Monetary-policy

The genious of the book is its simplicity. It is written with the beginner in mind, with facts and other information broken down and explained in elementary stages. It is good reading and a good reference book.

The book is full of very informative and elusive information about how our monetary system works behind the scenes. The author has taken great pains to explain and in some cases prove his points, and reveals some really scarry information. It's question and answer style was a little hard to take at first, but it's not written for it's style, but it's content. I would give it a 5 if it weren't for it's style. It's not an entertaining book, but the information it gives-- is.

This comprehensive work by Andrew Gause really opened my eyes to the machinations of the system of banking that is destroying this country. The fact that our Government is paying billions of dollars in interest to a deceptively named private bank which holds the rights to creating our national currency is utterly shocking. Gause also points out the dangers of a currency that is created at the whim of an institution that is unaccountable for it's actions. Every American who is concerned with our future should read this book.

There are not many books focusing on the phenomenon of dollarization, and the few that have devoted significant attention to the subject have usually been written from the perspective of developed countries. Unfortunately, Gabriel's book fails in several respects to offer a legitimate alternative. He apparently has little or no economic training, and the book itself describes him as a "philosopher and inventor." This may be fine if you want to debate the sentiments associated with dollarization, but his argument against dollarization has no basis. Most of his argument seems to be based on ideas he has just came up with himself instead of actually researching and analyzing the subject. Further, the writing itself is very weak, with many instances of incorrect grammar. If you are looking for a solid reference source for the causes and effects of dollarization, avoid this book and read something from a journal of economics or political science. I recommend reading something by Guillermo Calvo from the University of Maryland, who has studied dollarization extensively.

The Dollar Hegemony is a small book but, with its amazing ideas, it could shake the American financial fortress and urge it for more fairplay and justice.

In this book, Jean Gabriel, not only fights the hegemonial dollar as a factor of more poverty throughout the world, but more importantly he fights poverty itself advocating a genial theory on inflation, which only awaits implementation by a bold government.

In my opinion "The Dollar Hegemony" is a gem full of genial, innovative ideas that stand solid and look irrefutable. The author's thesis on inflation deserves very close attention, and should be tried.

Books like The Dollar Hegemony, sooner or later, will change the world.

This book denounces false assumptions about money, currency and development. It also opens new horizons for developing countries.

This book would probably make a good textbook for a college course on international financial affairs, but for someone like myself who just wanted to know what the gold standard was, this book is like pulling teeth. Mr. Eichengreen's "Golden Fetters" just goes into too much detail. By page nine of the introduction I wished I hadn't bought the book, by page 30 I was ready to donate it to the local library. If you live and breathe the stock market or international finance, this book may be for you. I'll just wait for a good documentary on the subject on television.

Barry Eichengreen's classic tale of financial hubris and mismanagement is almost ten years old. But it's still riveting. It's a broad-sweep introduction for generalists and financial buffs alike. And it's very well written too.

The book begins by describing the inner workings of the gold standard and how it evolved from its inception in the 1800s. This part may be a bit dry for generalists, but once underway all the terms become quite easy to understand. It's worth persevering since WW1changed the way the world worked. In particular, the after effects of the war made staying on gold much more difficult for countries experiencing persistent balance of payments deficits.

After that, Eichengreen goes on a tour of the interwar years and aims to show why the collapse of the gold standard and the plunge into depression had nothing to do with the US stock market and everything to do with rivalries and mismanagment on an international scale. The US crash was a symptom of an international crisis, not the cause.

All the classic powderkegs are there. The UK's mindless attempt to rejoin the gold standard at the overvalued, pre-war rate. Vindictive French domestic politics and the hyperinflations in continental Europe. Vindictive French attempts to humiliate the Germans over reparations. Bank runs in Germany and Austria. French and American attempts to bend the rules of the Gold Standard for their own national interests. Wild swings in capital flows from Europe to the US and back again. And the cataclysmic days of 1931 when the whole system collapsed under the weight of banking crises and currency contagion - in ways very similar to Asia in 1997.

