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Top 10 Books for Silver Investors, Best Sellers and Best Reviews

By Jonas Dorian
Published: May 4, 2008 in Book Reviews,

1. Get the Skinny on Silver Investing, by David Morgan — best seller, high reviews.David Morgan has been a private economist for over two decades. His background started in engineering then later with an advanced degree in Economics/Finance gives a unique perspective to the financial markets that pure business majors often miss. He applies the discipline of logic to verify the basics of economic law. Mr. Morgan has been published in The Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and Futures Magazine to mention a few.

2. Ruff’s Little Book of Big Fortunes in Gold & Silver: A Middle Class License to Print Money, by Howard Ruff — best seller, high reviews. This small book is deliberately designed to teach the investment novice exactly what to do as the bull market unfolds, including why, how and where to buy precious metals and mining stocks - as well as how to avoid costly mistakes. It is also an essential review for dedicated gold bugs to help them in this new and ever-changing market.

3. The ABCs of Gold Investing: How to Protect and Build Your Wealth with Gold, by Michael J. Kosares — best seller.
This book discusses topics beginning investors will find thorough guidelines for making good decisions in this guide to private gold ownership. Emphasis is placed on the asset-preservation qualities of gold at a time when investor uncertainty about the economy and recent investment scandals have led many to seek asset diversification. The economic and political trends driving gold marketing are detailed, as are the reasons why gold plays an important role in millions of investment portfolios worldwide—as both a hedge and an investment for capital gain. Topics examined include understanding gold’s role in combating inflation and deflation, how to select a gold firm, the history of gold since 1971, storing gold, and government debt.

4. The Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit from It: Make a Fortune by Investing in Gold and Other Hard Assets, by James Turk and John Rubino — best seller.
James Turk, a leading gold authority and the founder of GoldMoney.com, and John Rubino, editor of the popular Web site DollarCollapse.com offer strategies for investing in gold coins, gold stocks, gold-based digital currencies, and other hard assets to create a profitable portfolio.

5. Precious Metals Investing For Dummies, by Paul Mladjenovic — best seller.
This book gives readers a clear and thorough introduction to investing in precious metals, including gold, silver, and other precious metals.

It includes information on the different types of metals, how to mix them into a portfolio, the risks and rewards in metal trading, the different ways to purchase and trade metal, and trading plans and strategies. With precious metals performing so well in today’s markets, this guide will be a trusted, valuable resource for novice and experienced traders.

6. Junior Mining Investor: 14 Natural Resource Experts Show You How to Invest Profitably – best seller.
This book brings together the combined wisdom of 14 mining-industry veterans, including David Morgan, Brian Fagan, Jason Hommel, and others, to reveal how they make money speculating, trading and investing in junior mining and exploration stocks. Those topics trade like no other sector and the potential to double or even triple your investment in 2-3 days means you have to be in the right stock at the precise time. Each succinct chapter presents the author’s strategy and offers step-by-step guidance on implementing it for maximum profits.

7. The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures, by Richard Duncan — best seller, high reviews.
“I held a class for about 150 people on the book entitled “The Dollar Crisis,” authored by Richard Duncan. If you want to better understand why the real estate bubble bust and the crash of the dollar will probably lead to a prolonged recession, you may want to read this book sooner rather than later. In a nutshell, we really do not have a real estate bubble… the world is in a currency bubble. In other words, the governments of the world have printed too much ‘funny’ money and cash will soon turn to trash. Even if you are not in real estate or are saving dollars, you may want to read this book to find out what you need to invest in now, before the bubble bursts. If you are in stocks and mutual funds, you definitely want to read this book,” said Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad

8. The Silver Pennies: An Investors Guide to U.S. Silver Stocks by David Bond –high reviews.
The number of American Silver Mining Stocks has shrunk by 100 in the past decade, but three dozen still thrive, in varying stages of exploration, development, and production. Contained herein are their stories. Herein is also silver’s story, its rise as the preeminent strategic metal of our times and its re-emergence as a store of value.

9. Gold: The Once and Future Money, by Nathan Lewis — high reviews. Nathan Lewis’s, a former chief international economist for a research firm, ultimate conclusion is simple but powerful: gold has been adopted as money because it works. The gold standard produced decades and even centuries of stable money and economic abundance. If history is a guide, it will be done again. As described on the inside flap, “Lewis also provides an engaging history of U.S. money and offers a sobering look at recent currency crises around the world, including the Asian monetary crisis of the late 1990s and the devastating currency devaluations in Russia, China, Mexico, and Yugoslavia. And, in doing so, explains why making gold a part of your portfolio has never been more important than it is today.”

