Monday, October 13, 2008

The Trouble With Prosperity

The trouble with prosperity : the loss of fear, the rise of speculation, and the risk to American savings by James Grant is just one of several books that can be found in the library to illuminate the current U.S. economy. Grant says that booms are always followed by busts, and the louder the boom, the more devasting the bust. Fortunately, he also predicts that bigger busts produce bigger booms. "The extra dollar of consumer expenditure," he wrote more than a dozen years ago, "is requiring a larger and larger unit of consumer borrowing."
M
anias, Panics and Crashes by Charles P. Kindleberger is the definitive overview of financial emergencies. "Given a seizure of credit in the system," he writes, "more is safer than less. The excess can be mopped up later. As for timing, it is an art. That says nothing--and everything."

The above is from the Wall Street Journal's Five Best books column on financial meltdowns which also recommends these books found at the library.
Beyond Greed by Stephen Fay and When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein which can be found i
n English and Chinese in the library.

Bookstores are rushing to satisfy the public's need for financial advice. No need to spend at the bookstore when your library has copies free for borrowing. Here are some more:

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown by Charles Morris, The World is Curved by David Snick, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets by George Soros (also available electronically including an excerpt),


Bad Money by Kevin Phillips (go to Mission Library and get this without a wait), and Crash Proof by Peter Schiff. -mb