Taming the Money Sharks


Book Description

Easy-to-follow guidelines from a pro for simplifying your investments, protecting yourself from the investment sharks and achieving financial freedom Drawing on his years as an investor for leading banks in the U.S. and Asia, Philip Cheng delivers down-to-earth strategies guaranteed to make you "shark-proof" while you optimize investment returns. Statistics show that only 20% of small investors ever come close to achieving their investment goals. The other 80% get eaten alive by "investment sharks"—investment advisors, fund managers and other hucksters out to line their pockets with your hard-earned cash. Motivated by a sense of fair play, Cheng resolved to write an investor's survival guide in which he'd share everything he's learned in his years as a successful professional investor. The result is Taming the Money Sharks. The easy-to-follow guidelines you'll find in this book will help you navigate the shark-infested waters of the investment world, all the way to the financial freedom you dream of and deserve. A must-have survival guide for novice investors, and a source of fresh thinking and innovative strategies for experienced investors Features many illustrations, summaries, charts, real-world examples along with other powerful tools to help you avoid common mistakes and win at the investment game Lays out 8 proven strategies for investing systematically and surviving and thriving in the shark-infested waters of the stock market




Taming the Sharks


Book Description

Taming the Sharks: Towards a Cure for the High Cost Credit Market chronicles the historic, economic. legal, and political factors breeding America's feverish high cost debt industry. The ideas presented are novel, progressive, and controversial. Historians have long argued that interest rates provide a sort of economic and political health of nations. If true, the contemporary American market for credit shows troubling signs of distress. While Federal Reserve Board monetary policy has kept commercial and prime consumer interest rates low, the past two decades have seen explosive growth in an industry specializing in high-cost consumer debt. Payday loan outlet chains, automobile title loan companies, rent-to-own furniture stores, pawnshops, and sub-prime and manufactured home mortgage lenders are transforming the personal finance patterns of millions of Americans. Many observers have complained this industry charges excessive prices, uses unfair business practices, and is generally causing more harm for its borrowers than good. Industry insiders retort they are merely responding to a legitimate demand for financial services that, in effect, consumers vote with their feet. Echoing problems of past centuries, today's consumers face difficulty comparing credit prices, patterns of reckless lending and borrowing, as well as distressing economic externalities. With an idea on the future, Peterson's book hopes to find ingredients of a compromise to protect working-poor borrowers while simultaneously preserving economic competition.




Taming the Fringe


Book Description

Taming the Fringe analyses the regulation and evolution of two credit products that were, and remain, vital to the working poor. Policymakers have struggled with pawnbroking and moneylending because they raise broader issues pertaining to poverty, capitalism and financial regulation. The values of easily accessible credit and financial independence compete with society’s desire to protect people from predatory loans. Policymakers have pondered whether regulation can lower costs without reducing access for those most in need of small cash loans. Can government policy protect borrowers while also providing sufficient profit for lenders? The many attempts at doing so reveal the difficulty of safeguarding the needs of people who have experienced financial trouble before seeking a loan. Taming the Fringe is the first extended study of the payday lending and pawnbroking markets in Britain, and the only one to examine over 160 years of financial results and market data. This work explains why small-value lenders have generated such passionate debate, even being described as the devil incarnate. It adds to our knowledge of fringe banking and the evolving role of financial regulation to protect the working poor. Since 1870, pawnbrokers and moneylenders have actively shaped regulation – a viewpoint the existing literature does not address adequately. This work contributes to the scholarly and policy dialogue on financial inclusion, working-class poverty and the development and legitimacy of fringe lending. This book analyses the motivation, content and outcome of critical regulatory episodes that have shaped fringe banking. While historians have written volumes about consumer credit, few have analysed why elite policymakers have sought to protect the working poor from some credit markets. This work demonstrates that, across time, conflicting views on poverty and liberal economic theory have, to varying degrees, influenced how the government has protected the working poor, and will be of interest to financial and economic historians.




Sharks Aren't Real


Book Description

It is well known in the scientific community that "sharks" aren't real. This is evidenced by the fact that there is no ongoing debate about their existence. The lack of a debate clearly shows that there is no scientific evidence pointing to their existence. Amongst the laymen, the debate about whether "sharks" exist or not runs rampant. Some fail to follow the highly regarded, scientific experts and assert that "sharks" do live among us. Some even claim to have seen one, some even claim to have been bitten by one! This is preposterous! The lies need to stop. This book will present in clear and simple terms (not using a scientific method, as scientists know the truth) that "sharks" are a fictional creation of man's mind. As many pranksters and frauds continue to present "sharks" as ruthless killing machines, I will reveal the light of truth to all. "Sharks" aren't real.







