Based on a popular class taught by a Harvard Business School professor. If you're not a numbers person, then finance can be intimidating and easy to ignore. But if you want to advance in your career, you'll need to make smart financial decisions and develop the confidence to clearly communicate those decisions to others. In How Finance Works, Mihir Desai--a professor at Harvard Business School and author of The Wisdom of Finance--guides you into the complex but endlessly fascinating world of finance, demystifying it in the process. Through entertaining case studies, interactive exercises, full-color visuals, and a conversational style that belies the topic, Professor Desai tackles a broad range of topics that will give you the knowledge and skills you need to finally understand how finance works. These include: How different financial levers can affect a company's performance The different ways in which companies fund their operations and investments Why finance is more concerned with cash flow than profits How value is created, measured, and maximized The importance of capital markets in helping companies grow Whether you're a student or a manager, an aspiring CFO or an entrepreneur, How Finance Works is the colorful and interactive guide you need to help you start thinking more deeply about the numbers.
Authoritative coverage provides a foundation for understanding core concepts and recent developments in banking and financial institutions. This Nutshell title covers subjects such as the history and structure of the financial services industry and its regulators, interaction of law with monetary and economic policy, increased competition, bank and thrift failures, large-scale bailouts, and deregulation and restructuring efforts. Unresolved challenges include budget stimulus, treatment of deficits, and new questions about the appropriate role of supervision by regulators.
What Is Economics And Why Does It Matter? Could the United States experience another Great Depression? Is the Social Security program doomed for future generations? What, exactly, do economists do anyway? Economics is not only for academics or Wall Street titans. If you're curious about how the economy functions and don't know where to start, Economics will guide you through the essentials, laying out the basic concepts and issues in the field of economics, from business cycles and free markets to social security and healthcare reform, and more. Packed with eye-opening information, key concepts, and need-to-know terms, this easy-to-read primer lets you explore economics at your own pace. Get a straightforward overview of the economy that's stripped of overwhelming jargon, so you can gain a deeper understanding of economics as it applies to everyday life. You'll review important background on differing economic schools of thought--from influential theories to the main thinkers driving them--so you can develop your own conclusions. Economics features: An overview of markets and how they operate A review of broad themes--like taxes, inequality, and jobs--as they apply to everyday life Explorations of business cycles covering what happens during a recession Useful timelines and real-world stories that help you travel the world of economics
A Financial Times Book of the Year, 2015 An Economist Best Book of the Year, 2015 A Bloomberg Best Book of the Year, 2015 The finance sector of Western economies is too large and attracts too many of the smartest college graduates. Financialization over the past three decades has created a structure that lacks resilience and supports absurd volumes of trading. The finance sector devotes too little attention to the search for new investment opportunities and the stewardship of existing ones, and far too much to secondary-market dealing in existing assets. Regulation has contributed more to the problems than the solutions. Why? What is finance for? John Kay, with wide practical and academic experience in the world of finance, understands the operation of the financial sector better than most. He believes in good banks and effective asset managers, but good banks and effective asset managers are not what he sees. In a dazzling and revelatory tour of the financial world as it has emerged from the wreckage of the 2008 crisis, Kay does not flinch in his criticism: we do need some of the things that Citigroup and Goldman Sachs do, but we do not need Citigroup and Goldman to do them. And many of the things done by Citigroup and Goldman do not need to be done at all. The finance sector needs to be reminded of its primary purpose: to manage other people's money for the benefit of businesses and households. It is an aberration when the some of the finest mathematical and scientific minds are tasked with devising algorithms for the sole purpose of exploiting the weakness of other algorithms for computerized trading in securities. To travel further down that road leads to ruin.
"In the next 10 years, we'll see more disruption and changes to the banking and financial industry than we've seen in the preceding 100 years"?Brett King Breaking Banks: The Innovators, Rogues, and StrategistsRebooting Banking is a unique collection of interviews take from across the global Financial Services Technology (or FinTech) domain detailing the stories, case studies, start-ups, and emerging trends that will define this disruption. Features the author's catalogued interviews with experts across the globe, focusing on the disruptive technologies, platforms and behaviors that are threatening the traditional industry approach to banking and financial services Topics of interest covered include Bitcoin's disruptive attackon currencies, P2P Lending, Social Media, the Neo-Banks reinventing the basic day-to-day checking account, global solutions for the unbanked and underbanked, through to changing consumer behavior Breaking Banks is the only record of its kind detailing the massive and dramatic shift occurring in the financial services space today.