Customer Reviews:
 Very 'now' but not nesc tomorrow December 8, 2008
I've read several of the 'little books' range and generally they are good and well written for the non-finance geek and this is no exception.
The reason I have only given it 3 stars is that it does not actually take it on to provide a definite game plan beyond the near(ish) future.
The book starts out with a very good piece on the issues we now face and how we got here, including some proof that the author called this back in 2007 amidst much derision. This is all pretty informative and well written.
Where I feel this book falls down is that the other books in the series I have read have given back tested styles of investing. Although these all suffer the intermittent glitches, as any style will, they can be applied in the future and used to develop your own style of investing.
This book simply gives an overview of the recent past and what you should do now, but nothing too much about future economic cycles. More importantly there is lots of subjective advice, but very little concrete back-testing beyond retelling of how he called this right.
Now I am not arguing with Mr Schiff's reasoning or intellect, but that this is great for now, but what happens when things move on as they invariably will? You will need to find someone else that 'gets' it then and tell you what to do again at that point.
So to sum up, if you want to get a better understanding of the economic mess we are in in the latter part of 2008 and some suggestions about what to do now, this book is pretty good.
However, if you are looking for something that could be the basis of an investing approach for the long term or if you are looking at this during some future economic cycle, then it's probably not going to be so useful.
|
