The Failure of Wall Street

The Failure of Wall Street PDF Author: Erik Banks
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466888318
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Wall Street, the world's primary financial market and middleman, is in many ways a success. It brings together and places capital, creates new and innovative financial products, and buys and sells physical and financial assets. Its role in global economic growth has been, and remains, unique and vital. In spite of its importance and strengths, however, Wall Street repeatedly fails. At all levels, Wall Street makes serious mistakes in its core areas of expertise – falling short of its potential when raising capital, giving advice or managing risk, and demonstrating vulnerabilities when carrying out its responsibilities. These failures, which damage both finances and reputations, often affect a broad range of insiders and outsiders: employees and managers, personal and corporate clients, investors, creditors and regulators. In some cases they destabilize entire sectors and economies. Worse, many of these failures are likely to plague Wall Street for years to come, until there is greater willingness to recognize and resolve the underlying problems. The Failure of Wall Street analyzes how and why Wall Street fails, and what can be done to rectify the failures. After a short discussion of Wall Street's role in raising capital, granting corporate and personal advice, managing risk and acting as a trusted financial analyst, Erik Banks explores the dramatic failures that have occurred in each of these areas, using case studies and examples to illustrate the nature and extent of the problems. Next, the book demonstrates why Wall Street fails in each area of supposed "expertise," focusing on shortcomings in governance, management, skills/controls and transparency. Lastly, Banks proposes a framework for addressing the shortfalls that continue to plague Wall Street. He argues that these solutions, while not quick, easy, or cheap to implement, can help make Wall Street become the sound, consistent, and efficient financial expert it is meant to be.

The Failure of Wall Street

The Failure of Wall Street PDF Author: Erik Banks
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466888318
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
Wall Street, the world's primary financial market and middleman, is in many ways a success. It brings together and places capital, creates new and innovative financial products, and buys and sells physical and financial assets. Its role in global economic growth has been, and remains, unique and vital. In spite of its importance and strengths, however, Wall Street repeatedly fails. At all levels, Wall Street makes serious mistakes in its core areas of expertise – falling short of its potential when raising capital, giving advice or managing risk, and demonstrating vulnerabilities when carrying out its responsibilities. These failures, which damage both finances and reputations, often affect a broad range of insiders and outsiders: employees and managers, personal and corporate clients, investors, creditors and regulators. In some cases they destabilize entire sectors and economies. Worse, many of these failures are likely to plague Wall Street for years to come, until there is greater willingness to recognize and resolve the underlying problems. The Failure of Wall Street analyzes how and why Wall Street fails, and what can be done to rectify the failures. After a short discussion of Wall Street's role in raising capital, granting corporate and personal advice, managing risk and acting as a trusted financial analyst, Erik Banks explores the dramatic failures that have occurred in each of these areas, using case studies and examples to illustrate the nature and extent of the problems. Next, the book demonstrates why Wall Street fails in each area of supposed "expertise," focusing on shortcomings in governance, management, skills/controls and transparency. Lastly, Banks proposes a framework for addressing the shortfalls that continue to plague Wall Street. He argues that these solutions, while not quick, easy, or cheap to implement, can help make Wall Street become the sound, consistent, and efficient financial expert it is meant to be.

The End of Wall Street

The End of Wall Street PDF Author: Roger Lowenstein
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101197692
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
Watch a Video Watch a video Download the cheat sheet for Roger Lowenstein's The End of Wall Street » The roots of the mortgage bubble and the story of the Wall Street collapse-and the government's unprecedented response-from our most trusted business journalist. The End of Wall Street is a blow-by-blow account of America's biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. Drawing on 180 interviews, including sit-downs with top government officials and Wall Street CEOs, Lowenstein tells, with grace, wit, and razor-sharp understanding, the full story of the end of Wall Street as we knew it. Displaying the qualities that made When Genius Failed a timeless classic of Wall Street-his sixth sense for narrative drama and his unmatched ability to tell complicated financial stories in ways that resonate with the ordinary reader-Roger Lowenstein weaves a financial, economic, and sociological thriller that indicts America for succumbing to the siren song of easy debt and speculative mortgages. The End of Wall Street is rife with historical lessons and bursting with fast-paced action. Lowenstein introduces his story with precisely etched, laserlike profiles of Angelo Mozilo, the Johnny Appleseed of subprime mortgages who spreads toxic loans across the landscape like wild crabapples, and moves to a damning explication of how rating agencies helped gift wrap faulty loans in the guise of triple-A paper and a takedown of the academic formulas that-once again- proved the ruin of investors and banks. Lowenstein excels with a series of searing profiles of banking CEOs, such as the ferretlike Dick Fuld of Lehman and the bloodless Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, and of government officials from the restless, deal-obsessed Hank Paulson and the overmatched Tim Geithner to the cerebral academic Ben Bernanke, who sought to avoid a repeat of the one crisis he spent a lifetime trying to understand-the Great Depression. Finally, we come to understand the majesty of Lowenstein's theme of liquidity and capital, which explains the origins of the crisis and that positions the collapse of 2008 as the greatest ever of Wall Street's unlearned lessons. The End of Wall Street will be essential reading as we work to identify the lessons of the market failure and start to reb...

