Wall Street Versus America: A Muckraking Look at the Thieves, Fakers, and Charlatans Who Are Ripping You Off | 
| Author: Gary Weiss
Publisher: Portfolio Trade
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 55172
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 1591841631
Dewey Decimal Number: 332
EAN: 9781591841630
ASIN: 1591841631
Publication Date: May 29, 2007
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Product Description
Gary Weiss, one of the business world s most dogged investigative reporters, has written the definitive book about the dark side of Wall Street not just a few bad apples, but the whole rotten barrel.
This is the outrageous, riveting, darkly funny story of what really happens in every corner of the financial system: from Internet tip sites and boiler rooms, to fee-happy mutual funds and hedge funds, to the bluest of blue-chip securities firms. With vivid anecdotes and character studies, Wall Street Versus America will show you how investors are consistently victimized while sleepy regulators, biased arbitrators, and the media all look the other way.
You ll learn, for instance, how respectable institutions such as Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley push the ethical envelope, and how Washington, under both Democrats and Republicans, simply has not kept up with innovations in Wall Street greed.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Forewarned is Forearmed! July 4, 2006
Loyd E. Eskildson (Phoenix, AZ.)
18 out of 25 found this review helpful
Wall Street's system of resolving customer complaints allows no lawsuits- a defined system of arbitration is instead used. The Process takes about two years, and according to the NASD, investors win 53-61% of their cases. What they don't talk about is that any award, no matter how small, is considered a win. Parties pick panel members from lists compiled by NASD, proceedings are closed to the public, all papers (except for the final decision) are exempt from public disclosure and legal discovery and kept under lock and key, decisions are very uninformative - the aim is to provide no basis for a court to pick apart a decision, and decisions are almost impossible to appeal (unless the broker loses).
There are only a few studies about small investors as stock pickers - the most dramatic is a study of 66,000 in 2000 which found that between '91 and '96 households underperformed the market by 1.5%, and the more they traded the worse they did. The average endowment manager lagged S&P 500 by 2% over ten years, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers in '05.
NASDAQ is a computer network; most stock markets today, from Tokyo to London, are also. The NYSE claims its manual system serves the public by specialists' buying against the market to help smooth fluctuations - academic research shows it mostly happens when the market is about to turn.
Some analyst "research" is paid for by the companies covered. Academic research has found that picks by non-brokerage-analysts outperformed investment-bank analysts by 8.1%. Paid research is SEC required to so note, as well as the amount - they often don't, with little or no SEC reaction.
Boiler rooms outside the U.S. sell Regulation S shares (must be held at least 1 year and sold outside the U.S.), receiving 70% of the take with the rest split between issuers and the stock promoter.
Prior to '68 mutual funds were priced at the close of the prior day - thus, insiders could get easy gains by buying in today's up-market (without commission), and selling the next day. Abuses after '68 involved back-dating orders. One study found that of 361 funds in '76, 72 merged (usually because of crummy performance) and 37 disappeared within the ensuing 17 years. Most mutual funds under perform the market. The industry is not price competitive, allowing funds to pay brokerage firms for "shelf-space" (kickbacks).
Hedge funds are a mystery to most. They typically charge 20% of profits plus 2% of assets/year. Restricted to investors with a new worth of at least $1 million, hedge funds can do most anything and often require investors to lock in their money for a period of years, and most under perform the market (eg. 8.8%/year in '95-'03, vs. 12.4% for the S&P). Further, most have "high-water" clauses (eg. if lose 10% in a year, must regain this amount before the 20% of profits claim - thus, many will simply close the fund in such a situation.
Underwriting state and local bond issues that don't require competitive bidding involves "pay to play" (bribes).
Lots of "pump and dump" still goes on - one timed the market reaction to be that he sold 7 minutes after buying.
Recommendations include telling the media to stop focusing on trivia (puff pieces, advertisers), lobby against the arbitration system currently used, and buy low-cost index funds - tilting at windmills, with the exception of the latter.
Bottom Line: "Wall Street Versus America" suffers from too many efforts to be witty; nonetheless, it clearly is valuable because it warns Americans of the sharks on Wall Street. It also implicitly pours cold water on President Bush's proposal to privatize Social Security.
