Fund-of-funds Books

I am very pleased with the service I received when ordering the book (Financial Management for Human Service Administrators) that
I needed for my class. Amoazon got me the book in a timely manner,they also alllowed me to be able to track the item to see where it was and to know when to expect it. I will do more business with Amazon for my future needs. Thanks again Amazon for a job well done. Sheryl

This book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in elections and democratic governance. There has been much talk about the role of money in elections and the impact of campaign contributions on how politicians govern. But rarely do we hear about the people behind the money. Who are they? Why do they give? To whom do they give? How much access do they have to members of Congress? These questions are answered in this well-written and well-researched book.

The basics of grant writing from start to finish, including locating funding, internet choices, and project management, are packed into a reference which is filled with advice from grant-writing professionals. Plenty of examples of successful funding efforts are included throughout, from sample forms to analysis of the critical components of a proposal. Highly recommended.

I've read a dozen grant writing books, and this one offers the whole package. Notable strengths of this book include:

1) Get the organization behind your fund raising effort. Barber hits where others miss by consistently illustrating the importance building support for your grant internally, throughout the organization. Only experienced grant writers know how important this is.

2) The dreaded budget. The bottom line in proposal evaluation is the budget. It must be easy to comprehend, be realistic and professional-looking. This book offers important tips on calculating overhead, in direct costs, and bottom-up budgeting that I have seen in no other grant writing text.

3) "Comprehensive Guide": This book (and accompanying disk) offers template materials as well as the historical and philosophical back ground of public funding and philanthropic giving. The book as a whole is important to understanding the nature of fund raising through grants while providing practical advice on how to get that important project funded.

I keep this book nearby and use often for reference.

esta obra es un manual excelente manual para entender los mecanismos de funcinamiento de los estados en cuanto a la cuestion fiscal, en aquellos paises que funcionan como federaciones o un grupo de estados. al mismo tiempo se puede extrapolar las diferencias para hacer una analisis horizontal que permite tener una idea de las diferencias en cuanto a mecanismos de adjudicacion de impuestos. entre linea sy con una esperiencia profunda ne la materia se pueden llegar a comprender las fallas de algunos mecanismos, siempre que se haga el analisis comparativo de un estado con otro.

The late Milton Trautman was a professor at the Ohio State University and the recognized authority on freshwater fish of the region.

Of course, this work holds good beyond Ohio's borders and will help you to identify fish species all over the midwest and throughout the eastern interior United States.

This is what I would call a "life work," nicely illustrated with drawings. The book is bulging with technical information and is the last word on fish identification.

As a former Ohio conservation officer and adjunct College instructor, I cannot say enough good about this fine volume. A must for eastern naturalists.

I found this book very helpful because it opened my eyes to a whole new form of investing that I was never aware of before. It's well-written, gets to the point, and showed me very specifically how to set up my own divisified portfolio online, at an unbelievably cheap price. And what I really liked about the book was that it offered a number of pre-selected portfolios of blue chip-type stocks that you could start with immediately. Walden has done his research.

Most everyone today agrees that people world wide should have a basic right to the food they need to survive. Ensuring food security is one of the greatest challenges facing the world community today. All economic and social development, political stability and overall well-being of the planet depend on it. It is the first level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The developed countries will not be safe within their fortresses if those beyond the walls do not have access to the basic requirements of life - starting with food.

The challenge is most critical in low-income, food-deficit countries, especially those in Africa. Of the 50 countries that are defined as Least Developed, 34 are on this continent, and the author of this book rightfully focuses much of his insight on food security challenges confronting Africa.

Despite some gains in food production and food security on a global scale, many countries and whole regions in sub-Saharan Africa now produces less food per person than three decades ago. As a consequence, the number of chronically undernourished people has increased dramatically due to a number of reasons, including population growth, poverty and agricultural production capabilities.

Food and the Poor is an important primer on this increasingly critical subject. I would consider it required reading for anyone working on development issues.

