Book Bits | 10.13.12

Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
By Chrystia Freeland
Article by author via The Atlantic
F. Scott Fitzgerald was right when he declared the rich different from you and me. But today’s super-rich are also different from yesterday’s: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations that granted them opportunity—and the countrymen they are leaving ever further behind.


Trade the Congressional Effect: How To Profit from Congress’s Impact on the Stock Market
By Eric Singer
Press release for the book
Historical research indicates that, more often than not, when Congress is in session there is a negative effect on equities markets (the “Congressional Effect”) due possibly to investor uncertainty surrounding government action or inaction as well as the unintended consequences of Congressional legislative initiatives on the stock market. Author Eric Singer, a financial professional with over twenty-five years of experience, is an expert on this phenomenon, and with this new book he shares his extensive insights with you. Trade the Congressional Effect skillfully details how you can profit from Congress’s impact on the stock market. Along the way, it puts this approach in perspective and gives you all the tools you’ll need to profitably incorporate it into your investing endeavors. Singer walks you through the process of trading the Congressional Effect and provides practical guidance regarding the possible pitfalls and opportunities you’ll face each step of the way.
The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think
By Mary S. Morgan
Summary via publisher, Cambridge University Press
During the last two centuries, the way economic science is done has changed radically: it has become a social science based on mathematical models in place of words. This book describes and analyses that change – both historically and philosophically – using a series of case studies to illuminate the nature and the implications of these changes. It is not a technical book; it is written for the intelligent person who wants to understand how economics works from the inside out. This book will be of interest to economists and science studies scholars (historians, sociologists and philosophers of science). But it also aims at a wider readership in the public intellectual sphere, building on the current interest in all things economic and on the recent failure of the so-called economic model, which has shaped our beliefs and the world we live in.
The Family Wealth Sustainability Toolkit: The Manual
By Fredda Herz Brown and Fran Lotery
Summary via publisher, Wiley
The Family Wealth Sustainability Toolkit gives wealthy individuals, family offices, and the financial planners, advisors and wealth managers who counsel them, the tools they need to better assess their wealth sustainability skills. One part assessment software tool and one part companion book, the online Index allows readers to assess their family enterprise across four dimensions of sustainability, while the Manual acts both as a roadmap to analyzing their results and provides a foundation in best practices.
The Shrinking American Middle Class: The Social and Cultural Implications of Growing Inequality
By Joseph Dillon Davey
Summary via publisher, Palgrave Macmillan
The United States lost one third of its factory jobs in the past decade as jobs were outsourced offshore, mostly to Asia. Jobs that require a college degree are next to go. China will award six times as many degrees this year as they did ten years ago and any job that can be digitized will be ‘tradable’. Estimates of the number of vulnerable jobs range from a low 11 million to a staggering 56 million ‘middle class’ jobs. The median United States household income has already dropped by seven percent since 2000 and without dramatic changes in the American workforce that trend will become a disaster for middle class Americans.
How To Really Ruin Your Financial Life and Portfolio
By Ben Stein
Video interview with author via The Tavis Smiley Show
The author of the forthcoming text, How to Really Ruin Your Financial Life and Portfolio, weighs in on abortion, the defense budget, the economy, poverty and how voters choose their candidate.