 Decent effort but boring damn read. July 27, 2006
Joseph Goodman (Tallahassee, FL)
15 out of 26 found this review helpful
Some books are vast in scope and others are half-vast. This is sadly a rather half-vast effort. Reading it I couldn't help but think that the author was given an advance, a deadline, and a minimum word count to meet and that's it. Otherwise it's hard to understand how something so unorignial and meandering ended up in book form.
That said, I'll commend the author for doing the institutional and market research, most of which was probably valid, but I'll ask him at the same time why it felt necessary to rehash the work of so many other solid Wall Street writers who've said all this already, and certainly more succinctly.
Buy this if your curiousity is overwhelming, but not until you've crossed everything off your "to read" list first.
An eye-opener April 27, 2006
Elliot Baker (Red Bank, NJ)
14 out of 20 found this review helpful
A startling, eye-opening account to the murky mechanisms of Wall Street, and also very funny in its writing style.
This book is a worthy follow-up to Weiss's Mafia tale Born to Steal, which I also read recently and enjoyed immensely. This book takes a much broader look at Wall Street than the claustrophobic view that was presented in the previous book.
Even if you don't agree with everything in the book, and I don't agree with his negative view of stock-picking, you'll find this book to be quite a revelation of how Wall Street screws individual investors. It consistently amusing and reminds me of Michael Lewis in his Street-skewering days.
At times the book is poignant, such as when it describes the travails of Rand Groves, the ordinary investor sucked into a maelstrom of injustice. The book also explores the arrogant management of university endowment funds with wit and insight.
What I enjoyed the most was its take on Arthur Levitt and the SEC. This is probably the most damning look at securities regulation that I have ever read.
The lengthy Notes section is a book unto itself, and contains quite a few witticisms of its own.
Quite a find and most enjoyable.
Entertaining, informative old-fashioned muckraking July 29, 2006
Dave Cotter (Bedford, NY)
13 out of 18 found this review helpful
A readable one-volume compendium of the many ways Wall Street can deplete your investment portfolio, written for a mass audience without sacrificing details.
I found it to be well-researched and, though it has a strong point of view, balanced and fair in its presentation.
The book is critical of regulation and takes a surprisingly antagonistic view of former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt, which it criticizes throughout for everything from mutual funds to Entron. The book also castigates Levitt's successor William Donaldson.
I liked quite a bit this book's writing style, which was humorous and presented difficult subjects in an entertaining manner. The book contains one of the best explanations I have read so far of the mutual fund scandals, and goes beyond that to explain the various other ways mutual funds can rip you off.
Despite the light approach, this is not at all like Michael Lewis's books. Lewis takes a laid back attitude generally agreeing with the Street's way of doing business, while this tome is outraged. In its style and presentation it harkens back to the Washington Merry-go-Round books of Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson.
Well-researched and illuminating June 7, 2006
Richard (USA)
11 out of 17 found this review helpful
Gary Weiss's Wall Street Versus America : The Rampant Greed and Dishonesty That Imperil Your Investments is a well-researched and illuminating account of Wall Street's standard practice to rip-off small investors. It exposes all parties from the small and big Wall Street brokerages all the way to the regulators that allegedly look-out for small investors.
Before the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, pretty much only the wealthiest Americans were invested in the market, so Wall Street was confined to rip-off only the wealthiest.
After the Crash, the US Government instituted various rules and policies. Most notably it instituted Self-Regulatory Organizations like the NASD. NYSE, etc. and the government regulatory organization The SEC. The former are nothing more than industry trade groups looking out for the industry. The later is a lax government institution that does a better job protecting Wall Street than the individual investor. Indeed, the first head of the SEC was Wall Street tycoon who made millions of dollars manipulating stocks.
The changes were only a shell game. With the rise of pensions, etc, almost everyone is invested in the markets. So Wall Street traded blatant cons of a relatively small number of rich Americans for more subtle cons of all Americans.
For the past thirty or so years Wall Street even started running its own self-styled justice system under the name of arbitration. The system is completely rigged in favor of Wall Street. Investors rarely receive justice. And Wall Street evades the law, avoids punishment, and conceals any negative publicity that might spur real regulation or at least more investor skepticism.
Unfortunately Wall Street is not just ripping off small investors. It is ripping off supposedly savvy corporations as well as infecting corporations with its own dishonest, money-grubbing culture.
Weiss's book should be required reading for the legislators in Washington DC.
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