Money Finance Economics

Early in the 21st century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, R&D, or software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, from tech firms and pharma companies to coffee shops and gyms, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success.

An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and the public for half a century. Originally published in 1944 - when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program - The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production.

Learn about Foreign Currency Exchange with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Foreign currency exchange is the transaction of monetary business between two different countries. When conducting any business, participants must eventually be paid in the currency of their own country, regardless off whether the business is domestic or international.

In this groundbreaking book, celebrated economic historian Joel Mokyr argues that a culture of growth specific to early modern Europe and the European Enlightenment laid the foundations for the scientific advances and pioneering inventions that would instigate explosive technological and economic development.

In this shocking exposé, former EHM John Perkins gives an insider view into the corrupt system that cheats and strong-arms countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars and ultimately causes staggering income inequality and ecological devastation. EHMs are highly paid professionals who use development loans to saddle countries with huge debts and force them to serve US interests. Now, a new EHM wave is infecting the world, and at the peak of the devastation sits China, a newly dominant economic power, with its own insidious version of the US EHM blueprint.

A radically revised new edition of this highly readable, popular guide aimed at everyone from students to statesmen who want to make sense of the modern economy and grasp how economic theory works in practice. It starts with the basics, and from the underlying theory it moves to the specifics of the world economy, including an analysis of the recent recession. The closing part puts the usefulness and the failings of economics under the spotlight, and looks at the innovative approaches being developed to address these failings.

Crisis seems to follow crisis. Inequality is rising, growth is stagnant, the environment is suffering, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed every crack in the system. We hear more calls for radical change, even the overthrow of capitalism. But the answer to our problems is not revolution. The answer is to create a better capitalism by understanding and harnessing the power of creative destruction - innovation that disrupts, but that over the past 200 years has also lifted societies to previously unimagined prosperity.

In the beginning was the loan, and the loan carried interest. For at least five millennia people have been borrowing and lending at interest. Yet as capitalism became established from the late Middle Ages onwards, denunciations of interest were tempered because interest was a necessary reward for lenders to part with their capital. And interest performs many other vital functions: it encourages people to save; enables them to place a value on precious assets, such as houses and all manner of financial securities; and allows us to price risk.

The finance sector of Western economies is too large and attracts too many of the smartest college graduates. Financialization over the past three decades has created a structure that lacks resilience and supports absurd volumes of trading. The finance sector devotes too little attention to the search for new investment opportunities and the stewardship of existing ones, and far too much to secondary-market dealing in existing assets. Regulation has contributed more to the problems than the solutions.

John J. Murphy has updated his landmark bestseller Technical Analysis of the Futures Markets, to include all of the financial markets. This outstanding reference has already taught thousands of traders the concepts of technical analysis and their application in the futures and stock markets...

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes' acclaimed, best-selling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why do some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty? The answer, as Landes definitively illustrates, is a complex interplay of cultural mores and historical circumstance.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “The most authoritative portrait of one of the most important American investors of our time.”—Los Angeles Times “Even people who don’t care a whit about business will be intrigued. . . . A side of the Oracle of Omaha that has rarely been seen...

In How Asia Works, Joe Studwell distills extensive research into the economics of nine countries - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China - into an accessible narrative that debunks Western misconceptions, shows what really happened in Asia and why, and for once makes clear why some countries have boomed while others have languished.

Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry? Author James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not - and cannot - be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge.

Learn about EBITDA with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Traditionally, those looking to investigate the financial health and value of a company have focused on things such as net income, cash flow and revenue. In recent times, another form of financial analysis has become increasingly used by investors, debt holder and others interested in the worth of businesses. It is known as EBITDA.

Learn about Leveraged Buyouts with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Leveraged buyouts originated in the early 1960’s. It is also known as a hostile takeover, a highly-leveraged transaction, or a bootstrap transaction. In effect, it is a tactic through which control of a corporation is acquired by buying up a majority of their stock using borrowed money.

Since the end of the Second World War, the US dollar has been the global reserve currency, which has ensured American dominance of the world economy. But no longer. More than a hundred countries are developing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), digital equivalents to cash that will utterly transform how we do business at home and abroad. Urgent, clear-eyed and groundbreaking, Smart Money shows us how CBDCs are going to impact all of our futures in ways that most of us have failed to even consider.

The book Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) hailed as “essential reading” for anyone who wants to “make informed decisions” and “have a basic understanding of the economy”: an illustrated guide to economics from one of the internet’s favorite financial educators. “Few people can...

B.R. Sutton learned portfolio management the hard way. Like many traders, at first he was in it strictly for the money. But after ten years of making money and losing it, learning and growing, Sutton gained what he was lacking in his life: autonomy. In Money Mind, Sutton shares his journey, along with strategies for creating independence and the tools to maintain it. You’ll learn ancient principles that enable you to become a good steward of money, enjoy speculation, and bounce back from defeat stronger than before.

"The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph," writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of crisis." In The Mystery of Capital, the world-famous Peruvian economist takes up one of the most pressing questions the world faces today: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail?