45 books like Lying for Money

From my reading of Frank Partnoy’s book, I get the impression that Swedish celebrity financier Ivar Kreuger did really start out as a skillful and legitimate businessman, negotiating exclusive rights to sell matches in a range of central and Eastern European countries in the 1920s and early 1930s.

But, as so often happens, when business became more difficult in the 1930s, his elaborate financial activities gradually morphed into recklessness and fraud.

Though not a volume pertaining to “hard science,” Mackay’s book is an early and essential inquiry into “group psychology” long before the phrase was coined. I used this and Kuhn’s books as background when writing World on Fire.

Why do perfectly respectable people act against their own self-interests, often violently, I wondered, when drawn into the seductive folds of a crowd? Mackay wrote his first edition in 1841, just a few decades after the convulsions that swallowed up Priestley and Lavoisier, then updated it in 1852: he chronicled the spreading group madness of such historical phenomena as the South Sea Bubble, “alchymists,” the Crusades, witch manias, and the “popular admiration of great thieves.”

Mackay’s 1852 preface crystallized his theme with the question: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds while they only recover their senses slowly and one… show more.

The journalist Nathaniel Popper starts at the beginning, telling the story of how Bitcoin emerged from message boards and was slowly but surely propelled forward by government-wary libertarians, computer science nerds, and opportunistic venture capitalists.

Popper persuasively articulates the many problems that Bitcoin solves across the world—and then reveals its extremely bumpy road toward adoption. 

I found this book to be not only an astonishing story of outright fraud and theft, but one which raises unexpected questions about the nature and function of money.

A confidence trickster managed to persuade the eminent banknote printing company Waterlow to reprint and give him a large stock of Bank of Portugal escudo banknotes, which he proceeded to spend.

Learning how the scam was uncovered is fascinating in itself, but even more intriguing is the question of who lost from this scam, and by how much. 

I have always wondered whether John Law, the creator of the ill-fated Mississippi System that brought the financial system of France to its knees in 1720, a genius who understood money better than anyone before him, or a deluded fantasist who had learnt just enough to create a monetary weapon of mass destruction?

In his careful and well-researched account, Antoin Murphy leans towards the first interpretation, but he offers enough information to allow the reader to form their own conclusions.

I was an eye-witness as every single one of the banks serving the Irish economy effectively failed during the crisis of 2008-10.

Some were bailed out by their foreign shareholders, some by the Irish Government, which in turn had to be bailed out by the IMF and European Union. Worst of all, by a long distance, was Anglo Irish Bank, whose buccaneering executives lent billions to over-optimistic property developers, distorting economic activity and luring the other banks into unwise lending also.

Eventually, their desperate last-ditch attempts to save the bank and its shareholders led top management into illegal share support activities. Simon Carswell captures well the social dynamics involved.

For Attack, I knew I had to explain the libertarian origins of bitcoin, and Golumbia’s book supplied my reference list for chapter 2. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand why bitcoin.

The political currents that went into bitcoin include several strains that are now accepted as the normal Silicon Valley political position—the “Californian ideology.” Bitcoin shares an ancestry with Silicon Valley startup culture, internet free speech movements, the right wing of transhumanism, and the neoreactionary political movement.

It’s a short book, but it does its homework thoroughly. Cryptocurrency still follows the bitcoin political template in 2023.

The Basilisk Murders is a mystery centred on the Bay Area “transhumanist” subculture—another offshoot of the Californian Ideology that gave rise to bitcoin, and with much of the same style of grandiose bad thinking, ill-directed idealism, and an undercurrent of fraud.

The characters are also into their bitcoins. It’s a rollicking read, and you don’t have to know anything about these people beforehand to learn and understand why they do what they do.

Mr. Carreyrou was the Wall Street Journal reporter who broke the story that eventually led to the downfall of Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos. At its peak, this company was worth over $9 billion. Today, Holmes and her former COO have been convicted of fraud and are serving time.

I like this book because it serves as a curriculum for how NOT to operate a biotech company. It shows that while belief in your vision is essential for all successful entrepreneurs, there is no place for secrecy and arrogance in the business world.

Unfortunately, the “Theranos” effect has led to a decline in investment in new medical technology and has had a negative effect on the value of clinical laboratories.

I loved this book because it is such an incredible example of brave journalism that exposes one of the biggest global financial scandals in history. The book outlines an intricate web of corruption involving a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. It draws connections between Malaysia, Singapore, the Middle East, and the United States of America.

I love how they tell the story of an awkward schoolboy who finds a way to make it in with some of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities and some of the most reputable financial institutions, like Goldman Sachs. The book also shows who the “fall people” are, who bear all of the criminal risks while the mastermind, Jho Low, has not been caught.