Biography
Michael A. Martorelli, CFA, is a director at Fairmount Partners, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, and adjunct professor of finance at Philadelphia University.
In addition to tracing the histories of America’s 50 largest financial corporations, this richly illustrated coffee-table book spotlights many of the important economic events that influenced the evolutions of those institutions.
Adapted from a lecture by the author and a follow-up discussion with eminent economists, this book includes an analysis of the South Sea Bubble and the application of the author’s new economic model to that and similar episodes. Open-minded investors would benefit from the book’s insights on speculative trading bubbles.
This thorough, fascinating account of the international conference that culminated in the 1944 agreement to maintain stable exchange rates skillfully places it in its economic and geopolitical context. Although the author presents no boldly original interpretation of Bretton Woods, he offers excellent insight into the tribulations of the key players.
Walter A. Friedman tells the captivating story of some pioneers of what many still call the “black art” of economic forecasting and credits them with inspiring succeeding generations of forecasters who may or may not have raised the art to a science.
With a focus on value investing, this book is full of useful discussions of such topics as creditworthiness, market efficiency, diversification, and financial accounting. It is primarily aimed at investors interested less in trying to predict near-term earnings and the temporal movements of stock prices than in management’s ability to maximize the value of corporate assets.
Throughout this long and multifaceted work on the recent financial crisis and its aftermath, Professor Blinder demonstrates that he is the rare academic economist who writes clearly about a complicated topic, clarifying complex issues for readers who remain confused about what happened. Some readers may find his proposed remedies problematic.
In this comprehensive historical analysis of several decades’ worth of decisions to bail out troubled banking firms, the author suggests that the 2008–09 interventions were ill conceived and inadequately justified. He argues that misguided government policies were largely responsible for the financial crises that necessitated such bailouts.