Separating Fools from Their Money: A History of American Financial Scandals

ISBN-13: 9781412810548 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 294 str.

Scott MacDonald; Jane Hughes

Opis

What do Michael Milken and Martha Stewart have in common? (Answer: Both became public scapegoats for an outrageous era of greed and excess.) What was the most outrageous party thrown by a financial baron of the twentieth century? (Answer: Tough call, but either Michael Milken's Predators Ball in 1985, or Dennis Kozlowski's Sardinian birthday bash in 2001, with its vodka-spouting sculpture.) Which U.S. war hero president became party to, and victim of, an unabashed con man known as the Napoleon of Wall Street? (Answer: Ulysses S. Grant, but it's a long story.)These questions and more are discussed in Scott MacDonald and Jane Hughes' Separating Fools from Their Money. The authors trace the history of financial scandals from the early days of the young republic through the Enron/WorldCom debacle of modern times. A host of colorful characters inhabit the pages of this history, revealing human nature in all of its dubious shades of gray. At the same time, the book exposes themes common to all financial scandals, which remain astonishingly unchanged over more than two centuries--greed, hubris, media connections, self-interested politicians, and booms-gone-bust, to name a few.Informative and entertaining, Separating Fools should engage the interest of investors and casual business readers, as well as economists interested in supplemental reading for their students.A new introduction focuses on trends since publication of the original, with a postscript on the financial panic of 2008.

Spis treści

Revised Preface, 1. Introduction, 2. Wall Street Loses Its Innocence: William Duer and the Panic of 1792, 3. The Gilded Age Part I: All That Glitters, 4. The Gilded Age Part II: Of Presidents and Bankers, 5. Teapot Dome Erupts, 6. Empires Undone: Samuel Insull, the Emperor of Utilities, 7. The Decade of Greed: Michael Milken, Junk Bonds, and Insiders (1980s), 8. The Decade of Greed, Continued: Where the Money Is, 9. The 1990s B.E. (Before Enron): A Few Bad Apples, or Rotten to the Core?, 10. Enron Etc. Vol. I: Crooks, Liars, and Envelope-Pushers, 11. Enron Etc. Vol. II: Enablers, Symbols, and Scapegoats, 12. Eliot the Untouchable (Spitzer, not Ness), 13. Conclusion, Postscript: The Financial Panic of 2007-2008, Selected Bibliography, Index

O autorze

Scott B. MacDonald