(Part 3) Top products from r/business

The Fed normally contracts the money supply and thereby raises interest rates by manipulating the discount rate or through open market operations, but instead "helicopter Ben" is pumping up the money supply with a fire hose by such atrocities as paying interest to banks for holding other people's money (ie; paying interest to banks merely for holding the 10% minimum reserve requirement of other people's money, not money the Fed loaned the bank).

As Milton Friedman emphasized in his seminal book "Money Mischief", inflation is purely a monetary phenomena. In other words, inflation is something the Federal Reserve and US Treasury actively engage in like a teenager with a new credit card. Likewise, were the supply of money limited, inflation could not occur in the first place.

They answer this critique on pages 110-117 of their latest book. Sounds like a lot of semantics on both sides of the argument, and I've yet to wrap my head around what real consequences there are to the different calculation methods, but I suspect there are at least a few. To summarize:

There are two kinds of taxes, inclusive and exclusive. For example, assume that for every $1 dollar, you keep/spend $.70 and send the government $.30. Calculated inclusively, the tax rate is $.30/$1.00 = 30%. Calculated exclusively, the tax rate is $.30/$.70 = 43%.

Since all the Federal embedded taxes that the Fair Tax is intended to replace - the Income Tax, Payroll Tax, etc. - are inclusive, the Fair Tax advocates say it should be calculated inclusively also. That does not include the state sales taxes, which are exclusive taxes. If you want to calculate the Fair Tax exclusively, fine, just calculate the Income Tax, Payroll Tax, etc. exclusively too.

Good Wikipedia page on it too, for anyone who doesn't want to read the whole book.

Grandchildren more likely but I agree it will be a great story. I wonder who will be the next J K Galbraith. I would be nice to read a 21st century version of that book. You can get the original here.

This quotation from it seems particularly apt.

""Even in such a time of madness as the late twenties, a great many men in Wall Street remained quite sane. But they also remained very quiet. The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them."

heres a good book thats pretty related.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Obvious-Everything-Need-Know-Succeed/dp/000724570X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207743848&sr=8-1

very easy to read :)
and just obvious stuff

Thanks, watching it now. The best book I've seen on the topic is The Great Risk Shift by Jacob Hacker. Highly recommended. Just finishing up Bad Money by Kevin Phillips, very sobering.

Here's another rate your employer site. Started by the same folks who brought us zillow.com

http://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm

Also, if you're interested in the topic of how to create a happy company, this is a good read. (Maybe you could put an anonymous copy on the CEO and SVP of HR's desk...)

http://www.amazon.com/What-Happy-Companies-Know-Happiness/dp/0131858572

Agreed the way it was founded seems a tad like a conspiracy. But Central banks around the world were founded in standard way.

Not a bad book if you don't mind the conspiracy theory aspect of it.

My Term at the Fed is more interesting
http://www.amazon.com/Term-Fed-Insiders-View/dp/0060542705/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208531191&sr=8-1

This book is a very good one on the subject : One Simple Idea

I hear you and agree, at least in part, but from a long term perspective I wonder.

I think of the makers of 8-inch drives. 5 1/4" technology was a relatively expensive technological upgrade that, initially anyway, offered less than already existing 8-inch drives. Add in that the drive maker's primary clients were mainframes and minicomputers, people for whom a few inches space were not important, and it seemed a no-brainer not to 'waste' money to develop a product that would be expensive and didn't satisfy the customer.

Long story short, 5 1/4" drives initially found a very different market (the PC primarily), grew greatly in ability, dropped profoundly in cost, and ended up replacing 8" drives even in large applications. Because they hadn't developed the technology, not a single 8" drive maker was able to survive the transition to 5 1/4" technology.

Much the same thing happened with the change to 3 1/2" drives.

In other words, when making investments for the future a company has to be very careful not to be left in the dust. Even though a technology might not seem like it will be competitive in the near-term, especially to one's target market, there is a real risk that is will take hold somewhere else, grow, and displace your own products.

[citation/source of analysis]

There is a great book that talks about this issue, and other irrational consumer behaviors.

http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-Decisions/dp/006135323X

This book has an interesting chapter discussing how Walmart's practices concurrently work for and against the lower and middle class.

This?

And this?

after the name of a book, Super Capitalism

This is called contrast principle. There is a lot of info on this and other methods businesses use in this book:

[Influence by Robert Cialdini] (http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X)

Or the [free version] (http://www.iiit.ac.in/~bipin/files/Dawkins/July/Robert%20Cialdini%20-%20Influence%252C%20Science%20and%20Practice.pdf)

It is really hard to get a job at Google. There are books written on the hiring process.

https://www.amazon.com/Google-Nail-Your-Interview-Book-ebook/dp/B0761VH1DD

Most people in finance are sales people.

This is a good book with which to understand just what the hell they are trying to sell you.

Unfortunately, the only way John Browne will suffer for his decade of safety cost-cutting at BP will be that sales of his new autobiography will be even less underwhelming than they might've been.

>Explain with examples please.

See William K. Black's book on the S&L crisis from the 1980's: The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry.

A few were prosecuted, but lots of them (cf Neil Bush, John McCain, et al) got off with a mere "slap on the wrist" (and handing back a few pennies compared to the millions they absconded with).

Fast forward to the current fiasco... are there ANY prosecutions at all? The FBI states they had evidence that such fraud was "rampant" even early in the decade... but all I hear are crickets.