Investment-bank

clearly written by a pair of highly intelligent intellectuals. it is a pity they cannot comunicate.

The authors not only demonstrate their understanding of financial markets by way of the breadth and precision of the topics discussed, but they also present the material in a way that is understandable to even those uninitiated in finance. If you are looking to learn the basic concepts underlying the various markets (equity, bond, mortgage, etc.), and you are interested by the wide range of pricing tools available today, this book is up your alley.

This is one the best introductory textbooks on the subject of financial markets and institutions. It is comprehensive and full of examples and exercises. The authors do an excellent job of presenting complex concepts in a relatively simple and straightforward style. Highly recommended.

There are no insights to Greenspan or the Fed. No interviews with Fed officials. Its like reading newspaper clippings. He has absolutely zero access to Greenspan and some of his facts are false. I work on Wall Street and for us this book was a joke.

We became familiar with Steven Beckner as reporter on the U.S. economy for National Public Radio. However, reading his most recent book: Back for the Brink: The Greenspan Years the reading public may not be reminded of a voice emanating from the radio as much as reminded of William Greider's wonderful book, Secrets of the Temple.

Published in 1987, Greider's book gave us a brief history of the Federal Reserve System in the United States and carried the survey of its history up to the October 1987 crash of the stock market spending a great deal of the book discussing the administration of Paul Volcker as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. That book left the present author wanting more. Steve Beckner's book is the answer to that prayer.

Picking up almost exactly at the time of the October 1987 crash, Beckner brings the story of the Federal Reserve up to September of 1995. The book has already become one of those books which is referred back to even after it has been completely read, spending as little time on the shelf as the dictionary and other reference materials in this house.

Heavily into the subject, Beckner spends little time explaining his terminology. Even for readers with some background in economics this can be distracting as readers break off in the middle of a good read to look up Germany's Bundesbank Lombard rate to understand what Beckner is trying to say.

Still in all, some reviewers may have been unfair to Beckner to state that he fawns over the actions of Alan Greenspan. What may appear as fawning on the surface may actually be the writing style a reporter who has learned to take care in the statements he makes to avoid sending misinterpreted ripples to the markets which have in the past been characterized as "the Beckner effect" by the New York Times as noted in the dust cover of the book. Reading the book in light of this reserve means playing tennis with the net up rather than down. Nonetheless, a careful reading of the book reveals clear criticism of Greenspan for his lack of independence from the policies of the Clinton Administration and for his over reation to the so-called "credit crunch of 1992" a phenomenon whose very existence is still being debated. The book is, therefore, an important addition to every current affairs collection.

Brian Wayne Wells
Attorney at Law
Charleston, West Virginia

We always watch the yield curve and try to unsuccesfully predict how changes in its slope might affect market expectations. Knowing about the person who indirectly draws it makes a lot of sense. Undoubtly, Alan Greenspan will be remembered for many years to come as one of the greatest economic minds of this century. Highly recommended. Not very technical which makes it an easy read...

When I picked this book up, I expected to read a book written by someone with a graduate degree. What I actually read was a third-grade-style report. There were incorrect grammatical usages and shady Artificial Intelligence applications.

Failures on internet bankin

Zhang's Barings Bankruptcy presents a workable, though at times dry treatment of the Barings debacle and financial derivatives. Despite what the web page blurb says, this book only speculates at what caused the Barings bankruptcy. Zhang hints at certain things, but does not give us any real facts beyond what made the headlines throughout the world.

At first glance, the book is organized fairly well. Starting with the fall of the bank in early 1995, the first three chapters of the book give some interesting background on the Barings family and merchant bank. We also learn that at one point, the Barings family was considered to be one of the six great powers of Europe. In part two of the book, readers who are unfamiliar with exotic financial instruments received a thorough and comprehensive introduction to options, futures, and other exotic derivatives. Throughout the explanations Zhang employs vivid analogies and clever examples to get his point across. In part three of the book, Zhang makes a weak though well substantiated attempt to implicate the Japanese economy as the real culprit and devotes nearly a whole chapter to explaining the state of the Japanese economy at the time of the bankruptcy. Zhang gives us a brief history lesson of the Japanese political economy and Japanese financial markets, and a snapshot of Japanese economic and financial activity in and around the first two months of 1995.

Zhang agrees with such financial scholars as Jorion, author of Big Bets Gone Bad, that the people who wield these exotic derivative products are often more dangerous than the products themselves. Here, just as in the case of Robert L. Citron's key role in the Orange county bankruptcy and the rocket scientists at the helm of Long Term Capital Management's financial collapse, this line of reasoning may very well be true.

Hal is obviously in the business of selling offshore services. His book, like Jerome Schneiders', is designed to give limited information in an effort to attract new clients. Better books on the market...