After the crash, we get down to the Great Depression and who fared the best. This part is much shorter since it isn't as complicated. Basically, those countries that devalued quickly and went the free market route fared much better than those that didn't. Sweden was a star performer. The US can be found towards the back of the class. Dear old Blighty gets full marks for going solo, although more recent evidence shows this had more to do with throwing in the towel than playing with new ideas.

Strangely there's little mention of Japan. Nippon took a beating in the late 1920s while the yen remained fixed to gold. Once sterling devalued, the Japanese followed suit. The recovery was swift and full blooded. But the central bank forgot to stop the printing press once growth returned and ended up fighting hyperinflation in the late 1930s. So Eichengreen's line that giving up was the great panacea isn't quite as true as he'd have you believe.

All told, Golden Fetters is great. While it lacks facts and figures on banking problems and doesn't really provide convincing evidence on contagion, it works really well as a diary of contrasting fortunes in Europe and the US after the guns fell silent in 1918. If you like history then this is for you.

Eichengreen does it again. His easy-reading prose takes the reader through the monetary meanders of the post-WWI scenario, alternating historical narrative with clear, in-depth looks into economic theory and economic thought. The book features a comprehensive analysis of the intricacies of the interwar gold standard. The international conferences, the German hyperinflation, the roller-coaster of the Franc between 1924 and 1926 and the monetary determinants of the Great Depression are studied with extreme accuracy. This magnificient account will not disappoint either the academic reader or the learned non-specialist.

There's one way of attracting money that Donald Walters leaves out: write a little pamphlet, then lay out each page in large font and surround it with lots of white space. This way, only a few paragraphs make an entire page, and you can call your pamphlet a book and charge a lot more! For the perfect example of this, see this book.

Money Magnetism is one of the best guides to attracting what you need when you need it that I have ever read. Although there are many thousands of books that discuss the techniques and theories for picking stocks, buying insurance, or building your career, there are very few that actually discuss--or even understand--the more subtle energetic and spiritual principles behind finding true wealth. But it is these underlying principles, of course, that form the true basis of all success. Money Magnetism explains these principles and gives simple, easy-to-follow techniques to magnetise the resources you need to lead a rich and fulfilling life. Even if you think you are looking for a book on hard-core financial management--buy this book, too. Understanding these principles will help you to more wisely and efficiently implement whatever investment or career strategy you choose. An amazing value for only 7.95!

An enjoyable read. I found this book to reveal the simplicity of the laws of attraction and abundance. Life doesn't have to be complicated with regard to being happy, it's generaly our perception of events. I liked his reflection that we are all part of a greater, intelligent reality. Also, the methods of concentration and affirmation are very "doable" for anyone.

This book published by the (Richard Mellon Scaife funded) Cato Institute is in fact dedicated to perpetuating world poverty through "Free Trade" aimed at causing the destruction of the Nation State and insuring that even the idea of the Nation State is not allowed to exist. What this book secretly advocates is world slavery. What ever do the author/editors believe the United States was fighting against in the Revolutionary War against King George's British Empire. Don't they understand that America was fighting British Empire "Free Trade" aimed at stealing raw materials from the colonies, forcing them to buy British manufactured goods, thereby forcing the colonies to remain backward and undeveloped, just as England does today with their "colonies" in Africa. This book is the very dark "shadow of the glove" and purely propaganda.

I found this to be a cogent analysis of the two organizations in question, particularly in light of the recent turmoil they've caused in East Asia and Russia.

Through this book, we see that the IMF and the World Bank were making mischief abroad long before their more recent, more well publicized disasters. The word disaster is particularly appropriate in Indonesia; I hesitate to guess how many decades the country has been set back as a result of the IMF/World Bank meddling. For a good analysis, see books by Steve Hanke, such as _The Revolution in Development Economics_. Some of his articles are available on forbes.com.

