Precious metals expert Michael Ballanger discusses his favorite investing books and reviews the landscape for gold and the U.S. dollar between now and the end of the year.
Since entering the hallowed halls of that venerable, old private Jesuit university, Saint Louis University, that sits near the banks of the equally-venerable-and-old man river, the “Mighty Mississippi,” I have kept a number of books in my library that shall remain as “life textbooks,” tomes upon which to refer in times of confusion, despair, joy and victory. Because of my background in hockey as a (much) younger man, I have always enjoyed re-reading sports books and one of my favorites was Ken Dryden’s “The Game” because he described a team and league that had many members familiar to me in the 1970s. Thomas Hauser’s “Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times” was another superb book about the singular, most-globally-recognized athlete of all time and, again, an athlete from the era in which I was raised.
However, the REAL text books were books like “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz, “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle, and “Conversations with God, Book 1” by Neale Donald Walsch, all of which dealt with the human spirit and personal struggle. However, in the world of business and markets, the books which are always within arm reach are, in order of least-to-most importance, “The Battle for Investment Survival” by Gerald M. Loeb (1935), “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator” by Lefevre and Lowenstein (1923), “Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World” by Michael Lewis (2011), “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand (1957) and finally “When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse” by Adam Fergusson (1975).
As a snapshot of the societal impact of the Great Keynesian Experiment through which are currently traversing, “Atlas Shrugged” tells you EXACTLY where …read more