Written by Trevor C. Bennett-Cohen
Minerva Press editorial evaluation, May 17, 1997
Common Cents, as the title suggests, is a good humored exploration of the workings of international money markets that accesses intriguing insights and privileged information for the layman reader, and a wealth of surprises for those who are old acquaintances with the system. There are many publications and books on the market which aim to open up the financial world, (at times rather exclusive), to a more public arena. However, although the subject is one which pervades and influences every aspect of daily life it is highly complex in detail, and there are few books which have succeeded in communicating its intricacy with the crystal clarity it requires. In addition, there are few books which are really up-to-date and street-wise, too many are weighed down with archaic thinking and terms on their way to obsolescence. Trevor Bennett-Cohen's is one of those which achieves clarity and reaches to the cutting edge. His is the maverick of the available financial literature. He combines the traditional methods of shrewd intellectualism, definition and analysis with the more unconventional methods of sweeping away the institutional jargon, and of debunking the investment canon.
This text reveals a smart, perceptive business mind in its ability to alight on common sense tactics and bring to them freshness and new application: so, for example, he expounds the paradox that taking no risk may often turn out to be the riskiest course of all. His argument is convincing, and enforces what all must realise on reflection, but what is lost in the presentation and packaging of the immediate world - officialdom, professionals, institutions often have less true qualification and omniscience than their credentials and sales techniques purport. Bennett-Cohen makes these fortified and forbidding institutional walls transparent.
This is a very readable and engrossing text which I am happy to recommend for publication under the Minerva Press imprint.
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