The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy

David Smick keeps a low profile, but experts consider him one of the most insightful financial market strategists in the world. For more than two decades, he has conferred with central bankers (such as Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke) and advised top Wall Street executives and investors, from George Soros to Michael Steinhardt to Stan Druckenmiller. Political leaders (from Bill Bradley to Jack Kemp) have regularly sought his policy advice.

The World Is Curved picks up where Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat left off, taking readers on an insider’s tour through the private offices of central bankers, finance ministers, even prime ministers. Smick reveals how today’s risky environment came to be—and why the mortgage mess is a symptom of potentially far more devastating trouble. He wrestles with the two questions on everyone’s mind: How bad could things really get in today’s volatile economy? And what can we do about it?

Drawing on riveting anecdotes in language anyone can understand, Smick explains:

• Why the churning cauldron we call China (the next great bubble to burst) represents a powerful threat to everyone’s pocketbook
• How Japanese housewives have taken control of their nation’s savings, and why it matters to us
• How greed-driven bankers and investment bankers have put everyone’s pensions and 401(k)s at risk
• Why today’s “incredible shrinking central banks” may not be able to save us when the next crisis hits
• Why the big-money Russian, Chinese, Saudi, and Dubai sovereign wealth funds represent a tectonic shift in global financial power, away from the United States, Europe, and Japan
• Why the world desperately needs a “big think” financial doctrine to guide today’s dangerous ocean of money

The World Is Curved is the rare book that speaks simultaneously to the Wall Street, Washington, and London elite, yet its apt storytelling shows Main Street readers how to survive in these turbulent times.

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The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 11th Edition

Customer Reviews

Good, solid GMAT review
I think this was a great first book to look at if you’re planning to do the GMAT, though I wish there was a little more explanation with the statistical answers. Otherwise it’s an easy guide.

A Few Mistakes
As a primary resource for preparing for the GMAT this book is invaluable. The questions are organized from easy to difficult and separated in to topics to help you find weaknesses. That said, there are a few minor mistakes in the book that can lead to hours of confusion. Those mistakes can be found at

http://www.gmatix.com/blogging/index.php?x=25

Other than that the book suffers from to few questions. This is not a good comprehensive study plan, just the best first step.

great COMPANION book for a real GMAT prep course
Unless you are one of the lucky few who don’t need formal instruction to prepare for standardized tests, you can not use this GMAT book as your only resource. But, if you are using other instruction or practice materials the Official Guide is great for testing the accuracy of the strategies you’ve learned.

It’s true that this guide will not tell you how to test better, but some people have left reviews saying there aren’t any explanations. I don’t understand why they’re saying that though, because I thought one of the best features of the GMAT Review is that it explains every single answer in both the quant and verbal sections very clearly. There are some typos, but it’s not like you can’t figure what they meant to say. Some people have also said that random questions they tried from the book were too easy. I wonder what sections they tried, because at least in the quant portion the questions become increasingly difficult. So the first 50 questions are pretty easy, but the last 25 are much harder.

Just as a side note, I took the 7 week Veritas GMAT prep course and scored a 630 on the test right when I finished the class. But afterward I spent the next month testing the strategies in this Offical Guide and improved my score to a 700. So I would definitely say it’s helpful.

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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t

The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world’s greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness — why some companies make the leap and others don’t.

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