Investing Books

• SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. Levitt
  Pop-economcics follow up to the original Freakonics book. SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: * Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands? * What's the best way to catch a terrorist? * Did TV cause a rise in crime? * What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common? * Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness? * Can eating kangaroo save the planet?

• Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life by John Bogle
  Written by John C. Bogle–the legendary founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund–Enough. offers his unparalleled insights on money, the values we should emulate in our business and professional callings, and what we should consider as the true treasures in our lives. Inspired in large measure by the hundreds of lectures Bogle has delivered to professional groups and college students in recent years, this book will help you discover what it really means to have "enough" and how close you are to really having it.

• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. Levitt
  Very popular and quick read (though some parts you can skip like the whole name chapter). The authors analyze data to draw some interesting and controversial conclusion.

Investing Articles

• Choosing The Highest Safe Withdrawal Rate At Retirement
  The article explores safe withdrawal rates for retirement savings - "As can be seen in Figure 1, there were many occasions in the past when withdrawal rates higher than even 5.5% could have been successfully employed. In fact, the average SAFEMAX for all retirees for the years 1926 to 1990 was 7.0%—much higher than the “worst case” scenario of 4.5%. It seemed to me, therefore, that it would be useful to have a method that prescribed high withdrawal rates when the right conditions existed."

• Jim Rogers: 'US government's inflation data is a sham by Jim Rogers
  "I expect interest rates in the US to go much, much, much higher over the next few years... If the world economy gets better, commodities are going to go up in price because there are shortages. If the world economy does not get better, you should own commodities, because [central banks] are going to print more money... Real assets are the way to protect yourself."

• Warren Buffett's Letters To Berkshire Shareholders by Warren Buffett
  Every Investor should read these. Letters going back to 1995 give you insight into Warren Buffett's ideas on investing, the economy and business.

• Charlie Rose Conversation with Elizabeth Warren by Elizabeth Warren
  "If your worldview is that it’s all about that handful of banks on Mount Olympus, then you have a different notion of what the problem is and you have a different notion of what the solution is. If your worldview is about 117 million American families, households, and you understand the kinds of pressures they are under and the problems facing them, you have a very different vision of where we need to concentrate our resources and where we need to start solving the problem."

• Middle Class Families from 1970-2005 by John Hunter, Elizabeth Warren
  Webcasts of speech by Elizabeth Warren. Interesting data. Looking at standard family (Mom, Dad and 2 kids from 1970 to 2005), in inflation adjusted dollars: earnings increased a great deal (due to women working much more) but disposable income decreased. This is because basic expenses increased: health care, housing, transportation… (and this is with assuming employer provided health care – which has really been decreasing in likelihood over time). Those families are also more deeply in debt and reliant on 2 incomes. And if either income producer losses their jobs the economics of the family fail. Which means the family is much more at risk.

• USA, China and Japan Lead Manufacturing Output in 2008 by John Hunter
  "The first chart shows the USA's share of the manufacturing output, of the countries that manufactured over $185 billion in 2008, at 28.1% in 1990, 27.7% in 1995, 32% in 2000, 28% in 2005, 28% in 2006, 26% in 2007 and 24% in 2008. China’s share has grown from 4% in 1990, 6% in 1995, 10% in 2000, 13% in 2005, 14% in 2006, 16% in 2007 to 18% in 2008. Japan’s share has fallen from 22% in 1990 to 14% in 2008. The USA has about 4.5% of the world population, China about 20%."

• Choosing the Road to Prosperity Why We Must End Too Big to Fail—Now
  by Harvey Rosenblum, Federal Reserve of Dallas. "We can perpetuate [Too Big to Fail] TBTF, with its inequities and dangers, or we can end it. Eliminating TBTF won’t be easy, but the vitality of our capitalist system and the long-term prosperity it produces hang in the balance... When competition declines, incentives often turn perverse, and self-interest can turn malevolent. That’s what happened in the years before the financial crisis... The term TBTF disguised the fact that commercial banks holding roughly one-third of the assets in the banking system did essentially fail, surviving only with extraordinary government assistance."

