Fiasco Blood In The Water On Wall Street

A Businessweek Bestseller "You fail to read F.I.A.S.C.O. at your peril." —Los Angeles Times F.I.A.S.C.O. is the best-selling account of Frank Partnoy's education in the jungle of high finance from 1993 to 1995. It follows the young Morgan Stanley salesman as he learns to navigate a marketplace where billions of dollars are made and lost in the creation and trading of derivatives, a type of security that almost nobody fully understands. Seen in relief against the financial meltdown of 2008, F.I.A.S.C.O. appears ever more prescient, and in a new epilogue written for this edition, Partnoy connects his story to the central role derivatives played in that crisis.

In this behind-the-scenes look at one of the world's top Wall Street investment firms, Partnoy recounts his experience during the annual drunken skeet-shooting competition where he and his colleagues sharpen the killer instincts they're encouraged to use against competitors, clients, and each other.

FIASCO is the shocking story of one man's education in the jungles of Wall Street. As a young derivatives salesman at Morgan Stanley, Frank Partnoy learned to buy and sell billions of dollars worth of securities that were so complex many traders themselves didn't understand them. In his behind-the-scenes look at the trading floor and the offices of one of the world's top investment firms, Partnoy recounts the macho attitudes and fiercely competitive ploys of his office mates. And he takes us to the annual drunken skeet-shooting competition, FIASCO, where he and his colleagues sharpen the killer instincts they are encouraged to use against their competitiors, their clients, and each other. FIASCO is the first book to take on the derivatves trading industry, the most highly charged and risky sector of the stock market. More importantly, it is a blistering indictment of the largely unregulated market in derivatives and serves as a warning to unwary investors about real fiascos, which have cost billions of dollars.

At the height of the roaring '20s, Swedish 'migr' Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression. Yet after Kreuger's suicide in 1932, the true nature of his empire emerged. Driven by success to adopt ever-more perilous practices, Kreuger had turned to shell companies in tax havens, fudged accounting figures, off-balance-sheet accounting, even forgery. He created a raft of innovative financial products -- many of them precursors to instruments wreaking havoc in today's markets. When his Wall Street empire collapsed, millions went bankrupt. Frank Partnoy, a frequent commentator on financial disaster for the Financial Times, New York Times, NPR, and CBS's "60 Minutes," recasts the life story of a remarkable yet forgotten genius in ways that force us to re-think our ideas about the wisdom of crowds, the invisible hand, and the free and unfettered market.

From the bestselling author of F.I.A.S.C.O., a riveting chronicle of the rise of dangerous financial instruments and the growing crisis in American business One by one, major corporations such as Enron, Global Crossing, and Worldcom imploded all around us, prey to a greed-driven culture and dubious or illegal corporate finance and accounting. In a compelling and disturbing narrative, Frank Partnoy's Infectious Greed brings to bear all of his skills and experience as a securities attorney, financial analyst, law professor, and bestselling author to tell the story of the rise of the trading instruments and corporate financial structures that imperil the economic health of the country. Starting in the mid-1980s with the introduction of the first proto-derivatives, and taking us through such high-profile disasters as Barings Bank and Long Term Capital Management, Partnoy traces a seamless progression to today's dangerous manipulations. He documents how each new level of financial risk and complexity obscured the sickness of the company in question, and required ever more ingenious deceptions. It's an alarming story, but Partnoy offers a clear vision of how we can step back from the precipice.

Stockbroker to young trainee: "Remember, when clients send in that money, it's not theirs anymore. It's ours...We're never giving it back to them." Welcome to Wall Street. The longest bull market in history has driven more people to invest in stocks than ever before--and has given rise to unprecedented levels of greed within the brokerage industry that "serves" those investors. In License to Steal, Timothy Harper and his Anonymous coauthor have succeeded in piercing the financial industry's code of silence. In a gripping and fast-paced narrative, they show readers how successful brokers on the "Street Without Shame" peddle worthless stocks, take questionable companies public, manipulate share prices, generate bogus commissions, and raid clients' accounts for their own use. Anonymous and Harper tell a wild, raucous, true story of outrageous acts committed by a handful of rogue brokers--as well as the off-hand, everyday deceptions that are routine in the securities business--and the high life as it is lived by the young and rich in the canyons of Wall Street. The book recounts the rise of a young, successful stockbroker, first as a smart, eager operator willing to do whatever it takes to make it. Always keeping just within the law, he watches his colleagues in the brokerage business cross over daily into unscrupulous conduct, lining their own pockets at the expense of their clients. Unwilling to join them, unable to endure the pressure of their corrupting influence, he eventually quits Wall Street. A mesmerizing story of personal redemption, License to Steal is also a searing indictment of a corrupt and brutalizing system and a warning to the millions of American investors who trust and rely on stockbrokers for guidance on their own investments.

America’s economy is in meltdown. Banks have failed, foreclosures are sweeping the housing market, and stocks have suffered their worst losses since the Great Depression. Faced with a complex and spiraling crisis, the government has poured billions of taxpayer cash into a bailout with no end in sight. At every step of the way, The Nation, America’s oldest weekly magazine, has tackled the most urgent questions facing the nation’s leaders and its citizens with clarity and insight. Meltdown draws together nearly twenty years of the best of their coverage of the financial crisis and explores what steps President Obama and his new administration must take to ensure a more secure future for everyone. Contributors include: William Greider on Alan Greenspan’s flawed ideology Robert Sherrill on why the bubble popped Thomas Frank on the rise of market populism Christopher Hayes on the coming foreclosure tsunami Barbara Ehrenreich on the implosion of capitalism Kai Wright on how the subprime crisis is bankrupting black America Naomi Klein on Bush’s final pillage Joseph E. Stiglitz on Henry Paulson’s shell game Jesse Jackson on trickle-down economics Katrina vanden Heuvel and Eric Schlosser on why America needs a New New Deal