Panic On Wall Street

A survey of the 12 financial crises which have gripped the American economy from the post-Revolutionary era to the 1960's.

What happens when the people running America's financial institutions believe that human judgment is passe? When they abdicate decision-making to an algorithm? The crash of 2008 was driven by a financial establishment, dominant in both Wall Street and Washington, that betrayed the fundamental principle of Capitalism: that all wealth springs from the minds of men. The bureaucrats of capital sought refuge in rules and systems as substitutes for thought, ultimately creating a machinery of disaster they could neither understand nor control.

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.

Dr. Gann gives a thorough explanation of investment rules in this book for new and seasoned investors alike. Read this over and over until they become clear and fluid practices in your everyday portfolio management. This is the only eBook you will find that includes all the original charts and tables.

Wall Street trader and author W. D. Gann’s third book, first published in 1930, is the follow-up to his acclaimed 1923 publication Truth of the Stock Tape (1923). It aims to provide traders and investors alike with seven more years of Gann’s own experiences—including mistakes made and losses incurred—by offering further tried and tested rules and methods that will help traders to study and learn how to select the proper stocks to buy and sell with a minimum of risk.