Skip to main content

The Great 401(k) Hoax by William Wolman and Anne Colamosca

When it's obvious by page 4 that a book is specious, overtly biased and poorly argued, why continue to read it?

Good question. And so I broke from my typical practice of finishing every book I start--no matter how bad--and I stopped on page 11, when two things became painfully clear regarding the authors of The Great 401(k) Hoax:

1) They have no knowledgeable insights on the stock market,
2) They don't even understand the basics of simple financial statements.

When I got to this quote, which betrays elitism and appalling ignorance on several levels, I simply had to throw this book away:

In effect, 401(k)s ask American workers to ape the investment behavior of the rich, even though they obviously do not have the resources to ride out bad markets of the kind that we believe will prevail for the next decade.

Rather than remaining above ground, where it might pollute naive and unsuspecting minds, this book is best left to rot, slowly, at the bottom of a landfill. Don't waste your time.



Here are four other investment books for you to consider, all of which are helpful, insightful and inarguably worth reading:
1) Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel
2) A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel
3) Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher
4) The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
Labels:

More Posts

The Stress of Life by Hans Selye

Gives a very useful set of lenses for how to think about stress in all its forms and manifestations. The bulk of the book deals with stress in medical biology and human physiology, but there are applications beyond our bodies, to our lives, communities, even among civilizations. A very interesting work.  The chapter "When Scientists Disagree" by itself makes this entire book worth reading. It is an eloquent articulation of the nature of scientific debate (including the implications of when scientific debate turns insulting and hostile), and the author quite humbly provides the reader *all* of the professional disagreements and contentions with his model of stress. This part of the book really sings out with humility, sincerity and a scientific rigor we seems to have lost in the postmodern era. Notes:  * General adaptation syndrome (G.A.S.): how we adapt to stressors: various shock therapies across history (fever treatments, electric shock, etc) provided improvement with n...
Read more

Stress Without Distress by Hans Selye

A short book distilling Hans Selye's groundbreaking technical work The Stress of Life  into practical principles for handling daily life. Articulates a basic philosophy that can be boiled down to "earn thy neighbor's love." Selye calls this "altruistic egotism" and argues that satisfaction in life can be achieved by seeking genuinely satisfying work, earning the goodwill and gratitude of others through that work, and by living with a philosophy of gratitude. Not his finest book, but it is interesting and useful to hear the values and prescriptive statements of one of biology's most eminent scientists. The ideas in this book are not original--the author candidly admits as much--but offer helpful guideposts for how to live. Notes: 1) The first chapter is essentially a layperson's summary of Selye's main work The Stress of Life , defining key terms, what he means (in biological terms) when he talks about stress, describing the evolution of the stres...
Read more

Mary's World by Richard N. Côté [Fourth Turning-style history of the Pringle family of Charleston, SC]

This is a history of a wealthy, well-connected South Carolina plantation family before, during and after experiencing an asteroid-grade event: the Civil War and the North's ensuing multi-year military and economic occupation of the South. The family quickly lost everything, became impoverished to the point of barely having enough to eat, and eventually scattered all over the country and world. They were once one of the richest and most important rice growing families in the entire United States; now no one knows who they are. Still more sad and sobering is how this experience changed the earnest, sincere, well-bred Christian matriarch of this family into an embittered and angry old woman--bickering with her husband, desperate for money, and starting little marmalade-making businesses in her 70s to try to make ends meet. [A quick  affiliate link to readers to the book here . You can support my work here by buying all your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, o...
Read more