This book is a good overview of the investment banking business, although it is quite expensive. I would strongly recommend instead or in addition the Vault Career Guide to Investment Banking, which is available either on amazon or directly from vault.com. The Vault guide includes more detailed overviews of all the departments and functions of an investment
bank including corporate finance, M&A, sales, trading, private client services, credit, etc. If you are a job seeker in investment banking also try the Vault Guide to Finance Interviews, which contains actual investment banking finance interview questions and answers and which I found to be enormously valuable in my Wall Street job search.

This is the first time in I life I thought of returning a book I got online. A lot of bla-bla, but the real information in this book, is ZERO, if you are really after a how-to book. To my humble opinion what the title creates as expection from this book and what actually this book could offer are several miles apart.

Thanks,

Spiros,
MEng, MSc, MMath

I found this book to be a fast-reading, informative overview to owning an offshore international bank. Its 12 chapters cover topics ranging from how these banks work, privacy issues, risks and tax-benefits, to asset protection, case histories and how and where to begin. I'm interested in finance, but do not currently have my own offshore bank. There's plenty of useful information in this volume, but reading it is just the beginning. Anyone venturing into this area of banking should certainly personally obtain the assistance of an "expert" in the field. If you're considering such a venture, reading this book is an appropriate start.

There is a lot of information jam packed into this book. Mr.Schneider uses many examples, anecdotes, and political reasons for why you should own your own Private International Bank and how to go about doing it.

Some of the ideas for their use are never fully developed. It is also dangerous to just get started from this information alone. Owning your own bank has a lot of regulatory pitfalls both in the United States and abroad. He also never fully develops the ideas about captive insurance companies.

Now with the new United States scrutinization of offshore havens after Sept. 11th much of the information is outdated and many ideas are now useless. The two places he recommends Vanauatu and Nauru have come under intense scrutingy for their banking license policies.

Mr.Schneider's book is easy to read and does a great job of pumping you up. It reminds me of an infomercial in that respect.
The primary detractor of the book is the constant selling of Mr.Schneider's services and other products.

Interesting read, I have been a financial advisor for 11 years and I have written several books on my area of expertise, but at the end of the day, when my clients ask me about going offshore I always discourage it.

... I wasn't happy with the software design or signals, but when the data download software stopped working only months after I bought the product making it useless, they told me they didn't know how to fix it? and I would have to "upgrade" for more money, eventually they kept all the product cost without resolving the problems and ignored all my correspondence. I am a Tradestation Easy Language expert, I have been trading and investing now for over ten years including consulting with online sites, and I know for myself how important it is from the very start to cut losses, but just as importantly to cut costs, because reality check, I never found any "system" in my own exhaustive testing that works consistently well. So if I could do it all over, as Trader Vic Sperandeo points out, capital preservation is bottomline crucial for success, I would buy absolutely nothing except a few good inexpensive books with all of the core technicals and fundamentals thoroughly covered. A somewhat useful free book is Charlie Wright's "Trading as a Business" from Omega Research, customer support has always been acceptable to me, and my brother likes his Supercharts software, a relatively inexpensive way to test ideas and find out there is no "system." This "Seven Chart Patterns.." book was mailed to us free of charge by the way and I think it is worth reading for free, probably by contacting Nirvana Systems, but I will personally never do business with them again. "Piranha" Systems demonstrated to me through their business character and my bad experience just how much they support, value, and respect me the customer.

I agree whole-heartedly with the writer above who stated that this book is simple but gets right to the point. These are the basics, of course you want to build on it by reading other books, but you will rarely find this much helpful imforation in so few pages. (While curious about his software (Omni-trader) I don't think I would leave Tradstation for anything else.)I've read hundreds of books on trading and sometimes I have to put everything aside and review the basics and this book is quick at hand. If you master his simple techniques and use good money management you will be a successful trader. I'm sure many traders want to feel what we do is far more sophisticated but it doesn't have to be. That's the point. Don't stray far from the basics taught here.

GAD

GAD

This book doesn't ramble, and instead cuts right to the chase. It features basic, straightforward rules for watching chart patterns. No frills, no bs, just the basics. I gave it 5 stars because this is what investment books should be like. I've seen other financial books with tens times the number of pages, but only one-tenth the info.

If you track charts, this book is a must.

We expected a useful guideline for parents. Instead we found a money regime that is unbelievably extreme. Willard Stawski recommends paying kids to do just about everything - pay them an allowance to read books, for example.

It may have worked extremely well in his family - good luck if it has - but I find the underlying money-centric values quite disturbing.

If you want your kids to earn every penny they have than this is a great book. If you are less militant than this book is way to extreme. It is very biased towards having the kid EARN every penny they get. I believe that some money should just be given to them.

It's a complex world today and kids somehow seem to have distorted notions of the value of money. It's no one's fault but many families could help themselves with this refresher course on financial basics. Stawski's ideas on how to educate kids about money make sense, whether your kids are very young or teens. This is a user-friendly book that includes worksheets you can use whether you have one kid or a houseful. Everyone in the family will benefit from this book!