This book is basically a catalog of the major non-U.S. central banks, the statistics they publish, the calendar on which each one publishes, some of the quirks associated with their statistics, and in some cases, which numbers are of particular importance to traders in the international bond and currency markets.



Despite some discussion in the introduction and on the book jacket about how this information would be of use to a typical investor, there is essentially nothing of that sort in the book. In a few places, after describing German producer price indices, for example, Picker offers something lame like "this might help you decide whether or not the economy is growing before you invest."



The book will be of use to those already familiar with the statistics it covers but who are branching out to new markets and who need to know, for example, the weaknesses in Spanish inflation measuring, as compared to Germany. The discussion of chained GDP vs. traditional base-year-GDP comparisons was useful.



Not a bad book, but not something anybody would want to read cover to cover.

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