Tom Powell has spent more than two decades as a lender, and it's no surprise that folks turned to him with their questions as a financial crisis enveloped the world in the past two years.
"How did we get here? How long will it last? How are we going to get through it?" I'm a finance guy. I live and breathe this stuff," says Powell, the chief investment officer of ELP Capital Advisors in Reno.
He decided to answer a whole bunch of the questions at once with a book, "Standing in the Rain," that's available in hardback and paperback through Amazon.com this week. It's also available on Kindle,
Amazon's reader for electronic books.
The book details the causes of the credit meltdown the root, Powell believes, is a something-for-nothing greed that enveloped the housing sector and consumers alike and spells out the steps the federal government has taken to return stability to markets.
"Standing in the Rain" also addresses ways that investors can profit from the market turmoil and delivers a state-by-state look at the impacts of the financial crisis.
The book is published by World Vision Publishing, a small Reno publisher that also brought out the "Real
Life Habits of Success" books developed by Powell along with Reno-area businessmen Mike Kitson and
Jeffrey Benjamin. Kitson and his company, OGC Creative, handled the design of "Standing in the Rain."
Powell also is seeking a national publisher for "Standing in the Rain," and it's currently under consideration by John Wiley & Sons. He also is working to get the book onto the shelves of book retailers, both locally and
nationally.
He began writing the book last autumn, working the writing around a busy schedule that includes regular trips to the Boston area, where he's a member of Harvard University's Advanced Management Development
Program in real estate.
Another interruption came when he was invited to address a conference on international real estate trends in Argentina.
A key decision, Powell says, was bringing on Bill West, an experienced ghostwriter in Reno, to hold Powell to a writing and editing schedule.
The duo met three hours a week to shape "Standing in the Rain," and Powell was making final corrections on page proofs by early January.
Early this year, Powell published a short run of the book about 200 paperback copies and distributed them to friends for their comments that helped shape the current edition.