MSME Saga Decoded


Book Description

Business is not just a profession but a way of life. Unlike other professions which are also essentially business only in some form or other, it does not demand any entrance tests. Business allows entry to all but spares none. Businesses are a race- not sprint but marathon. It demands consistent strength, stamina and agility not only physical and psychological but also emotional. All these qualities are tested to the threshold limits but those who pass with their worth, the rewards are impressive. The author having an experience of more that two decades of work experience blends the required qualities into a perfect basic recipe to work on. He shares his own experiences with compassion and alerts the reader about the common mistakes often committed by new entrepreneurs. Although business cannot be explained in its entirety in a few pages, this book fairly navigates through the crucial do’s and dont's in the early stages of business. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in the moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy..” The book 'MSME Saga Decoded' is an effort to enlighten the struggling entrepreneurs to face and manage the challenges with high aspirations and a ‘Never Say Die’ approach.




The Shark and the Sardines


Book Description

The Shark and the Sardines is a scathing allegorical short story by Juan José Arévalo Bermejo (1904-1990), who was the first of the reformist presidents of Guatemala (1944-1951). As a country that had seen a series of dictatorships following its independence from Spain, Arévalo’s 1944 election is considered by historians to be the first fair and democratic election in Guatemala’s republican history. Arévalo’s administration was marked by unprecedented relatively free political life during his six-year term. An educator and philosopher, he understood the need for advancement in individuals, communities, and nations by practical means. “It appears to be a truism today that anything touching upon US-Latin American policy is bound to end either in histrionics or hysteria, whether of the Left or Right. And former president of Guatemala, Juan Jose Arevalo’s The Shark and the Sardines is no exception. Free flowing, full of rhetoric at once both surly and suave, astream with shockers, statistics and stilettos, it promulgates what the blurbs dubb a “poetically tragic fable”, depicting in iridescent black and white the tortured heart beating south of our border, wherein Uncle Sam emerges as the Shark and the mestiza have-nots, the poor Sardines.”—KIRKUS Review




Delinquent


Book Description

Publisher's Weekly Top 10 Fall Release in Business and Economics​ A consumer credit industry insider-turned-outsider explains how banks lure Americans deep into debt, and how to break the cycle. Delinquent takes readers on a journey from Capital One’s headquarters to street corners in Detroit, kitchen tables in Sacramento, and other places where debt affects people's everyday lives. Uncovering the true costs of consumer credit to American families in addition to the benefits, investigative journalist Elena Botella—formerly an industry insider who helped set credit policy at Capital One—reveals the underhanded and often predatory ways that banks induce American borrowers into debt they can’t pay back. Combining Botella’s insights from the banking industry, quantitative data, and research findings as well as personal stories from interviews with indebted families around the country, Delinquent provides a relatable and humane entry into understanding debt. Botella exposes the ways that bank marketing, product design, and customer management strategies exploit our common weaknesses and fantasies in how we think about money, and she also demonstrates why competition between banks has failed to make life better for Americans in debt. Delinquent asks: How can we make credit available to those who need it, responsibly and without causing harm? Looking to the future, Botella presents a thorough and incisive plan for reckoning with and reforming the industry.




Sharks


Book Description




Unspeakable Horror


Book Description

The story of the USS Indianapolis is well-known. After delivering crucial components of the atomic bomb that would level Hiroshima in 1945, the Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine in the South China Sea. Of the nearly 1,200 men aboard, 900 survived the torpedoing, spilling into the sea. White tip sharks began attacking the next morning and after four days only 300 sailors were alive to rescue. Less famous are the many stories of ships sinking in shark-infested waters with gruesome results. Such as the Cape San Juan, a US troop transport ship that was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Pacific Ocean near the Fiji Islands; nearly 700 of the survivors were killed by sharks. Or the HMS Birkenhead, which sunk off Danger Point, South Africa, in 1852, resulting in 440 shark-related fatalities. In 1927, the luxury Italian cruise liner Principessa Maldafa sank ninety miles off the coast of Albrohos Island while heading to Porto Seguro, Brazil. Nearly 300 who survived the wreck were killed by sharks. In 1909, the French steamer La Seyne collided with British India Steamship Co. liner Onda near Singapore, twenty-six miles from land. One hundred and one people were eventually killed by sharks. In the water, human intelligence is no match for a shark’s brutal, destructive instincts. Sharks are born to kill and eat: They detect distress, smell blood—and attack. Marine disasters such as those above result in humans becoming prey, floating in inner space as shadowy sharks swim below, ready to attack. Helpless to save yourself—floating and waiting, watching the malevolent creatures circle, knowing what will happen . . . a sudden swirl of water, a cloud of blood, the searing pain . . . until there is no more. This is unspeakable horror