Wall Street Versus America: The Rampant Greed and Dishonesty That Imperil Your Investments (Hardcover)

by Gary Weiss (Author)
Key Phrases: stock scamsters, naked shorting, offshore boiler rooms, New York, Artie Levitt, Bill Donaldson (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Never mind Enron—corruption, fraud and towering incompetence are Wall Street's daily bread and butter, insists this lively j'accuse. Ex-BusinessWeek reporter Weiss (Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street) details the myriad ways the financial industry preys on small investors. Scraping the bottom are the boiler-room operators who peddle worthless microcap stocks over the phone and the "paid research" outfits hired by companies to tout their stocks under the guise of independent analysis. But the author finds plenty of chicanery at the pinnacle of Wall Street probity, blue-chip mutual funds, which, he contends, charge exorbitant fees and pay kickbacks to brokers to steer customers their way—while yielding a markedly worse return than market indexes. He also pillories the industry's toothless watchdogs—the New York Stock Exchange, a business media addicted to hype and puffery, and a do-nothing Securities and Exchange Commission. (Weiss's savaging of oft-lionized ex-SEC chairman Arthur Levitt is particularly vicious and funny.) The author sometimes meanders, and his cures for the rot—empowered short-selling and investor grousing on the Internet—seem pretty feeble. But Weiss's wise-guy attitude and muckraking chops make for a devastating broadside. (Apr. 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
If you're like half of America, and you own stocks, either directly or through mutual funds, IRAs, or 401(k)s, you may not want to hear what Weiss has to say about the industry--but you'd better read it anyway, for your own good. Weiss, an award-winning investigative journalist, formerly with Business Week, refuses to toe the party line. He describes practices we thought were confined to the fringe dark side of The Street, such as boiler room fraud; overpaid, uncaring fund managers; ineffectual SEC regulations; and Wild West-style hedge funds. The wall that is supposed to separate CEOs, analysts, underwriters, and the media has long disappeared, according to Weiss, as these forces cozy up to form a coalition designed to separate you from your money. If this all sounds too tough to beat, Weiss describes a way to fight back--for instance, place funds in an unmanaged index fund and beat more than half the managers "playing" the market right off the bat. Traders will enjoy the behind-the-scenes look at the war between short sellers and just about everybody else. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; First Edition edition (April 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591840945
• ISBN-13: 978-1591840947
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #553,505 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you're a small investor, this book will make you cry., July 8, 2008

By	calvin (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wall Street Versus America: The Rampant Greed and Dishonesty That Imperil Your Investments (Hardcover)

I recently received a small inheritance, and bought this book for some suggestions on what to do with it. After reading this scathing account of how careless, and frequently criminal, Wall Street is with investors' money, I think the best thing to do with it is stuff it in a pillow case and throw it in the closet.
I looked at other reviews here to see if anyone in the know disputed any of Gary Weiss' claims, and, alarmingly, no one did. A former Business Week columnist, Weiss definitely appears to know his subject, and, more importantly, he adopts a tone that makes the book readable for a complete layman like myself. Though his style may occasionally come off as glib as facetious, he presents a view of Wall Street you are not going to get anywhere else, packed with information that pesents the world of investment as nothing more than an Old Boy's Club that simply doesn't care at all about you.

Brief list of things I learned from reading this book: The regulation and punishment of criminals on Wall Street is usually done by the very people committing the fraud, hedge funds don't behave any differently with your money than any other investors, boiler room scams are alive and well (not hounded out of existence by the SEC, as I believed) and "punishments" meted out for criminal behavior by the SEC usually consist of being asked nicely to stop it.
I can't recommend this book enough to anyone considering investing. I'm very glad I got it when I did. A Must Read!

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, informative old-fashioned muckraking, July 29, 2006

By	Dave Cotter (Bedford, NY) - See all my reviews

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Bravo" from an ordinary investor, January 7, 2007

By	Tim Mooney (Maryland USA) - See all my reviews

I'm just an ordinary investor who has been feeling like a piece of bait for the securities industry- until now.

I applaud you for Wall Street Versus America. Reading it made me realize that my concerns and suspicions are valid and that I'm not alone. Not only that, it provided the beacon I need to have the confidence to be aggressive with my questions, bold with my actions and to never again blindly follow the "advice" of a broker and never again exist only to have my portfolio's mission priority be to fill a broker's pockets ahead of mine. I am lucky to have learned this before Wall Street had a chance to ruin me.

I was fortunate to retire with a pension lump sum. When I started looking into how to invest it, I found the brokerage industry to be like the Big Bad Wolf licking its chops, just waiting to brainwash me and take my money. So, I left my broker and found another, then I left the new one too. After that, I sold everything and put my money safely into Treasuries and Money Market funds so I could take all the time I needed to get my act together. Then, I found your book, bought it and read it carefully. Life changed. Thank you.

Oh yeah, I said your book enabled me to be "bold with my actions". By that, I mean that I have already written to my congressman and to the chairman of the SEC to demand that Arbitration be made optional. I'm expecting little in return, or maybe some polite "baloney" but I'm not backing off. This absolutely feels like swimming up a waterfall, but it's a start.

Great book.