I tried my level best to complete all of this years' reviews before New Year's Eve, however I find myself failing to do so primarily due to circumstanI tried my level best to complete all of this years' reviews before New Year's Eve, however I find myself failing to do so primarily due to circumstances completely in my control (I got lazy). This is why I am posting a placeholder review here, apologies for this. I will be completing and posting the complete review in a week or so.
This was a fantastic read, an excellent overview and selective in depth analyses as well. More on this in a few days time...more
I tried my level best to complete all of this years' reviews before New Year's Eve, however I find myself failing to do so primarily due to circumstanI tried my level best to complete all of this years' reviews before New Year's Eve, however I find myself failing to do so primarily due to circumstances completely in my control (I got lazy). This is why I am posting a placeholder review here, apologies for this. I will be completing and posting the complete review in a week or so.
Economic history + Roger Lowenstein + Civil War Era = this had to be fantastic, and it absolutely was. More on this in a few days....more
I tried my level best to complete all of this years' reviews before new year's eve, however I find myself failing to do so primarily due to circumstanI tried my level best to complete all of this years' reviews before new year's eve, however I find myself failing to do so primarily due to circumstances completely in my control (I got lazy). This is why I am posting a placeholder review here, apologies for this. I will be completing and posting the complete review in a week or so
Key takeaways from this book were: this was written in the early 90s so is fascinating from the perspective of banking then, v what has entailed in the decades following this book....more
I picked up this book as pretty much a segue way / placeholder between different reads, coming in with low expectations about the quality of writing oI picked up this book as pretty much a segue way / placeholder between different reads, coming in with low expectations about the quality of writing on the engaging nature of the narrative, but expecting a much more complex and quantitative / analytical work. It is easy to see for any layman how a global economy that ‘catches a cold every time America sneezes� is kept running by the circulation of dollars. Global exports and imports, exchange rates, asset prices, and other economic and financial measures are all detailed in US dollar for good reasons. People who are better informed about economic history or modern finance know all of what is presented in this book, and even more.
This makes me wonder who or what the intended audience of this book was meant to be? Better informed people could have benefited from a more thorough analysis breaking down trade to components, subcomponents, as well as the role of intellectual property and global lending in circulating dollars from their point of origin, to across the planet and then likely back. What we have here instead read like a book meant to wow pre-teens or teenagers who have just begun to explore how the world works. This book may even work for an incredibly nerdy parent who wants to read their children, a night time book about ‘the Almighty Dollar� which rises up and goes around the world which is wow so mystical so cool. If this is found in a coffee lounge or an airport terminal and you have absolutely nothing else to read or do, then sure go ahead and read this one. Otherwise, pretty much a waste of time.
The title of this book suggested that I might be in for a hyperbolic read, although after having finished the same, I believe my initial fears were onThe title of this book suggested that I might be in for a hyperbolic read, although after having finished the same, I believe my initial fears were only slightly misplaced. ‘The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost it All� details the rise of Bill Gross and the Bond trading firm that he founded (PIMCO). Unlike most business history books that I have read, this is the first one which deals with a major (or the most well-known) player in the Bond market, as opposed to equities or goods and services.
While the book aims to compete with the likes of Bethany Mclean’s The Smartest Guys in the Room or Carreyrou’s Bad Blood, in my opinion it does not compete well with these books as it focuses excessively on individuals and their theatrics as opposed to market dynamics or even bond trading strategies. Even though those books also did not delve very deep into the products and businesses, they benefit from the fact that the startups or corporations they write about run businesses every household has interacted with. It is easy to understand what a smart blood diagnosis machine would do, or what an energy (natural gas) supplier is supposed to do. This is not true of the bond market. Even if a person understands what a bond is and how it works, this does not mean that they would intuitively understand how a bond market would work (this requires squaring off expectations of payoffs, yields, etc.). A layman may well scratch their head and wonder how can a $100 bond with a fixed interest payment be valued at anything other than the sum of the amount invested and the returned payments? And if that is all there is to the value of a bond, on what basis are they traded? Even these basic questions went unaddressed.
The book would have been much better if it was written like Roger Lowenstein’s book on LTCM or even Adam Tooze’s book Crashed on the decade of financial crises from 2008 to 2018. Both discuss individual participants in financial melodramas, but they also do not assume that the lay read would understand the financial products being discussed. This is why they explain at a high level, and with simple language, everything the reader must understand to comprehend the narrative being told. A single-minded focus on individuals may make for a good HBO thriller, and maybe that is what the author is hoping to secure. But that does not make for an excellent business history read. Who would I recommend this to? People who already know a bit about bond markets, are aware of PIMCO and just need more light shed on its founder and the firm’s internal shenanigans. Anyone else would be better off reading a handful of high-quality WSJ or FT articles and be just as informed as the person who read the entire book.
Rating 3 of 5, mostly for the entertaining drama-esque writing which made for a fun audiobook listen...more
The best economic history book that I have ever read, ‘A Splendid Exchange�, was written by William Bernstein. This is why when I saw another work by The best economic history book that I have ever read, ‘A Splendid Exchange�, was written by William Bernstein. This is why when I saw another work by him which was at the very least, proximate to economics and finance, I decided to read up immediately. However, this one was frankly, meh at best. This has little to do with the contents of the book, which as the title suggests, is building off of Charles Mackay’s book by a very similar name, albeit written in the 19th century. Bernstein upgrades the contents bringing in knowledge from the 20th and 21st century, namely in cognitive biases and other illusions to show how a lot of herd behavior and individual behavior in markets and otherwise, is driven by the delusional behavior of individuals amplifying trends. However, there was not anything particularly insightful or novel for anyone who knows finance and has read anything on behavioral economics.
Behavioral finance as a subset of behavioral economics does not really seem to offer anything exceptional insightful which the parent field already has not demarcated. Furthermore as in our time as issues related to behavioral economics have become more prominent and I daresay more interesting � ranging from replication failures as well as more intellectual weaknesses (as highlighted by Ole Peters and Nassim Taleb, dealing with ergodicity and the ‘rationality� of choice). None of these are recognized or addressed in this book, which seems to be making a case for behavioral finance without explicitly using the term, and so suffers from the weaknesses and challenges faced by behavioral economics. This makes for the book a mediocre read, which given the expectations I had from it, leads me to rate it lower than what others might have.
I tried my level best to complete all of this years' reviews before New Year's Eve, however I find myself failing to do so primarily due to circumstanI tried my level best to complete all of this years' reviews before New Year's Eve, however I find myself failing to do so primarily due to circumstances completely in my control (I got lazy). This is why I am posting a placeholder review here, apologies for this. I will be completing and posting the complete review in a week or so.
Ben Bernanke comes out to defend his era AND gives us a thorough lesson in monetary and economic history as well. This was by far the best finance/financial history read in a long while, and a must read for anyone interested in the subject matter. More on this in a few days...more
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