“The Economics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained” by Niall Kishtainy
I’m a sucker for the history of finance and economics. One of my favourite books of all time is “History of Money” by Jack Weatherford, followed closely by “Debt: The First 5000 Years” by David Graeber, while “Ascents of Money” by Niall Ferguson and “Money: The Unauthorized Biography” by Felix Martin are also largely fascinating.
I also love the more recent “The Price of Time: The Real History of Interest” by Edward Chancellor, or his classic “Devil Take The Hindmost” about market speculations. Or the “Reckoning” by Jacob Soll, about the history of accounting. “Treasure Island” by Nicholas Shaxson, about tax havens. “Currency Wars” by James Rickards, about, well, currency wars. Or even “Confessions of a Microfinance Heretic” by Hugh Sinclair, where my review on the book has led me to get into email exchanges with Sinclair himself and talk more about the dodgy microfinance industry.
And don’t get me started with all the financial market books, from the Market Wizard series, Inside the House of Money, Money Masters of Our Time, to any book about (and by) Soros, Buffett, Munger, Graham, Rogers, Dalio, and many other investment gods. And who doesn’t like the crazy tales about the market? Among many others, Liar’s Poker is a must read, followed by F.I.A.S.C.O, Traders Guns & Money, Monkey Business, When Genius Failed, 13 Bankers, and of course The Big Short.
And then we have economic books, from Marxist Economics to books about Keynes, Friedrich List, every book by Ha-Joon Chang, Joseph Stiglitz, to Thomas Piketty’s Capital, even reading Erik S. Reinert’s eye opening book about the true state of global economy. In fact I read about 30+ finance and economic books in one year at one time, while religiously reading The Economist, several blogs such as ZeroHedge and FT Alphaville, and re-watching the long documentary “The Commanding Heights” for at least 5 times. And that is outside of my master’s degree in finance. Indeed, obsessed is an understatement.
Which brings us to this book. The book covers pretty much every important ideas about finance and economics: ancient currencies, to the birth of banking, central banking mechanism, micro finance, economic crisis, bubbles, inflation, electronic money, trade and protectionism, demographic, the gold standard, Planned economy, property rights, statistics and how to measure the economy, the law of diminishing marginal utility, opportunity cost, currency crisis, bailouts, tax cuts, game theory, ponzi scheme, creative destruction, market crashes, bank runs, taxing pollution, on famine, single currency, economic cycle, price discrimination, collective bargaining, climate change, debt relief, exchange traded companies, financial derivatives, on incentives, international trade, the arguments on how to eradicate poverty, the post-Bretton-Woods global system, developmental economics, economics as a predictable science, economics as a force of nature, Keynes vs. Hayek, and many more fascinating debates and ideas, including my favourite subject behaviour economics.
All written in a concise and light manner. Pretty impressive since the subject of economics is often presented in a heavy, lengthy, and boring fashion.
We also get to learn about the many economic theories from thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, David Hume, Jean Bodin, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Irving Fisher, Milton Friedman, Ha-Joon Chang, Alfred Marshall, Theodore Schultz, John Stuart Mill, Kenneth Arrow, Joseph Schumpeter, Paul Krugman, Ben Bernanke, John Nash, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Irving Fisher, Hyman Minsky, Jean-Baptiste Say, Jeffrey Sachs, Eugene Fama, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, Dani Rodrik, Friedrick von Misses, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, and many, many more, including lesser known economists (but crucial to the development of the modern world) such as Gerard Debreu, or the power couple Beatrice Webb and Sidney Webb who created the concept of trade union.
As always, DK compiles all of these vast knowledge into a very well-written short chapters filled with concise explanations, which includes the ever helpful timeline, mind map, pictures, and even the context for the arguments. It is really everything we need to know about finance and economics in one book, and that comes from a guy who is obsessed with finance and economics books.
THE CHAOS THEORY 