How to Understand Company Financials

Sure, you know how to find raw financial numbers (use Mint, Orbis or Mergent for that) but what if you need help figuring out what they actually mean?

There are a lot of helpful books for that.

They are located on the fifth floor:

Browse the HG4028.B area here (includes e-books)

Also helpful: Corporations - valuation

There are also a lot of books on recognizing fraud, such as the wonderfully named Financial Shenigans (e book included in link)

Bonus: You can keyword search for books that address specific issues to an industry, such as how to analyze oil companies.

The New Black Market: System D

As the world fails to generate economic growth, many people are giving up on the system and starting their own businesses. These businesses are outside the regular legal and financial system.

Actually, this is how most of the world lives, and now there's a word: system d.

System d comes from the French word debrouillard - which means a crafty, self-reliant person. The kind of person you might have to be.

It appears increasingly unlikely that the system is going to work any time soon. Consider reading this article and thinking about setting your own course in life.

Awesome Research Guides for Entrepreneurs and International Businesses

New and improved research guides for international business and Entrepreneur/Start-Up resources (AKA Management 3360)

Too many library guides are simply lists of resources - I've organized these guides according to your need (statistics, how to find monetary data, Texas law, etc...) and included tutorials.

Mucho better. Save some future time and click on the links.

Samsung Makes Apple Chips in Austin

Remember that Samsung factory in Austin? Well, they're making a chip for the Apple Iphone in it.

In America. Rad.

Investor's Business Daily

I've recently gotten some inquiries about accessing Investor's Business Daily. We don't have a paper subscription anymore, but we do have good electronic access here. You can pick your database from that link, but I will steer you towards the Business Source Complete option.

I find that most users want to browse Investor's Business Daily, not search by article. If you follow the link above, and choose Business Source Complete, you will be able to browse by date.

If you would rather search by keywords, be sure to select "browse within this publication" once you are taken to the database.

Book Review: Boomerang:Travels in the New Third World

Michael Lewis's Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World (another copy available here) is a collection of elegant, wickedly insightful essays about the just-burst debt bubble and different countries' attempt to come to terms with what just happened - and, more ominously, - what is ABOUT to happen.

In the aftermath of the initial financial meltdown of 2007-8, Lewis visits several European countries and the United States and writes about national character turned loose "in the dark" with unlimited free money.

The best chapters are the Greek and Irish ones - masterpieces of cynicism, theft and tragedy.

Highly recommended for giving a flavor of the madness of our times. The abandoning of common sense, the incompetence and complacency and corruption in high places, and the cultural acceptance of what is basically debt peonage. Future generations will read this book and shudder.

It's important to read these things so you can rise above your present surroundings and make critical judgements.

Nassim Taleb's Black Swan of Cairo Essay

Here's a link to Nassim Taleb's essay in Foreign Affairs entitled The Black Swan of Cairo.

Taleb writes that governments and institutions, in attempting to flatten natural volatility, instead creates economic and social bottlenecks that will ultimately erupt beyond the artificially "normal" parameters of the last few decades.

Check it out - it's a fascinating essay.

Link to my earlier book review of Taleb's famous book The Black Swan.