Bob Klein Blog

The stock market is stumbling higher struggling with heavy new supply of stock from stock sales by insiders and from new stock offerings by companies.  Executives are rushing to sell to take advantage of the very elevated valuations.  Sales of stock by insiders has never been hig ...

On July 24th, gold hit a new all-time closing high in dollar terms, $1902, eclipsing the prior closing high in 2011. · (Some time ago, it hit an all-time high in all other major currencies.) · The catalyst this week was yet another $1 trillion stimulus package announced by the ...

It’s hard to imagine a modern society thriving without money, and, after all, our daily lives are driven by transactions of goods and services through commerce. Through the ages, money has evolved, taking various forms from shells to basic coins and now cryptocurrency. It’s no su ...

Both the earliest forms of currency and the first instances of paper money can be attributed to Chinese innovation. Cast iron coins from the 11th century BCE have been discovered in use from the Shang Dynasty. Around 20 centuries later, the invention of inexpensive paper-making a ...

Stretching back over thousands of years, China has had plenty of time to refine their currency system. Over the years, the way that they have bought and sold goods has changed greatly. Like many other primitive societies, China started out with a bartering system where people tra ...

The Euro revolutionized commerce when it was introduced. Until the euro came around, Europe had been divided when it came to money for decades. Germany had the mark, France had the franc and Germany had the mark. Currency exchange made trade more difficult. In the 1990s, the euro ...

Nearly 2,700 years ago in the old city of Efsos, a wealthy merchant and trading town located in Hellenic Greece, an electrum coin with a lion’s head marking was struck from the back and pressed into the front. The beauty and value of electrum, a naturally occurring mix of gold an ...

The pound sterling (commonly called the "pound", symbol: £) is the official currency of Great Britain and is the oldest currency still in use today. The pound first originated in Anglo-Saxon England, but its original roots can be traced all the way back to the Roman Empire. · Fr ...

For anthropologists, a stable currency is one of the hallmarks of advanced culture. In colonial North America, the Confederacies of the Algonquin and the Iroquois used wampum, beads made from the shell of the quahog hard clam. Purple beads carried a higher value than white ones a ...

The rise of the internet and the ease of mailing items around the world has led to a renewed interest in bartering. However, bartering is nothing new and was used by most ancient cultures as the basis for their economic systems. So what exactly is bartering and how did it get its ...

Curtis Pride’s story is both emotional and inspirational. From 1993 to 2006, Pride served as an outfielder on several different teams including the Montreal Expos, the Detroit Tigers, the Boston Red Sox, the Atlanta Braves, the New York Yankees and the Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels. ...

In addition to being among the all-time best professional baseball players, Roberto Clemente was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973 as the first enshrined Latin American, which was one of many other prestigious awards that he received in his lifetime. In add ...

The Huffington Post recently ran an article detailing the positive attitude of the National League Hall of Famer Ernie Banks or Mr. Sunshine as he was often known. During his 19-year career in Major League Baseball, Banks became known for his positive attitude which came to the a ...

A Summary of: The Shame of “Wall Street” by Bob Klein · On May 19th, 1998, Bob Klein’s article The Shame of Wall Street was published in The Union Leader. Throughout the article, Bob Klein discusses how Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” is an inaccurate portrayal of stockbrokers, inv ...

On  April 16th, 1989, Bob Klein’s article “Creating Wealth or Milkin’ the Public?” was published in the Sunday Edition of the Orange County Register. Bob Klein discusses how the late 1980s prosecutions of investment bankers and traders tarnished the reputation of Wall Street and ...