Get a $600 Collectible Investment Book for Free Here
By Tom Dyson
December 1, 2008
Three investment books are so sought after, yet so rare, that second-hand copies sell for hundreds of dollars on the Internet. If you see any of these books in second-hand bookshops, buy them immediately.
The Secrets of Professional Turf Betting, by Robert Bacon, is one. Used copies sell for $180 on Amazon.
This is one of the best books on speculation ever written. It explains how to win money at the horse track. But the advice Bacon gives in this book also applies to the stock market and all other forms of speculating in public markets. Famous speculator Victor Niederhoffer requires all his traders to read this book before he'll allow them to work for him.
I once found two copies of this book in a bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee for $30 each.
Margin of Safety, published in 1991 by Seth Klarman, is another collectible book. Brand new copies of this book sell for $2,300 on Amazon. Used copies sell for $700.
Seth Klarman manages the Baupost Group, one of the most successful value investing mutual funds in history, returning close to 20% per year over the last 25 years. He doesn't use debt or leverage and follows strict value investing principles in the same vein as Warren Buffet or Benjamin Graham. This book is a description of Klarman's investment strategy.
I've never seen a copy of this book... only an illegal photocopy.
The final book I want to mention today is the most relevant to the financial world right now. Not one person in a thousand understands what this book talks about. This ignorance is why millions of Americans are in dire financial straits. I think it's absolutely crucial to your family's future that you understand what is in this book.
The book is Murray Rothbard's The Mystery of Banking, published in 1983. First editions sell for as much as $600 on Amazon.
I read The Mystery of Banking this week. It's a sublime read, simple to understand and thorough. The book covers the function of money, it explains how the Federal Reserve system works, and describes how our financial system generates inflation. Chapters 6,7, and 8 are the best explanation of how a bank works I've ever read.
A new edition just came out this year. It's selling for $20. You can get this book free by following this link: http://mises.org/mysteryofbanking.pdf.
If you've never understood how the Fed's discount window works or what the newspapers mean when they talk about the Fed's "open market operations," you need to read this book.
But above all, this book is important because it explains the terrific efficiency of the American banking system when it comes to inflation.
It's horrifying. The free market has several checks and stops in place to prevent inflation and bad banking. But Rothbard shows, one by one, how our leaders have figured out how to skirt them, outlaw them, and turn the banking system into a ruthless inflation machine certain to collapse.
Deposit insurance is one device Rothbard discusses. The FDIC now insures deposits up to $250,000. So no matter where you park your money, as long as the bank is a member of the Fed banking system, your money is 100% guaranteed by the government in the event of a bank collapse.
Rothbard shows that every bank in America is insolvent. If even 20% of a bank's customers asked to withdraw their cash at the same time, the bank would have to shut its doors. The FDIC is the government's way of stopping bank runs in a world of insolvent banks.
Deposit insurance gives bank customers a false sense of security so they don't try to discriminate between risky banks and prudent banks. The boxer who doesn't feel pain is a good analogy. He may win a few fights. But in the long run, he's guaranteed to become a vegetable.
Without FDIC insurance, bankers would have a strong incentive to behave prudently or risk losing their business. Reputations would be cultivated over hundreds of years, good banks would prosper, bad banks would fail. Newcomers would have to offer higher deposit rates to make up for their unproven track record.
Any good banker should hate FDIC insurance. When Roosevelt first introduced deposit insurance in 1933, it caused uproar in the banking community.
I highly recommend you take the time to read this book by Rothbard. You'll never look at your bank in the same way again. But beware: It'll probably make you want to own gold.
Good investing,
Tom
Editor's note: Tom Dyson is a regular contributor to DailyWealth, a free investment newsletter focused on the world's best contrarian opportunities. We write with a simple belief in mind: You don't have to take big risks to make big money with your investments.
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Office rents in London's West End, midtown Manhattan and Tokyo fell in the third quarter for the first time in almost seven years as the global financial crisis cut demand, CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. said.
The total office occupancy cost in the West End was 139.50 pounds ($248.66) per square foot a year in the 12 months ended Sept. 30, down 5.1 percent from a year earlier, Los Angeles-based CB Richard Ellis said today in its semiannual global-office survey. Rents in London, midtown Manhattan and central Tokyo last fell from a year earlier in January 2002, during the last recession.
Even with the rent decline, London's West End remained the world's most expensive office market in the third quarter, CB Richard Ellis said. It was followed by Moscow, where office costs rose 30 percent to $234.73 a square foot, and Hong Kong's central business district, where they rose 29 percent to $231.59.
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Wall Street's painful downsizing could cost 225,000 New Yorkers their jobs over the next two years as it recent era of outsize profits may have ended and it adapts to less leverage, the state comptroller said Monday.
The securities industry could clip a total of 38,000 workers by next October, and another 10,000 employees could be axed in related fields, such as banking, insurance, and real estate, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli forecast in a new report.
Wall Street seems to have overpaid its employees in the first six months of this year, DiNapoli said adding that total compensation ate up "an unsustainable" 97% of net revenues. In contrast, the ratio averaged only 53% from 1990 to 2006.
The state and city could lose $6.5 billion in tax revenues from Wall Street over two years. New York City gets 12% of its tax revenues from this industry, while the state gets 20%.
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