Product Description: Why Going Against the Grain Pays.
Bestselling author Bill Bonner has long been a maverick observer of the financial and political world, sharpening his sardonic wit, in particular, on the vagaries of the investing public. Market booms and busts, tulip manias and dotcom bubbles, venture capitalists and vulture funds, he lets you know, are best explained not by dry statistics and obscure theories but by the metaphors and analogies of literature.
Now, in Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets, Bonner and freelance journalist Lila Rajiva use literary economics to offer broader insights into mass behavior and its devastating effects on society. Why is it, they ask, that perfectly sane and responsible individuals can get together, and by some bizarre alchemy turn into an irrational mob? What makes them trust charlatans and demagogues who manipulate their worst instincts? Why do they abandon good sense, good behavior and good taste when an empty slogan is waved in front of them. Why is the road to hell paved with so many sterling intentions? Why is there a fool on every corner and a knave in every public office?
In attempting an answer, the authors weave a light-hearted journey through history, politics and finance to show group think at work in an improbable array of instances, from medieval crusades to the architectural follies of hedge-fund managers. Their journey takes them ultimately to the desk of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank and to a cautionary tale of the current bubble economy. They warn that the gush of credit let loose by Alan Greenspan and multiplied by the sophisticated number games of Wall Street whizzes is fraught with perils for the unwary. Boom without end, pronounces The Street. But Bonner and Rajiva are more cynical. When the higher math and the greater greed come together, watch out below!
Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets ends by giving concrete advice on how readers can avoid what the authors call the public spectacle of modern finance, and become, instead, private investors - knowing their own mind and following their own intuitions. The authors have no gimmicks to offer here - but instead give a better understanding of the dynamics of market behavior, allowing prudent investors to protect themselves from the fads and follies of the investment markets.
Entertaining, insightful and very timely As the debt ridden economy of the U.S. crumbles at an accelerating pace, "Mobs, Messiah, and Markets" helps you laugh to keep from crying by at least explaining how we got here and why. Without being too apocalyptic it also offers some avenues of escape from financial ruin as the house of cards built on Federal Reserve Notes begins to topple.
The Daily Reckoning Bill Bonner is my favorite market/trading on-line newspaper "The Daily Reckoning" author. This is the reason the book was purchased. The central message of the book is how to avoid getting caught up in the public spectacle of money. The "public spectacle" may be not Bonner's invention but for me it is the first time I am get faced with the term and I like it very much. In fact it is almost the first time that in clear and sensible form I find not the explanation but at least a sympthomatic description of this obvious stupidity and manias covering over us. Bonner gives a wide retrospective of a public spectacle in society life, the type which is developed in the form of tragedy demanding a huge toll of deaths and ruined faiths. All these sacred figures like comandante Che or great chairman Mao are depicted in their awfulness beloved as much as bigger was the damage they brought in their attempt to do a good for the mankind.
The market type public spectacle is according to Bonner more farce than tragedy.
The lessons:
1. The safest and sometimes the best way to make money is to save them, not to loose. Think about cash.
2. Don't go looking for trouble. Stick with good investment.
3. Never expect the market to give a sucker an even break. Try to bend the chances in your favour heavily.
4. Buy low sell high.
5. Never buy what someone else really wants to sell.
6. Never buy what everyone else is rushing to buy.
7. Learn to not to do anything.
I Want My Money Back As someone who frequently purchases books about history, markets, and politics, I was appalled.
This is the first book I have read in years that made me want to get my money back. Since that isn't possible I have decided to try to save others.
This is a grossly inadequate book.
Save your money. You'd get better insight from your local bartender( and less smugness as well).
Too many jokes This book espouses a variety of important free market ideas with healthy doses of skepticism throughout. Unfortunately, the authors seem to be more concerned with making jokes than with their subject matter. They also engage in outright name-calling, which further discredits their arguments, often supported with completely unrelated anecdotes.
Free markets and individualism deserve better representation.
If you like The Daily Reckoning, you'll like this book. I read Bonner's Daily Reckoning e-letter every now and then and I enjoy it for his commentary and often accurate economic predictions. This book is similar in writing style, but with fewer of the useful bits the e-letter delivers. It is also not, as one reader mentioned, a strictly financial book, but more of a sociological survey.
The best parts of the book are in the latter chapters, where he gives us his plan (buy gold) and gets back into his usual (but useful for its predictive potential) end of the world riff. Before that, however, it is, as another person put it, like sitting next to that crazy drunk guy on the subway who won't shut up. The co-authorship of the book probably adds to the effect, since you really can't tell who's writing each chapter at any given moment. Schizophrenic authorship isn't good for books.
Although I did not always think his metaphors were accurate or relevant, I still generally enjoyed the socio-political commentary about the behavior of crowds and Bonner's challenges to the status quo. His example of the success of non-democratic Hong Kong versus the increasingly democratic Imperial Britain was very enlightening. Democracy does not, ipso facto, result in a booming economy, in fact a non democracy or even an absolute dictatorship can do quite well, as Bonner points out.
Overall, the book needed more focus and better organization, but if you have the time, it's still worth a look.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
