Almost in the ‘James Bond style’, the book grabs your attention with its opening sentence, “On a single day in 1998, I lost $15 million in the ruins of the Russian economy.” Now that’s something; why would you not want to read further? And the adventure does not end there, in many countries across the world in exotic settings and sometimes depressing settings, the author Robert P. Smith takes on a financial adventure, which the reader will find a lesson in trading and investment. Especially in the integrated economic world, the book offers “a unique perspective on how the process of the global economic integration has played out in the remote niches of the global economy”.
Robert P. Smith has been called the “Indiana Jones” of international finance by Forbes magazine, Robert P. Smith is one of the world’s most fearless financial adventurers. Over the past three decades, he has made, lost, and made back tens of millions of dollars by investing in emerging markets and downtrodden economies. Despite his unassuming presence, Smith has undertaken daunting risks, both physical and financial, and experienced adventures Hollywood couldn’t begin to invent. As Smith explains, he took the first intrepid steps in the business of “buying promises” — buying various forms of government debt in the world’s battered economies from pessimists and selling them to optimists.
There is a lot to be learnt from this book for economist and with today’s fluid conditions in the financial sector we better learn fast. International debts are rising and what to talk about our national debts trade deficits; the billions and trillions do not even make sense in actual counting now. I would highly recommend this book to those who are interested in understanding how the international markets are intertwined and how we can learn from the author’s experience in different countries on how to learn from the spending and debt management to make our future more secure.
You can find this book at Amazon at: Riches Among the Ruins: Adventures in the Dark Corners of the Global Economy