Bloomberg Series

Money Well Spent explains how to create and implement a strategy that ensures meaningful results. Components of a smart strategy include: - Achieving great clarity about one's philanthropic goals - Specifying indicators of success before beginning a project - Designing and implementing a plan commensurate with available resources - Evidence based understanding of the world in which the plan will operate - Paying careful attention to milestones to determine if you are on the path to success or if midcourse corrections are necessary. Drawing on examples from over 100 foundations and non-profits, Money Well Spent gives listeners the framework they need to design a smart strategy. This is a book for everyone who wants to get the most from a philanthropic dollar: donors, foundations, and non-profits.

The credit crunch is affecting every investor and every consumer, every industry and every government program, yet few people truly understand how it happened. Subprime mortgages have been center stage, but behind the scenes a conspiracy of greed among bankers, investors, rating agencies, and regulators has imperiled everyone's financial future. We need to know what went wrong and how to change the practices that led to this calamity. Bloomberg columnist Mark Gilbert shows how Wall Street's tolerance for extremes made the global credit crunch both foreseeable and inevitable. He offers a blow-by-blow account of what went wrong and what lessons need to be learned from the crisis. - Gilbert's argument-that everyone with skin in the money game had a vested interest in pretending that nothing could go awry-is a well-defended, compelling indictment of the financial community. - Gilbert is able to make complex financial events easy to understand. - His outlook is truly global: this financial crisis respects no geographical boundaries, and Gilbert draws on anecdotes and examples from around the world to make his case.

Andrew Lo, Director, MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, and his co-author Jasmina Hasanhodzic, present the creation and evolution of technical analysis, spanning several civilizations, from the most ancient onesas far back as the Stone Age, through the rise of Wall Street as the world's financial center.  It is filled with interesting facts, such as that speculative trading came into existence in ancient Babylon, where market values of various commodities were regularly charted with the purposes of forecasting them. They continue their research through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and the Industrial Revolution. They also explore the Eastern markets of China and Japan, and compare and contrast them to Western practices. Along the way, they examine the work of the people who have played a significant role in the formation and growth of this ancient practice. The work of Charles Dow, the grandfather of modern technical analysis, will be discussed in this volume, as well as the contributions of other pioneers, such as Samuel Armstrong Nelson, William, Peter Hamilton, Robert Rhea, Richard Russell, and C.J. Collins.

Why do some families thrive for generations? What accounts for the sad deterioration that others experience? This book takes families and the professionals who serve them beyond the now widely accepted practices offered in Family Wealth and offers a view of Hughes's panoramic insights into what makes families flourish and fail. It lays out the basis for the vision of family governance the author has been developing through his work and research. His advice addresses not only what to do but how to think about the complex issues of family governance, growth, and stability and the ongoing challenge of nurturing the happiness of each family member.

Every family hopes to confer advantages that are more than just material and financial-to inculcate character and leadership, to inspire creativity and enterprise, to help all family members find and follow their individual callings, and to avoid the financial dependency and loss of initiative that can all too often be an unwanted consequence of financial success. Yet many families never succeed in realizing that vision, much less sustaining it for three, four, or five generations and beyond. James Hughes's teachings synthesize insights from psychology, anthropology, political history, philosophy, economic theory, and the law. His ideas have been taken up by numerous exceptional families, by their advisers, and by scores of authors, practitioners, and academics who have found value in the methods he pioneered. The first edition of this book became a word-of-mouth classic. Now, Hughes has updated and substantially expanded it with new chapters that challenge conventional notions of wealth and offer guidelines for conserving family assets in the broadest senses. Filled with tested principles and practices for family governance and joint decision making, it is a rich source of workable wisdom that family members can put into practice today, to the enduring benefit and gratitude of future generations.

People wanting basic advice about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, retirement planning, and tax strategies are often frustrated by information overload. Picking the right book seems as daunting as deciding what to do with their savings and investments. Investing 101: Updated and Expanded removes both roadblocks, putting people on a path that they can understand and stick with. Kristof is renowned for taking the mystery and anxiety out of investing by keeping choices manageable. Kristof walks listeners through the entire investment cycle and the way they think of their financial lives, rather than presenting stand-alone concepts like stocks and real estate. This expanded edition has new information about 529 college savings plans, annuities, Roth IRAs, reverse mortgages, and why declining markets can be good for you. It includes a cautionary look at home mortgages as investments. There's even a portfolio for the lazy investor. Kristof's loyal readership and the success of this book's first edition demonstrate that she understands what's on the minds of investors as intimately as she knows what's happening in financial markets.