I'd like to see an updated version of the book, to take into account the more recent boondoggles. The sad thing is that they not only have wasted billions of dollars, but often have left the recipients worse off than they were to begin with. The administrators of the organizations, of course, are living high on the hog all the while (to any IMF/World Bank top dogs who've recently taken a vow of poverty, my apologies), even as they're effectively impoverishing millions.

Youre feeding a monster which doesn't care about people. It exists to perpetuate the corrupt oppressive and plain incompetent governments of various nations by bailing them out continuously. If you wanted to feed an african family would you buy them grain and tools or would you send the money to their rulers (with a couple of feeble conditions) and pretty much let them do what they like with it? The IMF is a power brokers dream, leeching funds from everyone and being accountable to none.

The previous readers precious nation states and their statists are the enemies of individual liberty, they are to blame - and we for letting them get away with it.

A good book, enough to make you think twice when you next hear about the billions pledged for this or that project which never seems to actually help anyone except global politicians.

GOOD = HAS SOME GOOD TIPS ON BUDGETING,AND BANKING.

BAD = CONSTANT PLUGS, A BIT ARROGANT...MEMEMEMEME!

BORED = BOOK TAPE IS BORING,AND MONOTONED

If you are looking for a book on how to accumulate the maximum number of green backs, this book is not for you. If you want a simple philosophy of money which will make you wealthy in more than just the material sense, buy this book and read it at least twice.

I first read this book almost 20 years ago, and every time I got greedy, and broke one of the Seven Laws of Money, I paid dearly for it.

I first read this book several years ago and not too particularly impressed I put it on my bookshelf and forgot about it. The other day it literally fell off the shelf and landed at my feet. I had completely forgotten about the book. It's a short book; why not read it again I thought. I did and was captivated. What happened? I would have given it two stars before, now I'm giving it five. I changed: In the intervening years I have become somewhat financially successful. Back when I first read it I was looking for some method to make money and didn't find it in that book. Now I know there is none. All books are mirrors of their readers as are these reviews. You have learned more about me than you will ever learn about The 7 Laws from reading this review. What can I tell you? Read the book or don't. When you find that no method or technique ever really works then you won't need this book or any other.

If you are looking for something with a lot of images, that's what you need.
Very nice and fine printed, but it has not so much to say.

Make no mistake -- this is a very attractive book. Frankly, its Jeremy Stout's design and Joshua Dunn's photography that make this book worth buying. Full color images of hundreds of U.S. and foreign paper currencies delight the eye. The layout itself takes its inspiration from money, with security stripes and microprinting, and even page numbers look like currency serial numbers.

The commentary, however, is another issue. While often containing valuable tidbits of the history of paper currency, especially in the section on the United States, "The Art of Money" suffers from failed attempts at humor and an often joyless condescending tone. In an entry on Queen Elizabeth II she's described as looking a little too much like "Prince Charles in drag." The portraits on the redesigned U.S. currencies are described as looking like characters on "South Park".

For most readers, this is not helpful information. In addition, there are too many explanations of images that include the modifiers "must be", "could be", "it would seem so" and modern interpretations of allegorical scenes. Absent an expert's analysis or first-hand knowledge of the reasons behind the placement of images on currency, the author's speculations do not help the novice currency collector and are likely to annoy the professional.

In the final analysis, its the photos of the currencies, and not the captions, that make this book an enjoyable "read." And, as a former articles editor for "Playboy", Mr. Standish might forgive readers if we pick up his book only to look at the pictures.

Probably not the venue to launch into a tirade against the stultified, diploma/stock certificate-like house design style of the American treasury. But when you see the variety, color, flare and adventuresome spirit of other countries' currency designs, it is enough to make you positively ill. This is an old complaint, of course. This books visuals make a totally convincing case for the plaintiffs, however.

There WAS one brief shining moment when American money designers put something better, a real world-class moolah design, in our wallets. --See the gorgeous 3 bill "Educational" series of the 1890's or the Buffalo dollar from the first decade of the 20th Century (with, yes, a full body engraving of a buffalo in the usual bureaucrat spot on front, and two bonus spots on the left and right bearing likenesses of Lewis and Clark). After this frolicking fist full of dollars, American currency design "went corporate"; there hasn't been a really fun or cool bill in almost a century now.