Naked, Short and Greedy

Naked, Short and Greedy PDF Author: Susanne Trimbath
Publisher: Spiramus Press Ltd
ISBN: 1910151831
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Rigged financial markets and hopeless under-regulation on Wall Street are not new problems. In this book, Susanne Trimbath gives a sobering account of naked short selling, the failure to settle, and her efforts over decades, trying to get this fixed. Twenty-five years ago, Trimbath was working “backstage at Wall Street” when a group of corporate trust specialists told her about a problem in shareholder voting rights. When she went to senior management at Depository Trust Company (DTC), then and still the largest securities depository in the world, they brushed it off saying, “You can’t balance the world.” Ten years later, a lawyer from Texas would tell her that the same problem was about to blow up the financial markets: Wall Street brokers are using short sales and fails to deliver to grab the assets of American entrepreneurs. This is a cautionary tale. What started as a regulatory failure turned into a regulatory crisis. Shareholder democracy is in shambles. The institutions that were established to correct a problem of trade settlement failures have instead exacerbated the problem. Global financial markets may not survive what comes next.

Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse (Majority and Minority Staff Report)

Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse (Majority and Minority Staff Report) PDF Author: United States Senate
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1304122212
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 647

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Book Description
In the fall of 2008, America suffered a devastating economic collapse. Once valuable securities lost most or all of their value, debt markets froze, stock markets plunged, and storied financial firms went under. Millions of Americans lost their jobs; millions of families lost their homes; and good businesses shut down. These events cast the United States into an economic recession so deep that the country has yet to fully recover. This Report is the product of a two-year bipartisan investigation by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into the origins of the 2008 financial crisis. The goals of this investigation were to construct a public record of the facts in order to deepen the understanding of what happened; identify some of the root causes of the crisis; and provide a factual foundation for the ongoing effort to fortify the country against the recurrence of a similar crisis in the future.

Too Big to Fail

Too Big to Fail PDF Author: Andrew Ross Sorkin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101443243
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 640

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Book Description
Brand New for 2018: an updated edition featuring a new afterword to mark the 10th anniversary of the financial crisis The brilliantly reported New York Times bestseller that goes behind the scenes of the financial crisis on Wall Street and in Washington to give the definitive account of the crisis, the basis for the HBO film “Too Big To Fail is too good to put down. . . . It is the story of the actors in the most extraordinary financial spectacle in 80 years, and it is told brilliantly.” —The Economist In one of the most gripping financial narratives in decades, Andrew Ross Sorkin—a New York Times columnist and one of the country's most respected financial reporters—delivers the first definitive blow-by-blow account of the epochal economic crisis that brought the world to the brink. Through unprecedented access to the players involved, he re-creates all the drama and turmoil of these turbulent days, revealing never-before-disclosed details and recounting how, motivated as often by ego and greed as by fear and self-preservation, the most powerful men and women in finance and politics decided the fate of the world's economy.

Too Big to Fail

Too Big to Fail PDF Author: Andrew Ross Sorkin
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141043164
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 904

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Book Description
From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, Russia and the corridors of Washington, 'Too Big to Fail' is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego, greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world's economy.

