Naked Money A Revealing Look At Our Financial System

Charles Wheelan’s wonderfully whimsical, best-selling Naked series tackles the weird, surprisingly colorful world of money and banking. Consider the $20 bill. It has no more value, as a simple slip of paper, than Monopoly money. Yet even children recognize that tearing one into small pieces is an act of inconceivable stupidity. What makes a $20 bill actually worth twenty dollars? In the third volume of his best-selling Naked series, Charles Wheelan uses this seemingly simple question to open the door to the surprisingly colorful world of money and banking. The search for an answer triggers countless other questions along the way: Why does paper money (“fiat currency” if you want to be fancy) even exist? And why do some nations, like Zimbabwe in the 1990s, print so much of it that it becomes more valuable as toilet paper than as currency? How do central banks use the power of money creation to stop financial crises? Why does most of Europe share a common currency, and why has that arrangement caused so much trouble? And will payment apps, bitcoin, or other new technologies render all of this moot? In Naked Money, Wheelan tackles all of the above and more, showing us how our banking and monetary systems should work in ideal situations and revealing the havoc and suffering caused in real situations by inflation, deflation, illiquidity, and other monetary effects. Throughout, Wheelan’s uniquely bright-eyed, whimsical style brings levity and clarity to a subject often devoid of both. With illuminating stories from Argentina, Zimbabwe, North Korea, America, China, and elsewhere around the globe, Wheelan demystifies the curious world behind the paper in our wallets and the digits in our bank accounts.

Charles Wheelan’s wonderfully whimsical, best-selling Naked series tackles the weird, surprisingly colorful world of money and banking. Consider the $20 bill. It has no more value, as a simple slip of paper, than Monopoly money. Yet even children recognize that tearing one into small pieces is an act of inconceivable stupidity. What makes a $20 bill actually worth twenty dollars? In the third volume of his best-selling Naked series, Charles Wheelan uses this seemingly simple question to open the door to the surprisingly colorful world of money and banking. The search for an answer triggers countless other questions along the way: Why does paper money (“fiat currency” if you want to be fancy) even exist? And why do some nations, like Zimbabwe in the 1990s, print so much of it that it becomes more valuable as toilet paper than as currency? How do central banks use the power of money creation to stop financial crises? Why does most of Europe share a common currency, and why has that arrangement caused so much trouble? And will payment apps, bitcoin, or other new technologies render all of this moot? In Naked Money, Wheelan tackles all of the above and more, showing us how our banking and monetary systems should work in ideal situations and revealing the havoc and suffering caused in real situations by inflation, deflation, illiquidity, and other monetary effects. Throughout, Wheelan’s uniquely bright-eyed, whimsical style brings levity and clarity to a subject often devoid of both. With illuminating stories from Argentina, Zimbabwe, North Korea, America, China, and elsewhere around the globe, Wheelan demystifies the curious world behind the paper in our wallets and the digits in our bank accounts.

A New York Times bestseller "Brilliant, funny…the best math teacher you never had." —San Francisco Chronicle Once considered tedious, the field of statistics is rapidly evolving into a discipline Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, has actually called "sexy." From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you’ll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more. For those who slept through Stats 101, this book is a lifesaver. Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts such as inference, correlation, and regression analysis, reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data, and shows us how brilliant and creative researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions. And in Wheelan’s trademark style, there’s not a dull page in sight. You’ll encounter clever Schlitz Beer marketers leveraging basic probability, an International Sausage Festival illuminating the tenets of the central limit theorem, and a head-scratching choice from the famous game show Let’s Make a Deal—and you’ll come away with insights each time. With the wit, accessibility, and sheer fun that turned Naked Economics into a bestseller, Wheelan defies the odds yet again by bringing another essential, formerly unglamorous discipline to life.