• The Great Financial Scandal of 2003 by Charles Munger
  An exploration of an imaginary company. "This price decline, in turn, triggered a careful examination of Quant Tech’s financial reporting practices which, at long last, convinced nearly everyone that a very large majority of Quant Tech’s reported earnings had long been phony earnings and that massive and deliberate misreporting had gone on for a great many years. This triggered even more price decline for Quant Tech stock until in mid-2003 the market capitalization of Quant Tech was only $140 billion, down 90% from its peak only six months earlier."

• Who Really Cooks the Books? by Warren Buffett
  "For many years, I've had little confidence in the earnings numbers reported by most corporations. I'm not talking about Enron and WorldCom - examples of outright crookedness. Rather, I am referring to the legal, but improper, accounting methods used by chief executives to inflate reported earnings. The most flagrant deceptions have occurred in stock-option accounting and in assumptions about pension-fund returns. The aggregate misrepresentation in these two areas dwarfs the lies of Enron and WorldCom."

• Why I'm not buying the U.S. dollar by Warren Buffett
  "At that point, the Squanders are forced to deal with an ugly equation: They must now not only return to working eight hours a day in order to eat -- they have nothing left to trade -- but must also work additional hours to service their debt and pay Thriftville rent on the land so imprudently sold. In effect, Squanderville has been colonized by purchase rather than conquest. ... In general, the batting average of doomsayers in the U.S. is terrible. Our country has consistently made fools of those who were skeptical about either our economic potential or our resiliency. Many pessimistic seers simply underestimated the dynamism that has allowed us to overcome problems that once seemed ominous. We still have a truly remarkable country and economy."

• Knowledge workers are the new capitalists by Peter Drucker
  "knowledge workers are highly mobile within their specialism. They think nothing of moving from one university, one company or one country to another, as long as they stay within the same field of knowledge. There is a lot of talk about trying to restore knowledge workers' loyalty to their employing organisation, but such efforts will get nowhere. Knowledge workers may have an attachment to an organisation and feel comfortable with it, but their primary allegiance is likely to be to their specialised branch of knowledge."

• Fund manager keen on Malaysia by Mark Mobius
  "Mobius said that over the past 25 years, he had been telling people that equities was the way to go and emerging markets were the places to be. Supply of stocks is growing in Asia and is actually soaking up the flow of hot money from offshore to this region. ... 'I am bullish on property everywhere. I put one third of my own money in equities, a third in property and a third in cash.'"

Investing Web Sites and Resources

• Management and Leadership Quotes by John Hunter
  Quotes on management, business, leadership and many related topics: innovation, problems solving, change, statistics, planning, motivation, etc..

• Adam Smith's Lost Legacy
  

• Freakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. Levitt
  Blog by the authors of the Freakonomics book which also includes many guest posts in teh same pop-economic vein.

• NPR Planet Money
  Blog from National Public Radio (USA) on personal finance, the economy and all matters money related.

• The Economist
  

• Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog by John Hunter
  

• Jubak Picks by Jim Jubak
  "The goal is to bring you the best market intelligence that I can on a schedule that keeps you at least one step ahead of the market. What's my definition of market intelligence? I’ve always aimed for a mix of analysis that lets you understand how things work — money flows, new technologies, company strategies, economic trends—and specific stock picks that let you make money from that analysis. When I make a buy or a sell I want you to understand the logic and facts behind it so you can say, Yes, that makes sense for me, or No, I disagree because..."

• Calculated Risk
  Analysis of economic data.

• Pop Economics
  

• The Baseline Scenario
  The Baseline Scenario is dedicated to explaining some of the key issues in the global economy and developing concrete policy proposals. By Simon Johnso, James Kwak and Peter Boone.