The US post office has dolled up their issues to the point people accuse them of tackiness or pandering to populist taste. This is how we can see that stamps are alive as a design vehicle. When everything is august and handsome and tasteful, it is precisely as dead as...well, as American money design.

Simply put, this is a bad book. It is poorly written and is bad history.

When the author stops digressing, he has many unimportant and trivial anecdotes about the dollar in American history.

His interpretation of American history is terrible. Just a few examples: Early in the book he cited Hawthorne, Thoreau and Twain (who lost a fortune trying to be an industrialist) to reach the conclusion that Americans did not collect and hoard money in the nineteenth century. Apparently he did not read the rest of his book which went on ad nauseum about Americans in the nineteenth century chasing and counterfeiting the dollar. In another instance he concludes that all civil rights were suspended during the civil war (not that this had anything to do with $) - completely ignoring the fact that the Supreme Court overturned Lincoln's attempt to suspend habeas corpus. Lastly (I could go on and on), he finished the book by noting that on our dollar bills are the icons that were present at the birth of our nation. This, after telling how Grant and Cleveland were on our bills! Last I looked they lived late in the next century.

I kept hoping that some pearls about the dollar would come shining through. Whatever pearls there might have been were muddied by his erroneous history and his horrible interpretations of the history he included.

I felt I wasted a good deal of time reading this book. If one wants to read the only useful part of this book, limit yourself to the chapter(s) describing the private banknotes. Nothing before or after is at all worthwhile.

Jason Goodwin is a polarizing author, whose books are either hated or loved by his readers. As in his best-known previous book, "Lords of the Horizons", in "Greenback" he uses a lot of wonderful anecdotes to spice up his prose and keep the reader interested. As in that book, his grasp of the essence of the subject is pretty good, although one could disagree in the details.

I am one of those readers who choose to stay away from rigorous, traditional history books because I am turned off by the stuffiness and the pedantic detailed narrative that they often provide. (I came to this end after having read a good deal of them...) I believe that the history of any subject is the sum of the personal histories of the people who participated and formed those events, famous or obscure, big or small. Jason Goodwin gives us plenty of those little personal stories and thank God for that as far as I am concerned.

I found this book very enjoyable to read and rich in information, although not as exciting as "Lords of the Horizons", so I am giving it 4 stars instead of the 5 I gave that one. I hope Jason Goodwin keeps giving us those great books on his diverse subjects and full of those colorful characters, and I am looking forward to his next book of non-sterilized history.

This is a very enjoyable work, well-written and researched, with numerous anecdotes and sidelights. I thought particularly strong the early chapters on colonial and post-revolution America. One sees in Jefferson an early version of a common type today: the person who is adamantly opposed to debt and credit instruments because he himself is hopelessly swamped in debt. Today's debt paranoiac shuns credit cards and deferred payment schemes of all stripes in favor of cash (paper dollars and checks drawn on bank accounts). But for Jefferson those very paper dollars and banks were suspect. For him, the only "real" money was metallic: gold or silver. The only stores of value in his opinion were coins or bullion or land.

This brought him into opposition to Hamilton, who wanted to inaugurate the new republic by assuming a huge load of debt (all the promises of payment represented by the wartime "Continentals"). Hamilton had a plan to set up a bank and issue paper money backed by gold reserves which didn't exist yet, but which he was confident could be built up by land sales and import duties. His plan, a risky scheme in Jefferson's opinion, was approved by Congress, and our little country began its life with a whopping 42 million dollar debt (p. 102). In spite of Jefferson's misgivings, the scheme worked so well that some twenty years later Jefferson himself was able to double the nation's land area by buying Louisiana from Napoleon.

I was disappointed that in this book, devoted as it is to various forms the dollar took over the years, no mention was made of the exact type of payment by Jefferson for Louisiana. Was it gold bullion? American gold dollars? Spanish gold dollars? Was there some of the paper money that he so despised? Was there a mortgage involved? Or a more racy installment plan (No interest and no payments until May 1808, or until the emperor conquers Russia, whichever comes first! Don't delay! Act now!)