The best-selling author’s practical guide to writing clearly and convincingly in every professional setting. How would you create a winning pitch for your latest investment idea? Or persuasively argue for a major policy change? Or successfully ask your boss for a raise? The answer: clear and effective communication, whether in writing or through a presentation. Best-selling author Charles Wheelan has spent decades mastering effective communication skills in his work as a writer, college professor, journalist, speechwriter, political candidate, and public speaker. In Write for Your Life, he shares his best tips. Taking readers through all the steps required to arrive at a coherent first draft, he then explains the best ways to improve and fine-tune your writing. He covers how to organize and present information, why it’s necessary to adapt your tone to different audiences, and when to use summaries, sidebars, bullet points, and other tools for making information more digestible. He explores the truth behind popular clichés like "Show, don’t tell" and "Kill your darlings," and discusses the proper use and attribution of quotations from secondary sources. And he goes on to cover how to speak effectively, providing helpful advice for preparing a winning presentation or delivering a speech. Writing with his signature wit and humor, Wheelan illustrates his points with entertaining examples from his own life, as well as memorable anecdotes from leading magazine and newspaper writers, political figures from Winston Churchill to Barack Obama and Elena Kagan, and a diverse array of the best communicators from the worlds of culture, sports, and politics. Write for Your Life is an essential guide for anyone needing to get their ideas across whether in an email, memo, report, presentation, fund-raising letter, or speech.

Attempts to assess whether the United States is in economic decline. Appropriate to general readers as well as economics students and scholars, this book examines the fears of Americans about their economic future.

What is the driving force behind most populist and protest movements? A feeling of INEQUALITY. From Occupy groups to global trade demonstrations, from American middle class angst to yellow vest frustration in France to the Arab Spring, a common feeling unites them that something in the system is unfair. Blue-collar supporters of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump use remarkably similar language to express a core belief: that the establishment's economic model is rigged against them. The same protest sentiment is expressed globally. Statistically, these movements are correct: inequality is rising in all developed economies around the world. But, what is the common cause? This book shows that the structure of the banking system is the cause of inequality in society. But, it isn't a protest book. It isn't meant to make you feel outraged or to provide an historical account of inequality or a lot of statistics. It is more useful than that. This book demonstrates technically how inequality is caused by the banking system. This is the first book ever that gives a genuine behind-the-curtain look at how banks really function and their impact on society. It reveals that banks create most of the money in an economy, not the state. It shows why inequality and discrimination against out-groups are institutional. It explains the banking mechanism that transfers wealth from the many to the few over time. It shows that, unlike almost all other industries, the banking sector enjoys unparalleled protection by the establishment against competition. This book solves some mysteries, like the following: - Why is fractional reserve banking like a distorted version of the game Monopoly? - Why does the establishment find women's sexual education repugnant? - Why does the economy blow up from time to time? - Why was Karl Marx so pissed off? - What does Professor Sybill Trelawney have in common with the governors of the Federal Reserve? It shows that the 1% derive much of their power from their preferential access to bank-created money. Money and the banking system underlie inequality and discrimination in society; if you want to address these issues, you have to start at the source. In the end, this is not really a book about money and banking; it is more about our values as a society.

We all depend on banks. They help us save and they help us spend. Yet for many they represent everything that's wrong with the world of finance. Poor service, high fees, creaking IT infrastructure, and a market controlled by just a few providers have combined in recent years to create a personal banking crisis every bit as severe as the global financial crisis. How have things gotten this bad? Why are banks unable to balance providing good customer service with making a profit? And what can we do to protect ourselves from the tricks banks play to part us with our hard-earned money? Written by two insiders, Naked Banking reveals why banks do the things they do. From designing products they know will rip customers off to cutting branches they know their customers rely on, they explain how many banks' failing business models force them to make the wrong choices again and again. They make a rallying call for us all to be better informed about how everyday banking products actually work and to be wary of the many tricks and techniques product managers devise to make money.

Everything from home mortgages to climate change has become financialized, as vast fortunes are generated by individuals who build nothing of lasting value. Das shows how "extreme money" has become ever more unreal; how "voodoo banking" continues to generate massive phony profits even now; and how a new generation of "Masters of the Universe" has come to domiinate the world.