Thursday, July 15, 2010

A Print and Dump?

Forget the classic stock pump and dump routine. Here's the new scam, find an obscure book, with few copies in the hands of the public, print up a bunch of copies and spread the news that Warren Buffett is recommending the book to his friends,as an illustration of the type of hyper-inflation that could hit Europe.

The fact that Buffett has never heard of the book, doesn't seem to bother the promoters.

All that said, the book, When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Hyper-Inflation by Adam Fergusson, and first published in 1975,is described as combining analysis with "eyewitness accounts by ordinary people struggling to survive" as Germany's currency lost almost all its value during the post-World War I Weimar Republic.

I don't think the book has much to do with the current situation in Europe and I don't think Buffett would recommend any economic book unless it was written by a woman, but the topic seems interesting and I will pick up a copy (Note: It is only available at the UK Amazon web site at a reasonable price).

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for this post. I had read that Old Street was handling the reprint and had bookmarked the publisher's website. As of this morning there is still no mention of it. 25 FRN delivered is most acceptable considering that it had previously been offered (with a straight face) at over $800 here in the states.

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