The Devil’s Financial Dictionary skewers the plutocrats and bureaucrats who gave us exploding mortgages, freakish risks, and banks too big to fail. And it distills the complexities, absurdities, and pomposities of Wall Street into plain truths and aphorisms anyone can understand.
An indispensable survival guide to the hostile wilderness of today’s financial markets, The Devil’s Financial Dictionary delivers practical insights with a scorpion’s sting. It cuts through the fads and fakery of Wall Street and clears a safe path for investors between euphoria and despair.
Staying out of financial purgatory has never been this fun.
Note: Please be advised that copies offered online by what Amazon calls “third-party sellers” may be missing the final 28 pages of text.
Some booksellers have been attempting to sell such copies for at least $275 apiece, apparently in the belief that they will be worth even more someday if they become collectibles. That is a big “if.” If you pay more than the $19.95 list price, please don’t blame me if you later feel you didn’t get your money’s worth.
Preview the book
Here are a few entries that give a taste of The Devil’s Financial Dictionary, my glossary of financial terms published by PublicAffairs in November 2015.
Inspired by Ambrose Bierce’s satirical masterpiece, The Devil’s Financial Dictionary is a glossary of all the financial terms you need to know but may never have understood.
In each definition, I’ve tried to distill everything I’ve ever learned about a topic down into the fewest number of words with the greatest educational and entertainment value.
Wall Street is, in many ways, a giant obfuscation machine, operated on the principles of making simple ideas complex, safe investments risky, and important facts incomprehensible. Alan Greenspan’s words when he was chairman of the Federal Reserve Board apply to the financial industry as well: “If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.” That’s why every investor — if not every citizen — needs a clear translation tool to cut through the jargon of money.
If you’ve ever been lost in a foreign country without a guidebook to the local language, you know that we aren’t kidding when we call this book “a survival guide.”
The goal of The Devil’s Financial Dictionary is to make you laugh and learn at the same time. I know I’ve never had more fun writing anything in my entire career; I hope you will like it.
Praise & Review
This is the most amusing presentation of the principles of finance that I have ever seen.
— Robert J. Shiller, professor of finance, Yale University; Nobel laureate in economics; author, Irrational Exuberance