This is a major revision. Of the 201 ideas, 174 will have changes of some sort. Some of the changes will be minor (little tweaks and updates), while some ideas will involve major revisions or entirely new ideas, including five new interviews in chapter 10 to replace Muriel Siebert, Tom Peters (completely new interview with him), Wally Amos, and Harvey Mackay. In addition, 18 ideas (not included in the 55 revised or new ideas) have been revised to varying degrees for the new "20 Great Ideas" booklet Applegate has done for VOD of Bloomberg TV to support a webinar for a cable TV market association. The revision will include new original research and reporting/interviews. The book will have a new angle that emphasizes technology and online marketing and management issues, including social media. There will be a secondary emphasis on flourishing in tough economic times.

Confidence Game is a tale about the dangerous delusions that humbled America's largest financial institutions and plunged the country into recession. Its heart is the story of how hedge fund manager Bill Ackman warned that MBIA Inc., a little-known insurance company, had guaranteed nearly a trillion dollars of debt. Branded a fraud in the financial press, Ackman, a short seller who stood to gain billions from the bankruptcy of the company was investigated by the Eliot Spitzer and by the Securities Exchange Commission. Today, Ackman's warning looks remarkably prescient. The invisible bond insurance business has all but evaporated and so has confidence in the markets.

The Gulf deep water well disaster has focused attention on BP's management and their unfortunate PR and media gaffes. Tony Hayward and Swedish Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg elicit no sympathy, and do cause people to wonder about their management capabilities. Others, perhaps BP apologists or those with a no deep sea well drilling agenda, seem to suggest that this was bound to happen and BP just happened to be the unlucky company to which this disaster befell.But Stanley Reed, who has been covering the company for over 10 years, knows otherwise. His reporting over 10 years shows that there is a very good reason that it was a BP well that burst, and not Exxon or Shell. And the blame likely lays squarely on the shoulders of former CEO John Browne, who was forced to resign after salacious details of his private life emerged in 2007. Browne was beloved by investors for his growth strategy that saw BP's stock rise and reward investors. However, the acquisitions came at a price, with an explosion that killed 15 workers in 2005 and spillage from corroded pipes in 2006. However, the media and public didn't seem to focus attention on these incidents. Perhaps BP's "Beyond Petroleum" strategy was working better than anyone realized.The reality is that Browne built a company focused on risk-taking and cost cutting - cultural assets in some areas that ended up being cultural poison in the area of deepwater drilling. The story of how the Gulf disaster happened, and the behind the scenes management of the company, is a fascinating object lesson that we will be learning from for decades.

Food security, the availability of food and reasonable access to it, has become one of the hottest topics of the year, growing in importance with every spike in agricultural commodity prices, of which there have been many since 2007. While 2010 prices rises have not been as severe as 2007 and 2008, they are still up double-digits with grain up 33% and fruits up an absurd 62%. These increases have led to hunger, starvation, and often civil unrest. Why is this happening just when such huge progress has been made in productivity? Could it be that the very markets first established in Chicago in the 1800s to help stabilize agricultural commodity prices have become a hedge funders casino where the rich really are taking food out of the mouths of the poor?

Private Equity firms, once tight-knit partnerships, have broadened their reach substantially, building or acquiring other businesses, from giving mergers advice to managing hedge funds, to underwriting stock and bond offerings. The majority have gone public, offering stock to retail investors, ensuring steady access to more money, and providing a means for which the billionaire founders (most of whom are already in their 60s) to cash out their holdings. This book will take the reader behind the scenes of these firms, understanding their origins and synthesizing the overlapping stories of their creations, evolutions and ambitions into a narrative as they prepare for significant public scrutiny as public companies. The Cast of Characters: Blackstone -- Stephen Scharzman, Tony James: A laid-off Lehman Brothers investment banker teams with his Lehman mentor to create a small advisory boutique. A decade later, he taps a savvy fellow banker who oversees an expansion and public offering, quadrupling its assets under management in a decade and leading the charge to the public markets. Carlyle -- William Conway, Daniel D'Aniello, David Rubenstein: Two young Washington area CEOs team with a lawyer and former Carter administration official to leverage their Washington connections into the first truly global private equity firm, tapping heretofore unknown, but massive, pockets of wealth in the Middle East.  KKR -- Henry Kravis, George Roberts: A pair of Midwestern cousins who want to work for themselves join their Bear Stearns boss (who eventually leaves them for being too aggressive). They establish themselves definitively with the then record-setting RJR Nabisco deal, where they're dubbed Barbarians at the Gate. Almost two decades later, they'll top themselves twice to set new records. TPG -- David Bonderman, James Coulter: A wealthy Texan hires an historical trust lawyer from Washington to fight a freeway scheduled to run through Fort Worth. The lawyer ends up staying on as his top adviser and meets a brash young former consultant. The unlikely pair breaks off from the billionaire to buy Continental Airlines for $80 million, selling it a handful of years later for 20 times their money. They go on to buy the likes of Burger King and J. Crew.

