re: Economics Book Club (EBC): Book 4 Starts Aug 21 (The Smartest Guys in the Room)

We can add that one to the reading list.

Seems like most people are converging on Economics in One Lesson followed by Applied Economics, but we'll see how the rest vote.

Start date is June 12. It looks like a pretty easy read and is about 200 pages. Could probably do 100 pages a week pretty easily if everyone doesn't think that's too much of a stretch.

Or we can spread out more to encourage more detailed discussion.

Btw guys I have a PDF copy of Margin of Safety that I emailed to the TDbookclub email if any of you want it.

Book costs like $900 so will save everyone a lot of $.

Using that email to share book pdfs or downloads should be really good for everyone to save $$

I'd like to join in. I'm currently a Senior in college studying Finance. Seems like a good thing to get into for the summer.

quote:

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Were you able to find the free version for your Kindle?

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No, paid the full Kindle price

But as an example of the steep Kindle discounts, boner alert: Alexis de Tocqueville's, Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II can be had for only 99 cents.

It's like Christmas in June.

People need to order their books if we are starting Monday, so I'm going to close this poll at around lunch time tomorrow. Get your votes in!

The plan is to use the top two or three vote-receiving books to put a schedule together for the next two months or so. Ready to drill down into some of this and see where we end up.

AGreed, thanks for starting this! Hell thanks for introducing me to the book board haha

Judging by the negative and no positive, no one clicked this link. So I'm posting it one last time in hopes you watch it, it is a great link and only five minutes. You won't not like this link unless you are a real sourpuss

Mankiw's 10 principles of economics, translated for the uninitiated
https://youtu.be/5uZdr4dk5CQ

I thought people must have thought it had something to do with my negative money printing thoughts. I'm jaded that we haven't had a real crash yet for 2008. Maybe too much zerohedge in my life... It is admirable to start an educational book club though, so kudos to you

I've started believing long term stock holding is almost entirely making money via inflation or money printing:

What is the con? The con is that economic growth is both good and real. It is most often neither. The long con is nominal returns versus real returns.
What keeps the con going? Apart from greed? Money printing.
Please, understand that if the amount of money in a closed system doubles, the value of each monetary unit halves, and the price of everything, including stocks, increases 100%.

There's no doubt expansion of the monetary base has led to a sustained rise in stock prices, but that's not the most proximate cause, in my opinion. Sure, it may be the ultimate cause, but the more direct cause is that historically low interest rates have allowed companies to engage in a level of financial engineering that is perhaps unprecedented in modern history. This ranges from simple refinancings to recapitalizations and even to debt issuances for the express purpose of funding share buybacks and dividends. In the aggregate, we've seen a market-wide and relatively massive decrease in the weighted average cost of capital which, given the lower implied discount rate, has resulted in higher equity valuations. As the tide goes back out, we'll see who can actually support the debt. The only thing that will burst the bubble will be a large increase in interest rates or reaching the point of maximum aggregate debt capacity. We could be close to both, but where else is there to put your money? The bond market is also arguably in bubble territory.