Review: The Daily Carrot Principle and 2 Others
by Miki SaxonI am a fan of Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton; I reviewed both The Carrot Principle and The Levity Effect and highly recommend them. The books feel like fast reads, but digesting and using the (unconventional to some) wisdom found in each takes a bit longer.
The Daily Carrot Principle is the size of a desk calendar and offers much of that wisdom in bite-sized pieces by addressing one idea each day of the year, explaining it and providing a short description of the action needed to implement it.
I highly recommend The Daily Carrot Principle for yourself and for a gift—unlike a desk calendar you won’t want to get rid of it any time soon.
Recommendations
Many articles and books have/are being written about the Madoff scandal and dozens of other Ponzi schemes born of loose money and a wholesale ignoring of the old adage, “if it seems too good to be true it probably is.”
The most compelling book I’ve come across regarding Madoff is the inside look from Harry Markopolos detailing the eight years he spent trying to expose him and how the SEC refused to listen. Read this excerpt from How I Got the Goods on Madoff, and Why No One Would Listen to decide if it’s your cup of tea.
The message was practically the same in every one of those 14 meetings: “We have a special relationship with Mr. Madoff. He’s closed to new investors and he takes money only from us.”
When I heard that said the first time I accepted it. When I heard it the second time I began to get suspicious. And when I heard it 14 times in less than two weeks, I knew it was a Ponzi scheme. I didn’t say anything about the fact that I heard the same claim of exclusivity from several other funds. If I had, or if I had tried to warn anyone, they would have responded by dumping on me. Who was I to attack their god?
Another excerpt served up by Bloomberg Business Week offers a fascinating peek into Roger Lowenstein’s new book The End of Wall Street. Not that it is going away, but that its laissez-faire attitude may be.
The crash of 2008 put to rest the intellectual model that inspired, and to a large degree facilitated, the bubble. It spelled the end of the immodest faith in Wall Street’s ability to forecast.
Image credit: Simon & Schuster