The gift of giving is at the core of family wealth and with the new estate law allowing up to $5,120,000 in tax-free gifting, the ultra-affluent are faced with the task of giving in the largest amount in estate tax history. Beyond the tax saving and wealth management implications, the act of giving in such a generous amount opens up a slew of new issues for wealthy families, the biggest of which is: how do I prepare the recipient of such a hefty gift? With that question in mind, Hughes, Massenzio, and Whitaker have written Wisdom and Wealth in three main parts: The Who of Giving, The How of Giving, and The What and Why of Giving. The first part deals exclusively with the people most deeply involved in family giving, especially the recipients and givers (parents, grandparents, spouses, trustees). The second part, The How of Giving, addresses the delicate balance of givers who want to maintain some level of control and recipients who want some level of freedom in accepting and growing the gift. The final part, The What and Why of Giving describes various types of gifts, from money to business interests to values and rituals. The authors also introduce their family bank concept as a model that combines loans, trusts, and outright gifts. It embodies a framework and set of practices for long-term family growth.

This book will address and answer the key questions...What's a zombie bank? When losses of a financial institution exceed its paid-in capital, it's insolvent. Thanks to systemic deregulation   in the last 30 years and cheap credit availability, banks in the U.S. and Europe borrowed more and more on a thin layer of equity, funding the explosive growth of their housing markets through securitized mortgages and piled many of the mortgage-related securities on their balance sheets. Why do we keep them alive? For many of these banks, having become too big to fail is their blessing. The global financial system has become so interconnected that the failure of one giant bank like Citi would have repercussions far and wide. How does that hurt economic recovery?  The banks have been making profits thanks to this interest rate subsidy at the expense of taxpayers, pensioners and other savers. Yet their hidden losses are so big that it will take them many more years to replenish their capital to the necessary level. So they need to keep hoarding all the cash they make to themselves, and cannot make new loans. That hurts market liquidity, which slows and flattens growth.  What needs to be done? The U.S. and the EU need to face the harsh reality in the face and accept the bitter medicine rather than push the problems out to the next decade, which will be lost if they do so.  Effectively, austerity measures.

One of the greatest sources of pain within families with wealth is the belief that there are no choices. Sometimes even wealth creators who feel more than able in their business lives feel at the same time that their wealth will inevitably become a pernicious influence on their children and grandchildren. The next generation must awaken to the problem of treating financial wealth as more important than it is and therefore not developing a sense of self separate from the wealth. The book will: Explain the challenge that wealth poses to rising generationsthe challenge of silence Discuss the rising generations and what their future might look like Share strategies that help members of the rising generation find their voices The Voice of the Rising Generation will discuss the successors of family wealth and what they can do to keep focused on human capital rather than putting too much emphasis to the role of financial wealth.

Economists do much more than explain how economies do or should work. In many cases, their ideas have helped new and established firms launch new businesses or develop different ways of making money. In other cases, their ideas have shaped government policies, which in turn, have either created opportunities for new business ideas, or have had powerful impacts on the landscape on which firms compete. Some of these ideas have been so well noted that their originators have received one of the two most prestigious prizes for economic thought, the Nobel or the Clark Medal. The book will discuss: The pace of future innovation How economists think about the world The role and importance of markets and their limits The contributions of economists to business and policy innovation in three distinct groups: Economics and Business Models, Economic Policy Ideas/Innovations That Have Encouraged Real World Innovation, and Economic Insights That May Promote Innovative Business Models and Policies in the Future As such, this book will demonstrate how prize-winning ideas, and those that have been overlooked, have shaped business decisions and models or government policies.

Complete Family Wealth: Wealth as Well-Being provides proven tools and best practices for families of means to use in maturing, maintaining, and managing personal and legacy wealth long into the future. The book is divided into three parts: the "what"-what is meant by family, wealth, and enterprise; the "who"-the persons crucial to family enterprise flourishing; and the "how"-specific practices families can use to enhance and grow family wealth. The second edition of this work places the health and well-being of the individual members of the family unit at the forefront of every aspect detailed within the book. A natural product of this focus is an increased awareness of the social complexities of wealth that have come to the fore in recent years, and the team of expert authors here address the responsibility of private wealth to the public good. In addition, Complete Family Wealth's second edition provides listeners with: a new chapter on "the big reveal," suggesting ways to encourage positive, life-affirming reception of the revelation of present or future wealth; an additional chapter on preserving the beloved family vacation home; two new appendices: "Fiduciary Course Curriculum" and "Key Practices for Families During Challenging Times"; and examples that make these practices accessible to a broad audience across the wealth spectrum.