'd avoid economics books written by journalists and politicians, as all I've run across are dominated by ignorance, bias, and agendas. Ones by economists often have agendas, too, but they aren't nearly as ignorant. Just imagine a technical book about electronics written by a journalist, and you'll know what I mean.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#13Ascent of Money - Niall Ferguson
The Long and Short of It - John Kay
A great place to look is the second hand study books for professional qualifications like the CFA, Chartered Banker and so on
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#14I liked Trading and Exchanges by Larry Harris
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#15Why would you ever read a book on financial systems by someone who isn’t absurdly rich
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#16For 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.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#17I've been having an interesting time working through Security Analysis by Graham and Dodd. It's ancient, but it really gets to the heart of what bonds and stocks actually are, and gives you an insight into how everything worked before it all got accelerated to the Nth degree. The historical perspective of the 1928 crash being recent memory is really interesting too.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#18Why would you ever read a book on financial systems by someone who isn’t absurdly rich
Some of the books being mentioned here are by people who got absurdly rich.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#19You can't go wrong with 'The Big Short'. I saw the film a few times before I ever bought the book, and it's still enlightening.
I would say that The Big Short is more impactful if you already have some general understanding of the markets.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#20For 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.