Too Big to Fail

Too Big to Fail PDF Author: Andrew Ross Sorkin
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0143118242
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Brand New for 2018: an updated edition featuring a new afterword to mark the 10th anniversary of the financial crisis The brilliantly reported New York Times bestseller that goes behind the scenes of the financial crisis on Wall Street and in Washington to give the definitive account of the crisis, the basis for the HBO film “Too Big To Fail is too good to put down. . . . It is the story of the actors in the most extraordinary financial spectacle in 80 years, and it is told brilliantly.” —The Economist In one of the most gripping financial narratives in decades, Andrew Ross Sorkin—a New York Times columnist and one of the country's most respected financial reporters—delivers the first definitive blow-by-blow account of the epochal economic crisis that brought the world to the brink. Through unprecedented access to the players involved, he re-creates all the drama and turmoil of these turbulent days, revealing never-before-disclosed details and recounting how, motivated as often by ego and greed as by fear and self-preservation, the most powerful men and women in finance and politics decided the fate of the world's economy.

Crash of the Titans

Crash of the Titans PDF Author: Greg Farrell
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 0307717879
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
The intimate, fly-on-the wall tale of the decline and fall of an America icon With one notable exception, the firms that make up what we know as Wall Street have always been part of an inbred, insular culture that most people only vaguely understand. The exception was Merrill Lynch, a firm that revolutionized the stock market by bringing Wall Street to Main Street, setting up offices in far-flung cities and towns long ignored by the giants of finance. With its “thundering herd” of financial advisers, perhaps no other business, whether in financial services or elsewhere, so epitomized the American spirit. Merrill Lynch was not only “bullish on America,” it was a big reason why so many average Americans were able to grow wealthy by investing in the stock market. Merrill Lynch was an icon. Its sudden decline, collapse, and sale to Bank of America was a shock. How did it happen? Why did it happen? And what does this story of greed, hubris, and incompetence tell us about the culture of Wall Street that continues to this day even though it came close to destroying the American economy? A culture in which the CEO of a firm losing $28 billion pushes hard to be paid a $25 million bonus. A culture in which two Merrill Lynch executives are guaranteed bonuses of $30 million and $40 million for four months’ work, even while the firm is struggling to reduce its losses by firing thousands of employees. Based on unparalleled sources at both Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, Greg Farrell’s Crash of the Titans is a Shakespearean saga of three flawed masters of the universe. E. Stanley O’Neal, whose inspiring rise from the segregated South to the corner office of Merrill Lynch—where he engineered a successful turnaround—was undone by his belief that a smooth-talking salesman could handle one of the most difficult jobs on Wall Street. Because he enjoyed O’Neal’s support, this executive was allowed to build up an astonishing $30 billion position in CDOs on the firm’s balance sheet, at a time when all other Wall Street firms were desperately trying to exit the business. After O’Neal comes John Thain, the cerebral, MIT-educated technocrat whose rescue of the New York Stock Exchange earned him the nickname “Super Thain.” He was hired to save Merrill Lynch in late 2007, but his belief that the markets would rebound led him to underestimate the depth of Merrill’s problems. Finally, we meet Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, a street fighter raised barely above the poverty line in rural Georgia, whose “my way or the highway” management style suffers fools more easily than potential rivals, and who made a $50 billion commitment over a September weekend to buy a business he really didn’t understand, thus jeopardizing his own institution. The merger itself turns out to be a bizarre combination of cultures that blend like oil and water, where slick Wall Street bankers suddenly find themselves reporting to a cast of characters straight out of the Beverly Hillbillies. BofA’s inbred culture, which perceived New York banks its enemies, was based on loyalty and a good-ol’-boy network in which competence played second fiddle to blind obedience. Crash of the Titans is a financial thriller that puts you in the theater as the historic events of the financial crisis unfold and people responsible for billion of dollars of other people’s money gamble recklessly to enhance their power and their paychecks or to save their own skins. Its wealth of never-before-revealed information and focus on two icons of corporate America make it the book that puts together all the pieces of the Wall Street disaster.

The Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street as We Know It

The Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street as We Know It PDF Author: Dave Kansas
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061977896
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
The definitive guide for Main Street readers who want to make sense of what′s happening on Wall Street, and better understand how we got here and what we need to know to in days to come. Written by seasoned financial writer Dave Kansas, this official Wall Street Journal guide will be filled with practical information, revealing what the crisis means for reader′s financial lives, and what steps they should be taking now to inform and protect themselves.

The Boy Broker, Or, Among the Kings of Wall Street

The Boy Broker, Or, Among the Kings of Wall Street PDF Author: Frank Andrew Munsey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Children
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description