Investment Advisor Act

Your Guide to a Safe Ride Down the Road of Investment Success " This compact book really does provide The Only Proven Road to Investment Success. And ‘ the road’ is a wonderful metaphor: Don’ t drive a gas-guzzler (keep costs low). Avoid toll roads (reduce Uncle Sam’ s take). Beware of potholes (active management, market timing, acting on impulse, joining the herd). It drives home the central message that will make you a long-term winner: the secret of investing is simplicity." – John C. Bogle, Founder, The Vanguard Group " Personal investment has become both an opportunity and a hazard for all but experts. As stocks have soared and then collapsed in recent years, there is a crying need for first-rate, disinterested advice on how to invest. Sengupta’ s book gives us precisely that. Written with authority and accessibility, it is a marvelous guide that no investor can do without. Read, implement, and prosper." – Jagdish Bhagwa University Professor, Columbia University External Advisor to the Director General, WTO The Only Proven Road to Investment Success provides the tools, knowledge, and insights that allow investors at any level– regardless of age, income, or financial wisdom– to successfully manage their own money and leave behind the expensive world of brokers and fund managers. Whatever your investment goals are, The Only Proven Road to Investment Success and its companion CD-ROM can help you reach them. Stop listening to the " investment professionals" on TV and in magazines and start listening to yourself. With The Only Proven Road to Investment Success, you can manage your own investmentswith peace of mind and watch as your portfolio safely grows beyond expectation.

After the breakup of the USSR, it briefly appeared as though Russia's emerging commercial banks might act as engines of growth for a new capitalist economy. However, despite more than a decade of "reforms", Russia's financial system collapsed in 1998. Why had ambitious efforts to decentralize and liberalize the banking industry failed? In A Fistful of Rubles, Juliet Johnson offers the first comprehensive look at how Russia's banks, once expected to revitalize the nation's economy, instead became one of the largest obstacles to its recovery. Drawing on interviews with Russian bankers, policymakers, and entrepreneurs, Johnson traces the evolution of the banking system from 1987 through the aftermath of the 1998 crash. She describes how dysfunctional institutional procedures left over from the Soviet period hindered the subsequent development of sound financial practices. Johnson argues that these legacies, along with misguided, Western-inspired liberalization policies, led to the creation of parasitic banks for which success depended on political connections rather than on investment strategies. Johnson demonstrates that banking reform efforts ultimately did more harm than good, because Russian officials and their international advisors failed to build the corresponding economic, legal, and political institutions upon which modern market behavior depends.