Wealth, War and Wisdom

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„Barton Biggs’s Wealth, War & Wisdom entertains us with a creative juxtaposition of a war narrative and a security market history. He challenges us with a notion that stock markets exhibit incredible prescience. He teaches us that equity-oriented, stable allocations of passively managed assets provide superior investment results. As has been the case throughout his remarkable career, Barton Biggs adds to our store of knowledge with his elegant, wonderfully crafted prose.“ –From the Foreword by David F. Swensen, Chief Investment Officer, Yale University
„Barton Biggs has brought his love of history together with half a century of investment experience and written a remarkably readable book about the destruction of wealth and the wisdom of markets during World War II. It is both scholarly and impressionistic and will likely become a mainstay in the libraries of serious financial people for generations.“–Byron Wien, Chief Investment Strategist, Pequot Capital Management, Inc.
At least once in every century there has been an episode of massive wealth destruction when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse–Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death–have ridden. The apocalypse will come again, but probably in a very different form than in the past. How do you preserve wealth amidst chaos, and are there messages from what has happened in the past?In Wealth, War & Wisdom, renowned Wall Street investor Barton Biggs studies World War II. He notes the surprising and previously unrecognized wisdom of stock markets in discerning the major tipping points. He then examines the performance of different asset classes, and what happened to wealth before and during the war. There are lessons to be learned as to what steps should be taken to preserve and enhance wealth in times of the most extreme adversity.
Biggs discusses the performance of equities in both victorious and defeated countries and also relates what happened to other forms of wealth such as bonds, land, gold, jewelry, and property during those years–offering important insights about what a person should do to pass on wealth to future generations in an uncertain world. Filled with in-depth observations and practical advice, Wealth, War & Wisdom will help investors apply these original financial lessons directly, and beneficially, to today’s turbulent markets.