I'm a strong believer in investing globally and I wanted very much to like this book. Borders are certainly less important to investors these days and I looked forward to Frishberg's thoughts on how to benefit. There weren't many, and most were nothing more than snide comments about the current administration's regulatory efforts. Perhaps the book's subtitle should have tipped me off that I would be disappointed: "How 6 Billion Investors Can Find Profits in the Global Economy." With the world's population currently at about 6.6 billion, that would mean nearly everyone, everywhere, would somehow be rolling in dough - a nice concept, but hardly realistic.



There are some nice moments. Frishberg deftly explains bonds by comparing them to rental properties, for example. He talks, relatively briefly, about how the world's need for water may provide some outstanding investment opportunities. He includes several entertaining transcripts of interviews conducted on his radio show (although there are so many extraneous details it seems surprising he didn't transcribe the commercials, too).



But it's hard to get past Frishberg's political diatribes, his smugness ("I can almost see you evolving as you're reading this" and "If I were you, I'd mark this chapter and come back to it often - maybe every time you start to think about your investments" and "you will be a witness to how one of the most successful nine-figure portfolios in the country is managed" and "My mom used to warn me when I was a kid trading silver contracts to make it through college..."), as well as eyebrow-raising assertions like these:



* "We (the US) started writing music and developing the arts while many countries were still trying to figure out how to build roads." (The Renaissance happened well before this country was founded.)



* "Face it, nobody goes to the library anymore." And "In every major city in the United States the public library is virtually empty." (Untrue in my experience, and I suspect Frishberg is simply assuming others are like him.)



* "Not one person who relies on analysts' earnings forecasts has made any real money in many, many years - not one." (It is impossible to prove this statement.)



* "If you're trying to win love rather than trying to win because you're playing for money, it's going to make you weak every time." (True if you choose to measure strength purely in financial terms, which sounds like a lonely way to go.)



* "Securitization, credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations - these are all newly engineered types of cash, designed to create enough capital to feed the hungry, developing global economy. And most certainly, this financial engineering will eventually prove to be the answer, right after more of us learn to navigate the complexities." (As Michael Lewis so ably illustrated in The Big Short, the whole point of those complex instruments is to confuse nearly everyone and enrich only those pulling the strings.)



* "So the families who make up the one and a half percent of the population (the ones who are in the more-than-$250,000 range) are going to be charged with paying it all back. If you look at that as a 20-year mortgage, that's $5 trillion shared among those people, leaving each one of them owning about a $2 million mortgage! It's simple math, and it means that they'll have about $179,000 a year worth of mortgage payments facing them. Don't forget, they only make $250,000." (No, they're in the "more-than-$250,000 range" and it's fair to assume many make quite a bit more than that.)



* "When the accounting standards were modified the problem (bank credit crunch) disappeared." (There's a problem? Change the accounting standards. Problem solved!)



* "I say Blackstone is a stock you can learn about, get confidence in, and buy and sell several times in your life. Whether the market falls too in love or gets too panicked - at either extreme the market will be wrong because Blackstone is just gonna keep rolling along, basically ignoring the market and the government and the regulators. Remember, these are the smartest guys in the room." (Where have I heard that phrase before? Oh, yeah: Enron! Interestingly, elsewhere in the book, Frishberg says "you don't often hear me giving specific stock tips or stock advice, and I certainly couldn't do it in a book." Blackstone's one of a dozen or so companies recommended in this volume.)



* "How about I take all 150 homes (originally sold at $250,000 and currently priced at $150,000) off your hands for 80 grand apiece? You'll be out of trouble, the homes will be absorbed by people who can now afford to live in them, the neighborhoods won't be blighted, life will go on, and everybody wins." (Except for the pesky implications of deflation.)



* "Stop listening to the whining herd and think for yourself. That's what I'm here for. That's what this book is providing that nobody else does for you." (Huh? If I'm supposed to think for myself, why would I want Frishberg to do it for me?)



After writing this review, it dawned on me to look into the author a bit more closely. So I Googled "Frishberg" and a few other terms, including "SEC." Suffice it to say I wish I'd done that before I bought the book.

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