10. Commodities Rising: The Reality Behind the Hype, by Jeffery M. Christian — high reviews.
With Commodities Rising, You’ll learn how commodities can be used to reduce risk and increase returns in a balanced investment portfolio. Author and commodities expert Jeffrey Christian debunks much of the misinformation currently circulating about commodities and provides a reasoned reality-check you can use to evaluate the claims and promises of various publications and brokerages in the commodity field. Specific issues addressed throughout this book include: variety of commodity investments such as exchange traded funds, stocks, futures, and options, commodities in the global economy, and investing strategies.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Jonas Dorian is the Senior Editor for Silver Monthly. (0)

After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

By Adam Doolittle
Published: November 28, 2007 in Book Reviews,

I packed myself into a full room of budding economists and future policy makers, mostly students from Hampden-Sydney College, to hear Chris Coyne. As the late professor of economics here at Hampden-Sydney speaks, Coyne’s fast, but often sporadically connected, arguments attempt to answer: “Why liberal democracy takes hold in some countries but not in others?”

Coyne, an Assistant Professor for the Department of Economics at West Virginia University, is rumored to have a “Who is John Galt?” (from the popular Ayn Rand novel), tattooed on his arm, illustrating his passion for free markets—which makes Coyne an excellent candidate to address the issues of economics in the exportation of American democracy.

In After War, Coyne, the economists, addresses foreign policy questions by applying an economic mindset to a topic traditionally tackled by historians, policymakers, and political scientists.

Or as Coyne explains, “Economics focuses on how incentives influence human action. From an economic standpoint, a successful reconstruction effort requires finding and establishing a set of incentives that make citizens prefer a liberal democratic order over any available alternatives.”

Coyne provides insight into why occupiers have failed in their efforts to create the incentives that underpin liberal democracy. But, as he mentions liberal democracy, he admits he doesn’t vote, stating instead that an individual’s vote doesn’t count (unless that vote tips a tied election). “You have a higher change of dying on the way to vote, than breaking a tied election,” said Coyne.

Addressing the issue of successfully exporting democracy, Coyne writes “Historically, the United States has attempted to generate change in foreign countries by exporting liberal democratic institutions through military occupation and reconstruction.”

Yet, “despite these efforts, the record of U.S.-led reconstructions has been mixed at best. For every West Germany or Japan, there is a Cuba, Haiti, Somalia, or Vietnam, and more recently, Afghanistan and Iraq.” Coyne suggests, because of these failed attempts, the United States doesn’t understand the factors responsible for establishing a liberal democracy. Successful liberal democracy that is, because at gunpoint a liberal democracy is a fundamental contradiction. Forced democracy isn’t freedom.

It could be said that Coyne’s main idea suggests efforts to export democracy by military intervention are always inherently doomed to fail. Because of the special interest groups and poor information signals leading to bureaucratic waste, “we should consider other ways to fostering democratic reforms in areas where democratic governments have yet to succeed,” notes Coyne.

This book argues that the ability of foreign occupiers to create incentives for the local population is limited by several constraints, mainly constraints from politicians. The policy makers forget the characteristics of liberal democracy, the protection of civil, political and property rights, as well as the rule of law. Those characteristics would seem to have universal appeal, yet we know very little about how to foster them. After War illustrates these central arguments, both politically and economically, with examples from history and current reconstruction efforts.

Coyne’s book, After War, sheds light on how the U.S. political system contributes to failure in reconstruction efforts. And Coyne points to “major problems of coordination, both within and across the numerous bureaucracies involved in reconstructions.”

A large focus of Coyne’s work is both the domestic and foreign interest groups attempting to influence the U.S. government’s policies in a manner benefiting their own self-interest at the expense of the goals of the broader reconstruction effort. As the reconstruction effort halts the unintended consequences, from an occupation of Iraq, start creping further costs to the American people. The U.S. will feel, Coyne adds, the “blowback against the United States in the years ahead.”

While mainly focusing on recent events in Iraq and abroad, Coyne shows the failure of reconstruction efforts in Iraq and elsewhere is not a matter of political ideology or of the political party in charge. Nor is it an issue of trying harder with more troops or better planning. Instead, failure is due to the fundamental inability of any government to centrally plan economic, political, and social institutions abroad.

Coyne argues for “free trade combined with principled non-intervention affords the best chance for finding a common ground between cultures and for laying the foundations of global peace.”

Popularity: 43% [?]

Adam Doolittle is an Economics and Commerce student at Hampden-Sydney College. « Previous