Public Finance

Since its release in 2006, Financial Intelligence has become a favorite among managers who need a guided tour through the numbers, helping them to understand not only what the numbers really mean but also why they matter. This new, completely updated edition brings the numbers up to date and continues to teach the basics of finance to managers who need to use financial data to drive their business.

Planning is the trick for succeeding in small business. This process needn't be daunting, especially if you can get the timing right, pick a strategy that works, and chart a sound financial course. And if your best-laid plans go sideways, there's always hope, and a practical way forward, in this book. Getting Started in Small Business for Dummies will help you decide whether small-business ownership is right for you, and assess the viability of your business idea; and more.

It was the most brutal corporate restructuring in Wall Street history. The 2015 bankruptcy brawl for the storied casino giant, Caesars Entertainment, pitted brilliant and ruthless private equity legends against the world's most relentless hedge fund wizards.

Created for risk professionals and non-risk professionals alike, this easy-to-understand guide helps you meet the increasingly insistent demand to make sophisticated assessments of companies' risk exposure. It provides the latest methods for measuring and transferring credit risk, increasing risk-management transparency, and implementing an organization-wide Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) approach.

The Failure of Risk Management provides effective solutions to significant faults in current risk analysis methods. Conventional approaches to managing risk lack accurate quantitative analysis methods, yielding strategies that can actually make things worse. Many widely used methods have no systems to measure performance, resulting in inaccurate selection and ineffective application of risk management strategies. These fundamental flaws propagate unrealistic perceptions of risk in business, government, and the general public.

Noam Chomsky is widely regarded as the most influential thinker of our time, but never before has he devoted a major book to one topic: income inequality. Requiem for the American Dream is not an essay collection but an entire work of some 70,000 words, based on four years of interviews with Chomsky by the editors. It is a book that makes Chomsky's breadth and depth accessible and at the same time gives us his most powerful political ideas with unprecedented, breathtaking directness.

Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show in this book, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today's trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past 30 years.

The top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the nation's wealth. And, as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains, while those at the top enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth, they fail to realize that "their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live." Stiglitz draws on his deep understanding of economics to show that growing inequality is not inevitable. He examines our current state, then teases out its implications for democracy, for monetary and budgetary policy, and for globalization. He closes with a plan for a more just and prosperous future.

In The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital, the pioneers of the industry share the investing and management wisdom they have gained by investing in and transforming their portfolio companies. Based on original interviews conducted by the authors, this book is filled with colorful stories on the subjects that most matter to the high-level investor, such as selecting and working with management, pioneering new markets, adding value through operational improvements, applying private equity principles to non-profits, and much more.

Corporate Turnaround Artistry is a complete guide for entrepreneurial companies in times of financial distress - presenting effective strategies and proven methods to revive and rehabilitate your business. Uncertain economic times have significantly altered the financial resources available to struggling businesses. Narrowing margins and mounting internal and external pressure has taken their toll on many companies. Fortunately, most businesses can be repaired while maintaining their existing revenue structure.

To modern Western society, capitalism is the air we breathe, and most people rarely think to question it, for good or for ill. But knowing what makes capitalism work - and what makes it fail - is crucial to understanding its long-term health and the vast implications for the global economy that go along with it.

In 2008, the American economy collapsed, taking with it millions of Americans' jobs, homes, and life savings. The impending financial crisis was devastating, and many are still feeling its effects today. Though the crisis was debilitating, the US government has yet to implement policies that would prevent a repeat of the Great Recession. Nothing Is Too Big to Fail holds a microscope to the very policies and corruption that led to this major economic recession.

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.

More than 10,000 mergers and acquisitions occur annually in the US, many among small and mid-sized companies. These complex transactions can be an effective growth strategy, but they carry significant risk. Mergers and Acquisitions from A to Z helps guard against costly mistakes. Expert advice, case studies, checklists, and sample documents walk you through every step of the process - from valuation to securities laws to closing and successful integration.

Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments stagger under record deficits. The End of Growth proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits.

In this timely and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage our obsession with metrics is causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from education, medicine, business and finance, government, the police and military, and philanthropy and foreign aid, this brief and accessible book explains why the seemingly irresistible pressure to quantify performance distorts and distracts, whether by encouraging "gaming the stats" or "teaching to the test"....

Alan Blinder, one of the world's most influential economists and one of the field's best writers, draws on his deep firsthand experience to provide an authoritative account of sixty years of monetary and fiscal policy in the United States. Spanning twelve presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Joe Biden, and eight Federal Reserve chairs, from William McChesney Martin to Jerome Powell, this is an insider's story of macroeconomic policy that hasn't been told before—one that is a pleasure to listen to, and as interesting as it is important.

Extensively updated, the second edition of Fundamentals of Enterprise Risk Management examines the latest technologies, such as Riskonnect and High Tech Electronic Platform (HTEP), and helps listeners recognize both internal and external exposures, understand crucial concepts such as risk mapping and risk identification, and align risk opportunities with their organizations' business models.

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy - but rather superior control of subordinate labor.