The Moneymakers

When real money is at stake, it tends to clarify the mind, and for over a decade, Anne-Marie Fink has had literally billions of dollars resting on her assessments of companies. As an equity analyst and professional investor, she has been charged with understanding whether businesses are solid, long-term moneymakers–or rotten tomatoes–before investing with them. She has had unusual access to an incredible variety of businesses, from entertainment conglomerates to newspapers, Internet companies, airlines, railroads, furniture manufacturers, auto suppliers, staffing agencies, and others. Well known for her ability to drill down to the details and understand what makes a business tick, she has skillfully dissected the story of many a CEO and talked with people up and down the ranks, as well as customers, suppliers, regulators, distributors, bankers, and rivals–anyone who could give her insight on a company’s operations. The result is a book of great originality–an unusual and perceptive look at business that busts myths and conventional thinking. Based on what she and her investing colleagues have seen firsthand, Anne-Marie Fink’s The Moneymakers provides a highly pragmatic framework for thriving in our hypercompetitive world. They include: • Shrink to grow: Why expanding a bad (low-return) business means you just have more of a problem, and how a step backward is often the best way forward. • Good performance requires inefficiency and duplication: How maximum efficiencyproduces suboptimal results by stifling innovation. • Don’t be a customer fanatic: How to know when to listen to and when to ignore your customers. • Economics always trumps management: Ignore bedrock economic laws–such as supply and demand–at your peril; it is akin to ordering the tides to stay in place. • Why happy employees don’t make for high-performance workplaces. • Problems in business are like cockroaches–there’s never just one: How to catch problems before they infest your company. • Avoid the trap of profitless growth: Additional profitis an illusion if it consumes too much capital. • Megatrends start as ripples: How to position your business to ride long-term waves, not be drowned by them.

Shortly after arriving in the White House in early 1933, Franklin Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard. His opponents thought his decision unwise at best, and ruinous at worst. But they could not have been more wrong. With The Money Makers, Eric Rauchway tells the absorbing story of how FDR and his advisors pulled the levers of monetary policy to save the domestic economy and propel the United States to unprecedented prosperity and superpower status. Drawing on the ideas of the brilliant British economist John Maynard Keynes, among others, Roosevelt created the conditions for recovery from the Great Depression, deploying economic policy to fight the biggest threat then facing the nation: deflation. Throughout the 1930s, he also had one eye on the increasingly dire situation in Europe. In order to defeat Hitler, Roosevelt turned again to monetary policy, sending dollars abroad to prop up the faltering economies of Britain and, beginning in 1941, the Soviet Union. FDR's fight against economic depression and his fight against fascism were indistinguishable. As Rauchway writes, "Roosevelt wanted to ensure more than business recovery; he wanted to restore American economic and moral strength so the US could defend civilization itself." The economic and military alliance he created proved unbeatable-and also provided the foundation for decades of postwar prosperity. Indeed, Rauchway argues that Roosevelt's greatest legacy was his monetary policy. Even today, the "Roosevelt dollar" remains both the symbol and the catalyst of America's vast economic power. The Money Makers restores the Roosevelt dollar to its central place in our understanding of FDR, the New Deal, and the economic history of twentieth-century America. We forget this history at our own peril. In revealing the roots of our postwar prosperity, Rauchway shows how we can recapture the abundance of that period in our own.

Three sons, one massive fortune. The race to be the first to make £1,000,000 to win the inheritence is on... Harry Bingham is a wonderful new talent in the great bestselling storytelling tradition of Jeffrey Archer and Dick Francis. Three sons. One fortune. Who will win it? A wealthy Yorkshire industrialist dies and leaves his three sons and one daughter, all used to a life of extreme luxury... absolutely nothing. Except the chance to win the entire inheritance by whichever one of them has one million pounds in his bank account at the end of three years. Startled out of their indulgent lives, the three sons start competing against each other in their mad attempt to make a million pounds. Two of them go into the City, the eldest buys a run-down factory. Which one of them is going to be successful in their desperate bid and win the millions? With a knack for story-telling in the style of Jeffrey Archer, this compulsively readable and absolutely un-put-downable novel heralds the arrival of a new bestselling, extremely commercial talent on the scene.

Three hundred years ago, a charismatic young gambler and man-about-town with a natural gift for mathematics fled London for the Contintent. His name was John Law and he had a good reason to go, having killed a man in a duel. Living off his lucrative winnings at the gaming tables of Europe, Law became increasingly fascinated by the nature of finance and journeyed to the impoverished , famine-stricken France of Louis XIV with an extraordinary idea. At the time when wealth was stored and exchanged as gold and silver coin - and there was rarely enough to fund the extravagance of kings, let alone trade - Law realised that the overriding problem was lack of available money. He reasoned that if this could be lent in the form of paper, properly backed by assets, then it could be lend repeatedly and credit used to multiply the opportunities for the making of money. Such a radical notion meant Law faced opposition from powerful vested interests. His persistence paid off in 1716 when, with royal backing, he established the first French bank to issue paper money. He also created a trading company which made its shareholders rich beyond their wildest dreams: so much so that the new term 'millionaire' was coined to describe them. What follows is the stuff of epic drama: a tale of fortunes won and lost, of paupers made rich and lords losing all. And in telling this enthralling tragi-comic story, Janet Gleeson brings to life two fascinating characters who together would change the way the world worked: the inscrutable John Law, and mercurial money itself.

A brand new, fully updated, second edition of the classic bestseller Who are the professional investment managers responsible for moving and making millions on the stock market? What approaches and strategies do they adopt? Britain has more successful stock market investors than any other country outside the United States. Yet for a long time their activities - and the secrets of their success - have remained shrouded in mystery to anyone outside the Square Mile. Now the City's top professional investors have talked in depth to a leading financial writer about their lives and their strategies for making money on the stock market. They include such market wizards as the private investor's champion Jim Slater, Michael Hart, long time manager of the UK's oldest investment trust, stockpicker supreme Anthony Bolton, and emerging markets guru Mark Mobius, Nobody with an interest in stocks and shares can fail to learn from reading how these consummate professionals go about their business. Or from their advice on what it takes to be a winner in the financial markets. The Money Makers profiled are: Anthony Bolton, Ian Rushbrook, Nils Taube, Colin McLean, Michael Hart, John Carrington, Jim Slater and Mark Mobius.

"Economic power is becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few, even as democratic movements worldwide allow for political power to be dispersed among the many. With their access to influence, the wealthy can shape and constrain the political power of the rest of the world. As the economic dominance of an elite minority coincides with the forces of globalization, is oligarchy becoming the dominant political regime? This collection explores the renewed relevance of oligarchy to contemporary global politics. By drawing out lessons from classic texts, contributors illustrate how the character of oligarchical regimes informs contemporary political life. Topics include the relationship between the American government and corporations, the tension between republican and oligarchical regimes, and the potential conflicts that have opened up between economic management and political life. On Oligarchy deftly illuminates the significance of this regime in the context of pressing global economic and political issues."--Publisher's website.