This book can be savored by anyone who loves silence and solitude. Solitude, in most of our lives, visits us when we are least prepared – unexpected work assignment to a different city/country, sudden hospitalization for an extended period of time, death of partner, break up etc. Most of us are ill-prepared to handle the sudden intrusion of solitude. This coupled with our childhood experiences of hyper protective parents questioning us – “Kid, you are very silent.

The book by Alex Kuznetsov gives a great overview of the financial markets in U.S. The book is targeted towards a person who is coming from a technical background and intends to work in finance but does not have a clear idea about,”What exactly happens on Wall Street ?” The book is ~ 500 pages and covers quite a lot of ground. The first part of the book gives a basic idea of how a Wall Street sell-side firm is structured, who are key players in the financial industry etc.

LIBOR is the reference rate for 70 percent of the U.S. futures market, most of the swaps market, and nearly half of U.S. adjustable-rate mortgages. LIBOR, undoubtedly can be called the “world’s most important number”. It was conceptualized to meet a certain need, i.e. “what rate should be used for a floating rate note? “. Primarily it was used in the payoff computation of Eurodollar futures and subsequently it was used in interest rate swaps, derivatives on interest rate swaps, basis swaps, mortgages etc.

Via This is your brain on silence : While it’s clear that external silence can have tangible benefits, scientists are discovering that under the hoods of our skulls “there isn’t really such a thing as silence,” says Robert Zatorre, an expert on the neurology of sound. “In the absence of sound, the brain often tends to produce internal representations of sound.” Imagine, for example, you’re listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence,” when the radio abruptly cuts out.