Take On the Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don't Want You to Know (Hardcover)

by Arthur Levitt (Author), Paula Dwyer (Collaborator) "When I first became a broker in 1963, and for many years after, my mother, Dorothy Levitt, was my most difficult client..." (more)
Key Phrases: auditor independence rules, corporate governance committee, investment banking deals, Wall Street, New York, Big Five (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Levitt, the Securities and Exchange Commission's longest-serving chairman, supervised stock markets during the late 1990s dot-com boom. As working Americans poured billions into stocks and mutual funds, corporate America devised increasingly opaque strategies for hoarding most of the proceeds. Levitt reveals their tactics in plain language, then spells out how to intelligently invest in mutual funds and the stock market. His advice is aimed squarely at small, individual investors, as he explains how to look for clues of malfeasance in annual reports, understand press releases and draw more from reliable sources. Woven throughout are his recollections about the SEC boardroom fights he oversaw. While most of them serve to illustrate a point about the market and its machinations, some passages, often outlining a failure or frustration, are oddly apologetic. In particular, when addressing the origins of recent corporate scandals (e.g., those involving Enron and Arthur Anderson), his effort to lay the responsibility equally on indifferent legislators, special interest groups, greedy CEOs and, perhaps most of all, lazy investors, makes it clear that Levitt wishes to avoid criminalizing corporate officers' actions. (After all, many of them are his friends and colleagues.) The final chapters, detailing how stocks are bought after they're ordered ("Pay Attention to the Plumbing") and retirement plans are structured ("Getting Your 401(k) in Shape") return to practical, profitable advice. One in particular, "Beware False Profits: How to Read Financial Statements," is worth the book's price. Levitt's mini-MBA course-sans the lifelong club connections-should be mandatory reading for anyone with a dollar invested in the stock market.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Good advice to individual investors from the longest-serving chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1 edition (October 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375421785
• ISBN-13: 978-0375421785
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #523,749 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pitt makes me really miss Levitt, November 4, 2002

By	Philip Brown (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews

Chances are anyone who rates this book as a 1 is a broker, member of AICPA, or serves on the Senate Banking committee. I am an investor who is very concerned about the greedily protected lack of transparency in the way public companies report their earnings or lack thereof, so I am giving this excellent book a 5.

The book is useful because it describes how securities markets really work. It also functions as practical investment advice which details what is happening with your money after it leaves your hands. It should be required reading in MBA programs. Finally, voters will be much more informed about how Congress, through its protection of accountants, investment bankers, and brokers, is interfering with the efficient allocation of capital in the US economy.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for young professionals and business schools, October 24, 2002

By A Customer

Levitt's book should be used by business schools scrambling to put together courses on business ethics and corporate governance. As a student working towards my MBA, I found this book to be of great value in an environment that lacks a curriculum to explain many of the issues underlying recent corporate scandals.

As a young professional, this book has also helped me better understand and manage my mini-portfolio, including my 401K. Truly a valuable read that has given me much to think about as I manage my financial future.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Arthur Levitt is a HERO not a villain, October 19, 2002

By A Customer

I'm really shocked at all the negative reviews this book is getting. I think they are totally unfair.

A lot of the criticism of this book is by people who claim to be disgruntled investors who lost big in the stock market. They seem to be taking it out on former SEC chairman Levitt. They are dead wrong!

Arthur Levitt championed the cause of small investors. He championed investors' rights against tough opposition from the Big 5 (now Big 4 sans Andersen) accounting firms, some (but not all) Wall Street financiers, etc. Levitt stuck to his principles in spite of tremendous opposition, personal insults, and threats to the SEC. The ONLY reason he lost in his attempts to defend small investors was because some members of Congress were bought off by Levitt's (and investors') enemies. This isn't just something that Levitt believes; almost everyone who has followed the issue on Wall Street and on Capitol Hill (EVEN Levitt's enemies) ALL agree that the above were the facts. In spite of the opposition, Levitt did manage to get some issues on the table (Reg FD - 'Fair Disclosure' - and trying to make accounting for derivatives as well as the co-habitation between accountants & consultants issues for public debate). All of that was accomplished by Levitt even when some in Congress threatened to cut the funding to the SEC.

Mr. Levitt's book recounts his heroic efforts, in the face of fierce opposition, to reform a flawed system. His book should be applauded for those reasons alone! On top of that, Mr. Levitt offers some sound advice to investors that would have helped to prevent many of those who have lost their shirts (and foolishly bash Levitt's book) from getting fooled into bad investment decisions.

Do I think Levitt's book is perfect or all that it claims to be? No. But if people are going to bash a book, they better back it up with facts and review a book in a thoughtful and logical manner rather than getting the facts wrong, lying, and/or going off into a world of their own.

Bottom-line: If you want the truth about Wall Street and politics, Levitt's book is a great read. If you want to criticize this book AFTER you actually read it, then please do so in a honest, factual, and logical manner rather than in a dishonest and irrational manner as some of the other reviewers have (unfortunately and unfairly) done.

Edit (11/17/02): I whole-heartedly agree with the review by Phillip Brown (Pennsylvania, .... Note (11/20/02): Apparently the rest of my edited review was deleted by Amazon thus making me look bad. Which begs the question: Why aren't they similarly editing out the 1-star reviews of this book that are clearly slanderous? I'm actually doing Amazon a favor by making sure that accurate, fair, and positive info about this book gets out there which will lead to more sales for them. The looney 1-star reviews would lead to poorer sales. So what gives?