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How to Improve Your Finance Skills (Even If You Hate Numbers)

Harvard Business

If you’re not a numbers person, finance is daunting. Stop avoiding finance because you’re afraid of numbers. Think of it this way, “Finance is the way businesses keep score. “Finance and accounting are very simple. .” “Finance and accounting are very simple. Overcome your fears.

Finance 28
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How the Great Recession Changed Banking

Harvard Business

That strengthened investment banks’ balance sheets by forcing them to scale back and to change the nature of the risks they take. As a result, their balance sheets are half as large on a risk-adjusted basis, and the capital they hold against trading positions has doubled over the past decade, our research shows.

Banking 28
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Why Apple Is Getting into the Energy Business

Harvard Business

Some of the energy saved and resold will come from traditional energy efficiency (EE) investments, which companies have been making for many years. However, the explosion of smart digital- and internet-connected devices has created a new form of energy efficiency that adds immediate control over equipment as a new EE strategy.

Energy 28
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The 3 Company Crises Boards Should Watch For

Harvard Business

Another CEO used prodigious management skills to successfully consolidate, grow, and dramatically increase the efficiency of a vertically integrated industrial company. To support a change in strategy from efficiency-driven to innovation-driven growth, the company acquired another company to be its innovation engine.

Company 28
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Descent of the Global Monetary System

Tom Spencer

The smaller the group of people, the easier it is to reach agreement on what to use as money. The principal goal of the Bretton Woods System was to create an efficient foreign exchange system in order to promote trade and economic growth while at the same time preventing countries from engaging in competitive currency devaluations.

System 88
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Stop Focusing on Profitability and Go for Growth

Harvard Business

Bain & Company’s Macro Trends Group carefully analyzed the global balance sheet and found that the world is awash in money. Global capital balances more than doubled between 1990 and 2010 — from $220 trillion (about 6.5 So, in real terms, debt financing is essentially free. times global GDP).