Robert E. Wright

Simon Constable

The Wall Street Journal Guide to the 50 Economic Indicators that Really Matter is a must-have guide for investors. Dow Jones columnist Simon Constable and respected financial historian Robert E. Wright offer valuable tips and insight to help investors forecast and exploit sea changes in the global macroeconomic climate. Unlike other investment handbooks, Constable and Wright’s guide explores the not widely known economic indicators that the smartest investors watch closely in order to beat the stock market—from “Big Macs” to “Zombie Banks.” Not only valuable and informative, The Wall Street Journal Guide to the 50 Economic Indicators that Really Matter is also wonderfully irreverent and endlessly entertaining, making it the most fun to read investors’ guide on the market.

From Big Macs to "Zombie Banks," the Indicators Smart Investors Watch to Beat the Market

The WSJ Guide to the 50 Economic Indicators That Really Matter

George David Smith

Timothy C. Jacobson

A lively history of one of America's oldest publishing houses, published in conjunction with Wiley's bicentennial Founded in New York City when Thomas Jefferson was president, Wiley has been a significant player in the publishing industry for two centuries. Now, on the occasion of Wiley's bicentennial, a distinguished team of authors brings Wiley's rich history to life, showing how the company has reacted to trends within the publishing industry as well as to larger economic, social, and cultural forces. Knowledge for Generations sheds light on the long-term strengths and weaknesses of Wiley's business, illuminates the continuities and changes over time, and shows how family ownership has influenced the company's strategies, values, and corporate culture. Drawing on unrestricted access to company archives and interviews with key executives, the authors capture a story of sustained business success, intriguing personalities, and dramatic changes in the industry. Illustrated throughout with illuminating photographs and graphics, Knowledge for Generations is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of publishing.

Wiley and the Global Publishing Industry, 1807 - 2007

Knowledge for Generations

Aleksandra Przegalińska

This book presents the most compelling arguments for and against implementing a basic income guarantee today, in the voice of proponents and critics, in alternating chapters. Tables, figures, and pictures illustrate the key concepts and evidence, which include benefit cliffs and disincentive deserts, time series macroeconomic data, business, economic, and technological change (BETC), artificial intelligence and other general purpose technologies, along with advanced robotics, the environmental Kuznets Curve, income distributions, democracy, social justice, dependence, autonomy, and economic freedom. A neutral, non-partisan tone introduction defines UBI and covers the history of universal income plans, while the conclusion summarizes the main arguments for and against UBI before surveying alternative policies, including universal basic asset, credit, service, job, and training plans.

Pros, Cons, and Alternatives

Debating Universal Basic Income

David Smith

A history of The Guardian Life Insurance company.

The Guardian and Life Insurance in America

Mutually Beneficial

David J. Cowen

Focuses on the lives of nine Americans who were instrumental in creating the wealth and institutions necessary to construct the American colonies into one cohesive economic power.

The Men Who Made America Rich

Financial Founding Fathers

This ground-breaking book adds an economic angle to a traditionally moral argument, demonstrating that slavery has never promoted economic growth or development, neither today nor in the past. While unfree labor may be lucrative for slaveholders, its negative effects on a country’s economy, much like pollution, drag down all members of society. Tracing the history of slavery around the world, from prehistory through the US Antebellum South to the present day, Wright illustrates how slaveholders burden communities and governments with the task of maintaining the system while preventing productive individuals from participating in the economy. Historians, economists, policymakers, and anti-slavery activists need no longer apologize for opposing the dubious benefits of unfree labor. Wright provides a valuable resource for exposing the hidden price tag of slaving to help them pitch antislavery policies as matters of both human rights and economic well-being.

How Unfree Labor Pollutes the Economy

The Poverty of Slavery

When Americans think of investment and finance, they think of Wall Street—though this was not always the case. During the dawn of the Republic, Philadelphia was the center of American finance. The first stock exchange in the nation was founded there in 1790, and around it the bustling thoroughfare known as Chestnut Street was home to the nation's most powerful financial institutions. The First Wall Street recounts the fascinating history of Chestnut Street and its forgotten role in the birth of American finance. According to Robert E. Wright, Philadelphia, known for its cultivation of liberty and freedom, blossomed into a financial epicenter during the nation's colonial period. The continent's most prodigious minds and talented financiers flocked to Philly in droves, and by the eve of the Revolution, the Quaker City was the most financially sophisticated region in North America. The First Wall Street reveals how the city played a leading role in the financing of the American Revolution and emerged from that titanic struggle with not just the wealth it forged in the crucible of war, but an invaluable amount of human capital as well. This capital helped make Philadelphia home to the Bank of the United States, the U.S. Mint, an active securities exchange, and several banks and insurance companies—all clustered in or around Chestnut Street. But as the decades passed, financial institutions were lured to New York, and by the late 1820s only the powerful Second Bank of the United States upheld Philadelphia's financial stature. But when Andrew Jackson vetoed its charter, he sealed the fate of Chestnut Street forever—and of Wall Street too. Finely nuanced and elegantly written, The First Wall Street will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the United States and the origins of its unrivaled economy.

Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance

The First Wall Street

Like its current citizens, the United States was born in debt-a debt so deep that it threatened to destroy the young nation. Thomas Jefferson considered the national debt a monstrous fraud on posterity, while Alexander Hamilton believed debt would help America prosper. Both, as it turns out, were right. One Nation Under Debt explores the untold history of America's first national debt, which arose from the immense sums needed to conduct the American Revolution. Noted economic historian Robert Wright, Ph.D. tells in riveting narrative how a subjugated but enlightened people cast off a great tyrant-“but their liberty, won with promises as well as with the blood of patriots, came at a high price.” He brings to life the key events that shaped the U.S. financial system and explains how the actions of our forefathers laid the groundwork for the debt we still carry today. As an economically tenuous nation by Revolution's end, America's people struggled to get on their feet. Wright outlines how the formation of a new government originally reduced the nation's debt-but, as debt was critical to this government's survival, it resurfaced, to be beaten back once more. Wright then reveals how political leaders began accumulating massive new debts to ensure their popularity, setting the financial stage for decades to come. Wright traces critical evolutionary developments-from Alexander Hamilton's creation of the nation's first modern capital market, to the use of national bonds to further financial goals, to the drafting of state constitutions that created non-predatory governments. He shows how, by the end of Andrew Jackson's administration, America's financial system was contributing to national growth while at the same time new national and state debts were amassing, sealing the fate for future generations.

Robert E. Wright

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