A great book on investing your money to achieve results within your comfort zone. A wide range of asset allocation models are provided and Veeneman's explanations of the models are fun and easy to understand.

If then, a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit. What is true for individual men is also true for the organizations that lead them. Hazlitt makes the sound case that the IMF is the root cause for world inflation. Henry Hazlitt, a man who was one of the greatest thinkers of our time, assembled in this book a series of editorials that he wrote while working at the New York Times when the Bretton Woods agreements were being constructed in 1944 and 1945.

Hazlitt's recurring criticism of the IMF was that it put too much pressure on the US Dollar as the world reserve currency. Under Bretton Woods, currency exchange rates were fixed as opposed to today where rates are deciphered and freely set by the market. No requirements were put on borrowing governments to keep their financial house in order. Governments could irresponsibly print currency and the US would have to buy that foreign fiat at the previously agreed fixed rate which was ultimately much higher than a free market would have paid. Now you know how the gold supply in this country went bye-bye. Hazlitt specifically cites the subsidizing of the French Franc at levels far above what a free market would tolerate, as being the reason the US was drained of most of its gold. Nixon doesn't get all the blame here folks. As stated on page 19 in the book, "The world dollar-exchange system was inherently brittle, and it broke."

Hazlitt also pointed out that The World Bank could lend prudently to counties that needed to rebuild after the war and that the IMF wasn't really needed. He also mentions different financial organizations that expressed the same thinking. Their sound reasoning was ignored. When Lord Keynes (the lead author of Bretton Woods) appeared before the House of Lords in England to promote his economic theory, he proudly stated that it was the exact opposite of a gold standard. Lord Keynes; as Hazlitt so aptly described him, as a man confused by the triangular exchange through the medium of money; ignored the necessity of production in favor of an orderly devaluation of currency. Talk about a blind guide. Opposite indeed!

Hazlitt urged the return to the gold standard as the only way to save the world's economic system. If a government is on a gold standard, they have to be fiscally responsible. And if every government is being responsible monetarily, then exchange rates will stabilize themselves. Henry offered a solution to the United States. Announce the return to a gold standard in a few years time. Meanwhile, balance your budget for the few years leading up to that return. Only then, will confidence be restored in the currency. That advice was given twenty-three years ago and fell on deaf ears. If you're counting, that's two out of three monkeys. I suppose the modern solution would be to enact a permanent pay-go law that the government had to stick to. And that interest rates shouldn't be suppressed to an unnaturally low level. Even Milton Friedman observed that the Fed has an "obsession" with interest rates. If you look up the dictionary definition for obsession, you'll see it to be an accurate description of the situation.

Every time the Fed meets, they report inflation as if it were some economic constant being tamed by current financial engineering. The truth is that inflation is an economic consequence that cannot be controlled. The bad monetary decision making on government's part has to stop for it to be eradicated. The fact that almost every government reports inflation as a constant, in and of itself, proves Hazlitt's point. Unfortunately, since most people have lived with it being reported all their lives, they too view it as a fact of life. It's no wonder Marc Faber recently described all fiat currency as confetti.

Things are different in the world now. The governments around the world have the ability to produce as opposed to the chaos after WWII, when everyone but the US was bombed to ashes. Currency has a free market and different national groups won't be so quick to listen to the IMF. Today individuals can own gold themselves, so they can be their own central banker in a sense, and preserve their current purchasing power. It's almost a joke now when the IMF comes out and states what currency values should be, as they have done in the last few days. No one remembers Bretton Woods, nor do they care to have some abstract organization dictate how much purchasing power they should have. Unfortunately, it's the holders of US currency that will now suffer the most as the reasons for the IMF have faded, but their consequences remain. Every time the price of gold establishes a new higher base, it is a worldwide vote of no confidence in the US Dollar. The same is true to a smaller extent for the rest of the world's currency, since gold is the only recognized form of money that is not an instrument of debt. People don't believe the US Treasury Secretary when he says that a strong dollar is in the best interest of the United States. The public recognizes that it's his job to speak no evil. He's become the third monkey.