Downside® book recommendations

An analysis of market stability, and what central banks should be doing about it. He starts by pointing out the asymmetry in Fed policy in recent years. The Fed hasn't been taking away the punch bowl when the party gets going, but it's been injecting liquidity at the slightest sign of a downturn. Now, too late, this one-sided policy is seen as a horrible mistake.

Cooper takes a look at basic control theory as applied to markets. He even puts Maxwell's classic paper on steam engine governors, the beginning of linear control theory, in an appendix.

Krugman's book on the Japanese bubble of the 1980s and its two-decade aftermath, updated to reflect the US crash in 2008. An easy, fun read.

The Secretary of the Treasury writes about the Great Depression. Much of the analysis revolves around the gold standard, and how it prevented the expansion of the money supply needed to promote demand. Worth reading to get a sens of the thinking at the helm of Treasury during the Bush years.

A petroleum geologist reviews the oil supply situation. Unlike other recent books about oil, this one is by someone who worked for a a major oil company for thirty years looking for it.

Deffeyes says we hit peak oil production this year. 2005. And he has the numbers to back it up.

The story of modern corporate deception and its consequences. A bitter little book about accounting, corporate public relations, and management irresponsibility. It's striking, and painful, to see the full panoply of corporate deception tools described in one place. An easy read, but not a happy one.

Published in 2002, after the Enron collapse but before WorldCom.

A mid-level Enron trader's view of the collapse. Gives some insight into Enron's deals-at-any-price corporate culture. The author went to work for Enron thinking it was a real company, and gradually came to the realization that it was a Ponzi scheme.

A guide to Club Fed, by a former executive of a failed company.

Send copies to CEOs under suspicion. Perhaps they'll take the hint.

Passer, Harold Clarence. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1953.
LC Number 52010754
Back in print, after decades of obscurity.

A new technology becomes available, and hundreds of startups prepare to cash in. It's happened before, with electricity. This old Harvard Business School case study is worth a read if you can find it. Read Edison's original business plan for the electric light. The similarity of this period to the "Internet age" is striking. Harvard's Baker Library has a copy.

Boring old Graham and Dodd, the original 1934 edition. A look from the depths of the depression might be just what we need right now. Remember, those guys came out of the Great Depression rich.

Benj. Graham's final work. More readable than Graham and Dodd, but the same philosophy. Updates Securities Analysis through the early 1970s, covering the go-go markets of the 1960s. Relevant to today's market. Preface by Warren Buffet.

A critique of the War on Terrorism. Bill Mahler strips away the jingoism with a set of biting posters and commentary. A much-needed dose of realism in an era when the level of public discourse is low.