Entries Tagged 'Reviews' ↓

Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction by David Enrich (2020)

This Wall Street Journal Bestseller and New York Times Bestseller deserves being a bestseller. Its author, David Enrich, has been a reporter for both papers.

This book does not start out to be about the Trump Family. It covers the entire history of the bank from March 10, 1870 in Berlin. That’s why the book is over 400 pages long, (the last 100 pages being endnotes).

The lens David Enrich uses to tell a really compelling story from the 19th century to the present year is shown through the stories of several top executives of Deutsche Bank.

In this book it is clear that the type of banker portrayed in the the American classic movie “A Wonderful LIfe” has been buried deep in their graves for centuries.

For those conspiracy lovers who have decided banks, and Deutsche Bank in particular are a run by Jewish cabal, this book will be a disappointment.

Dark Towers skims over the Nazi period and follows the all-German Board that runs the Bank its branches with secret meetings in the top of one of its Berlin buildings’ towers.

According to Wikipedia, Deutsche Bank dumped three of its Board members in 1993 and confiscated Jew’s belongings, provided funds for the Gestapo, and loaned the funds for building  Auschwitz.

From the start Deutsche Bank was run by a group of all German Bankers who met in secret in the top of one of the banks’ two towers and plotted to open branches all over the globe.

Throughout its long lifetime, outsiders were not let into this cabal until very recently when an Indian fellow was named CEO and an American added to the Board.

Incidently, these German bankers had a sense of whimsey. the two towers, that rose above the main bank Frankfurt were named “Credit” and Debit”.

And These Bankers are Not Boring

Continue reading →

Book Review of The Introvert’s Edge

The Introvert’s Edge: How the Quiet and Shy Can Outsell Anyone by Matthew Pollard with Derek Lewis (© 2018 Rapid Growth L.L.C (Published by AMACON: The American Management Association)

If you are an extrovert, don’t worry about the title of this book. It does include tips for you!

I had to smile when my most extroverted friend wrote this to me recently. It is something that most of us introverts know well by now:

“I’m loving the lock down. I had waaay too many responsibilities before. I even straightened a few of my drawers the other day. Such small improvements give me great satisfaction and happiness.”

Many extroverts and introverts are discovering or rediscovering the pleasures we introverts have enjoyed since birth – the freedom to be alone and focused solely on ourselves and what we want to do.

So, what do you, as a self-employed business owner, have to gain from this book? Continue reading →

For those interested in the Oil and Gas industry there is another book being promoted about an oil baron’s life story. It’s being heralded in book reviews here and abroad.

The name is of the man is Calouste Gulbenkian and the title of the book is Mr Five Percent: The many lives of Calouste Gulbenkian, the world’s richest man, by Jonathan Conlin (London: Profile Books Ltd., Southampton University, 2019, 416 pp)

Gulbenkian’s claims to fame are his large art collection left to the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal after his death in 1955.

He was a Turkish businessman of a wealthy Armenian living in Istanbul who made a name for himself that paralleled John D. Rockfeller and Jean Paul Getty in the early 20th century, making it into Life Magazine at the time by being called “the richest man in the world”.

Gulbenkian’s contribution to the oil industry was his dedication to creating international cartels that bypassed government controls, and championed vertical integration.

Vertical integration seems to be a practice purported to offer large advantages for the oil and gas field, but it’s a practice that has ignored costs and the inefficiencies of those companies to an extent that was harmful to the companies themselves, the economy, and financial markets.

Other names for this practice are “conglomeration”.

Today, the concern about the industry is more about fracking because of the even higher costs of this practice that can result in harmful “dis-economies”.

Others of course, defend the practice of vertical integration by pointing out some of its virtues, while on the other hand, The Motley Fool declares that today’s “Big Oil Companies are not integrated, just co-existing.”

Given that the oil and gas companies play a major role in climate change, this debate is one that should be discussed by our politicians, but unfortunately for our quality of life, isn’t in the forefront of the news today.

Yet, it looks like it soon will be given the climate crises taking place this past year!