Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street by Neil Barofsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wanted to read this book for it was about choices made by cabinet and governmental employees, Federal Reserve chairmen, executive bankers, and the special investigator of TARP that I could previously only infer from posted information and news reports. I really wanted to know, "What were they thinking? It looks like they were thinking they needed short-term, urgent solutions and the solutions they considered were strongly influenced by their former job histories and future job prospects.
Barofsky's tone sometimes comes across as whining and petulant when he does not get the cooperation from Geithner and also does not get included when he raises objections about the roles of servicers and other potential conflicts of interests. Barofsky did a good job of preventing fraud, and feels there was more to be done. He was especially displeased with the program that was supposed to help 3-4 million people who faced foreclosure.
If you don't want to read the entire book, please at least read the afterword for a summary.

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King Peggy: An American Secretary, Her Royal Destiny, and the Inspiring Story of How She Changed an African Village by Peggielene Bartels
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The title and subtitle intrigued me, and the strong recommendations from readers on Goodreads encouraged me to read this book.
King Peggy comes across as strong and still vulnerable to disappointments caused by the behaviors of others. Her indignation becomes righteous and helps her find the reason why her tribe has no money, why the former king must stay in the refrigerator at the morgue until a proper funeral can be hosted, and why the royal palace is in such disrepair. King Peggy is the wise leader we wish all our politicians might be.
The book also provides an introduction to the tribal culture of Ghana in a way that shows us differences and yet helps us find common ground in our humanity.

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The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was recommended as a book of the week on Consuela Mack's Wealthtrack show on my local PBS station.
Benjamin Roth was a lawyer with a sole proprietorship practice in Youngstown, Ohio and the sole provider for his young family. He kept a diary about the hard times and the developments as a way to understand and to learn from it. This book feels so current as he writes about his own worries about cashflow and bewilderment about government policies. These are real concerns for us today: have we done all we could to protect our families;would market timing and portfolio allocation have made an difference; and if we made mistakes how can we correct them if cash is unavailable? I did not realize how risky real estate investment became during the Great Depression when rents could not be collected and yet property taxes were still due.
I highly recommend this.


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America's Atlantic Isles by H. Robert Morrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is another book from my National Geographic Society bookshelf, and now I take the time to read all the text in it.
For the purpose of this book, the Atlantic Isles are divided into six geographic chapters written by either H. Robert Morrison or Christine Eckstrom Lee. The primary photographer is David Alan Harvey. The book was copyrighted in 1981, and yet the text only dates itself in a few areas. I'm sure most of the concerns of the island inhabitants are similar today: how can I continue to live here when the financial considerations impact my worries almost as much as the sea and its weather?
I highly recommend this book for armchair travelers.

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Broken Markets: How High Frequency Trading and Predatory Practices on Wall Street Are Destroying Investor Confidence and Your Portfoli by Sal L. Arnuk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a free ebook from BN.com, and it is no longer free.
I'm glad I read this for it explained to my satisfaction why one of my sell limit orders sold on the Boston exchange when its trigger price never reached that price on NYSE that day. It explained to my satisfaction why high volume occurs when the price drops lower than 7-8% intraday and yet it can be higher by the end of the day. It explained to my satisfaction why I rarely see volume exceed 50% of its Average Daily Volume on dramatic price up days. There are High Frequency Traders, arbitragers, and Dark Pools who can read my orders between the time it takes to submit and to execute, and who act on that information.
An analogy the authors frequently use in this book has this shopper ready to checkout at the grocery store. I head for a checkout line, and suddenly there are 9 other carts in front of me. I head for another line, and 9 more carts are there. And so on.
So much has changed in the last 15 years in stock markets and SEC rules, and this book explains much of it. The stock markets were previously not-for-profit with rules for self-governance and the SEC helped the investor. Now they are for-profit corporations and the rules of the SEC have been helping traders rather than investors.
I recommend it for readers with portfolios, even if your portfolio is managed by others. I don't give it the fifth star for too much of it is repetitious.

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Alaska's Magnificent Parklands by Tom Melham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read another book from my National Geographic Society bookshelf. It was published in 1981, and some of the text seems dated as I read it 31 years later. Don't use it for vacation planning. Use it to learn there are more National Parks in Alaska than Glacier Bay and Wrangell-Saint Elias. All of these thirteen places have the warnings of Be Prepared and Plan to be Self-Sufficient for these are wilderness areas.
The photographs continue to be stunning.


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Small Crimes by Dave Zeltserman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I put this on my to-read list when I heard NPR considered this to be one of the five best crime and mystery novels of 2008.
The protagonist Joe Denton does not have the first-person voice I usually hear in the fiction I read. Joe is out on early release after serving seven years in County jail for a horrific assault and maiming of the district attorney. At the time of the assault he was a police officer, a police officer who was robbing, gambling, and he was addicted to both cocaine and alcohol. He says he is reformed and he blames so many people for getting him into trouble before and now after.
I recommend this book to readers of noir fiction for the author does an excellent job telling the story by a sociopath who can spin a story that normal people want to believe until he says one small thing that makes you understand this guy is nuts and you have to break all ties with him if you want to survive this story.

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High Country Trail: Along the Continental Divide by Michael Robbins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

High Country Trail: Along the Continental Divide is another book from my National Geographic Society shelf.
I have a personal connection to the subject as I have hiked along some of the public trails along the Continental Divide in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado. Sometimes the text feels as if another traveler were telling me about his vacation and another photographer were showing me his pictures.
I have not yet hiked in New Mexico, and I think I may have to plan a trip there some day.

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Angel Fire East by Terry Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Angel Fire East is the third book of the Word and the Void trilogy from the 24 Shannara books. Now that I have read this one, all of the first eight are finished by me, and I have four more to read before I catch up with the book Don is currently reading.
I enjoy the characters of Nest Freemark, Pick, and John Ross. The demon Findo Gask is scary.
I recommend it for fans of the series. For new readers, I recommend starting with Running with the Demon.

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The Big Retirement Risk: Running Out of Money Before You Run Out of Time by Erin Botsford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was recommended to me by my brother and my father.
It is written for a general audience. I don't see much difference in this book and Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominquez and Vickie Robin which I read years ago, and I took that advice to heart. Instead of US Treasuries for a guaranteed income, Botsford recommends annuities to lock-in income for protection. The problem I have with her book is my interpretation she recommended this course of action to her personal clients before the 2008 financial crisis, and she does not give enough information about where their assets were before going into the annuity. Were they in tax-deferred accounts or did they have the assets in taxable accounts?



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