"Greenback" then goes into satisfying detail on the banknote phenomenon, the system of the 19th century whereby banks printed notes (dollars, promises to pay) and either backed them up or did not back them up with gold in their vaults. As I understand it, the US government did not start printing such notes until the Civil War, and it did not become the sole legal printer of dollars until the 1920s. I would have liked more detail about how that latter change came about. What was the exact last day when you could use a dollar printed by a bank. Why did they wait so long to pass such a law, which seems perfectly natural to us now? Might the conversion have had anything to do with the subsequent worldwide depression? All fascinating questions for a follow-up volume which I hope will come from the febrile pen of Mr. Goodwin.

Rather dry. Not very much that you couldn't figure out by yourself; not much original insight. The author uses statistics throughout to the point that it almost becomes meaningless. Anyone with the most limited experience with statistics knows that you can make them say just about anything you want.

What I had hoped for was some insight into why there is so much economic disparity in this country and what we can, or should, do about it. Instead the author gave more of a status quo, "we are here," appoach.

The last chapter was maybe the most insteresting. It focused on the economic changes in the US since WW2. It is anybody's guess what the future will bring, but it seems like it will continue as it is now until there is some big crash or other disaster.

Andrew Hacker's Money is a great look at who has the money in America and how they got it. He talks in great detail about how the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. I was astounded to read that in 1997 there were 137 individuals who claimed over $1 billion in income. Almost 70,000 tax returns claimed an income of at least $1 million. There are far more rich people out there than I thought and it leads me to believe that if they can do it, so can I.

As a former student of Professor Hacker, I've developed much respect for the man. While that certainly biases my opinion of his books (as I do view him as the God of Political Science), I know that I will always be getting a fresh perspective as I've never known anyone who could "cut the crap" better than Professor Hacker.

One of the most important lessons I learned from him is to always read between the lines; so that we may learn to think beyond the 68% norm. While Dr. Hacker could certainly fill hundreds of more pages with his insightful comments and statistical analyses, he knows that in between the lines, there is a whole other book yet to be created by the reader. I regret not having learned that until after he had already given me my final grade.

Popular histories of everyday items such as the British monetary unit don't have to be this poorly done. The political and social history presented under the guise of a "biography" of the pound is riddled with errors. Apparently, the author was asleep during his history classes in school.

This book's presentation of the economic and numismatic history of the pound is even more inaccurate. The author would have us believe that Britain has been a strictly insular phenomenon since the before the Romans and that trade & coinage influences only passed outward towards the continent.

Popular histories of those small things we receive the past without much consideration can be both enjoyable reading and enlightening. This book is, unfortunately, neither. I had a very hard time finishing it - the writing style put me to sleep. Its glaring errors will make one wince.

Save your pence and spend them elsewhere.

A wonderful book for the casual historian or any numismatist with an interest in English coinage. Sinclair takes us back, way back, to the old Saxon kings in his quest to describe the ascendancy of the pound sterling. Stopping for a moment at all the important events in English currency from Offa through the development, and many absements of the penny we get to see all the noteable monarchs form a slightly different angle. The facts are well researched and documented, often from primary sources, and the text is an easy read.

What a super book, taugh me more about REAL history than many others - this is about the driving force that steers an economy from barter into true commerce, and the people who made it happen. Some of them are a surprise, being revealed as less (or more, as the case may be) than one's previous conceptions. The populace doesn't suddenly decide they want a change of ruler or government - something prompts it, and we learn that money (or the lack) is usually the root cause.

But the main thrust of the book is the Pound - initially just that, a weight of precious metal, almost useless for normal business, so the economies of scale and convenience demanded an alternative, and also some method of defeating the 'clippers', forgers and money launderers (a long-standing problem, this!).

Impeccable research and a flowing style make this an eminently readable and enjoyable book. *****.