Ascent of Money is indispensable as a foundation for the whys and hows of banking from it's origins and first principles. It's a history book.
Anything technical (mathematical finance) is really not going to provide a foundation without the historical why of the instruments creation and use. One you have that, the most efficient way to understand it after would be with Quantlib (https://www.quantlib.org/docs.shtml)
There is a lot of middle brow commentary (krugman, piketty, reinhard/rogoff, dalio, taleb, etc) that will be entertaining and philosophical, but only that. The guts of economics (Keynes, Galbraith, Mises/Hayek) are very dense, and provide a very narrow, depth first plunge into something you won't be able to apply well without a more complete education.
Functional grasp of (re)insurance, securitization, liquidity, and the bond/debt markets is the best royal road, I"d say.
Anything technical (mathematical finance) is really not going to provide a foundation without the historical why of the instruments creation and use. One you have that, the most efficient way to understand it after would be with Quantlib (https://www.quantlib.org/docs.shtml)
There is a lot of middle brow commentary (krugman, piketty, reinhard/rogoff, dalio, taleb, etc) that will be entertaining and philosophical, but only that. The guts of economics (Keynes, Galbraith, Mises/Hayek) are very dense, and provide a very narrow, depth first plunge into something you won't be able to apply well without a more complete education.
Functional grasp of (re)insurance, securitization, liquidity, and the bond/debt markets is the best royal road, I"d say.