"As more people than ever invest in the stock market, many feel a profound need for professional advice about it. Yet a financial adviser generally has no idea what's going to happen. The 300-year history of everyday financial advice in the capitalist world--encompassing eighteenth-century domestic advice manuals; Gilded Age swindles; market crashes; the boom in self-help rhetoric; and TV shoutfests--is one of dart throwing, brazen hucksterism, and serial failure. It spans the Atlantic and is ultimately a cultural history ...
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"As more people than ever invest in the stock market, many feel a profound need for professional advice about it. Yet a financial adviser generally has no idea what's going to happen. The 300-year history of everyday financial advice in the capitalist world--encompassing eighteenth-century domestic advice manuals; Gilded Age swindles; market crashes; the boom in self-help rhetoric; and TV shoutfests--is one of dart throwing, brazen hucksterism, and serial failure. It spans the Atlantic and is ultimately a cultural history of rhetoric and imagination, not rationality. Remarkably, the authors of this book conclude advice aims less to guide investors toward financial returns than to create a kind of citizen, one who assumes others' risks, monetizes the future, and becomes in themselves a kind of investment"--
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