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Dave Barry's Money Secrets:
Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar?
Hardcover $24.95
272 pages Crown Publishers
A.D.
2006 is here, and many of us are already wrestling with our grandiose plans
to lose weight, get organized, and better manage our finances. The first two
items are beyond the scope of this article, but there is good news on the
financial front: A new book, Dave Barry's Money Secrets, is hitting
the shelves or virtual shelves of a bookstore or website near you.
You
may remember Mr. Barry from his long-running Miami Herald column and
the many humor books he has written over the years. The guy even co-authored
a sequel to Peter Pan. Now that takes some chutzpah. But what
qualifies him to dispense "expert" financial advice? Why should you
trust him on the important matter of your economic health? I'll let Mr. Barry
speak for himself:
If you follow the
advice in this book, and you somehow fail to become wealthy, simply take this
book back to the bookstore where you bought it, explain to the employees what
happened, and ask for a full refund. You have my personal guarantee, right
here in writing, that they will laugh until they blow snot into their lattes.
If
that's not enough, maybe the fact that the book is chock-full of other useful
information will convince you that you need to buy it now. With chapters on
"Providing for Medical Care (You'll Need Some Leeches),"
"Starting Your Own Business (Harness the Awesome Power of Human
Stupidity)," and "Income Taxes: Building Blocks of Our Great Nation
and Lifeblood of Our Sacred Democratic Way of Life (How to Avoid Paying
Them)," Mr. Barry offers valuable knowledge that us average,
middle-class Joes and Josephines can put to use as we navigate the chaos of
the modern global economy. Failing that, we can blow snot into our lattes
from laughing so hard at his book.
At any
rate, it's no secret that money can be a confusing subject. The first
question to ask is, "What is money, anyway?" Luckily, Mr. Barry
provides a chapter on monetary history, tracing its evolution from seashells
in ancient China to livestock in Mesopotamia to precious metals from the
Middle Ages through the early 20th century and, finally, to the fiat
currencies we have today. Of the latter, he notes:
We don't have the
gold standard anymore. Nobody does. Over the years, all the governments in
the world, having discovered that gold is, like, rare, decided it
would be more convenient to back their money with something that is easier to
come by, namely: nothing.
That's
why, continues Mr. Barry, "to this day, if you – an ordinary
citizen – go to Fort Knox and ask to exchange your U.S. dollars for
gold, you will be used as a human chew toy by large federal dogs."
He
also explains in helpful detail how the U.S. economy works: It involves
"the Federal Reserve Board, a mysterious organization that controls the
economy from its secret Bat-Cave-style headquarters far beneath the surface
of the earth." From time to time, the Fed chairman climbs up and, much
like the famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, looks around for his shadow, then
"makes an ambiguous remark, and everybody tries to figure out what it means."
I don't
know about you, but I never learned that in economics class. Probably
because I never took an economics class. But if I had, I would have wanted to
hear Keynesianism explained this succinctly:
Remember the part
in Peter Pan where we clap to prove that we believe in fairies, and we
save Tinker Bell? That's our monetary system! It's the Tinker Bell System! We
see everybody else running around after these pieces of paper, and we
figure, Hey, these pieces of paper must be valuable.
But
beyond all the scholarly theory, Mr. Barry's tome also offers practical
advice on arguing about money with your spouse, tipping, saving on travel,
and even getting rich the Donald Trump way ("Some ideas are good, and
some are not. Know the difference. Donald Trump does!"). You'd probably
have to buy 257 different books by Suze Orman, Jim Cramer, and that other guy
who's always on TV to get all of the information contained in this one
volume.
So,
you're asking, am I now personally wealthy as a result of reading Mr. Barry's
book? Was it worth it? Well, because I work for a major retailer and received
an advance copy of the book from the publisher gratis, I can honestly
tell you that it has already paid for itself.
David
Bardallis
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