The Failure Of Wall Street

Wall Street, the world's primary financial market and middleman, is in many ways a success. It brings together and places capital, creates new and innovative financial products, and buys and sells physical and financial assets. Its role in global economic growth has been, and remains, unique and vital. In spite of its importance and strengths, however, Wall Street repeatedly fails. At all levels, Wall Street makes serious mistakes in its core areas of expertise – falling short of its potential when raising capital, giving advice or managing risk, and demonstrating vulnerabilities when carrying out its responsibilities. These failures, which damage both finances and reputations, often affect a broad range of insiders and outsiders: employees and managers, personal and corporate clients, investors, creditors and regulators. In some cases they destabilize entire sectors and economies. Worse, many of these failures are likely to plague Wall Street for years to come, until there is greater willingness to recognize and resolve the underlying problems. The Failure of Wall Street analyzes how and why Wall Street fails, and what can be done to rectify the failures. After a short discussion of Wall Street's role in raising capital, granting corporate and personal advice, managing risk and acting as a trusted financial analyst, Erik Banks explores the dramatic failures that have occurred in each of these areas, using case studies and examples to illustrate the nature and extent of the problems. Next, the book demonstrates why Wall Street fails in each area of supposed "expertise," focusing on shortcomings in governance, management, skills/controls and transparency. Lastly, Banks proposes a framework for addressing the shortfalls that continue to plague Wall Street. He argues that these solutions, while not quick, easy, or cheap to implement, can help make Wall Street become the sound, consistent, and efficient financial expert it is meant to be.

An insider points out the holes that still exist on Wall Street and in the banking system Exile on Wall Street is a gripping read for anyone with an interest in business and finance, U.S. capitalism, the future of banking, and the root causes of the financial meltdown. Award winning, veteran sell side Wall Street analyst Mike Mayo writes about one of the biggest financial and political issues of our time – the role of finance and banks in the US. He has worked at six Wall Street firms, analyzing banks and protesting against bad practices for two decades. In Exile on Wall Street, Mayo: Lays out practices that have diminished capitalism and the banking sector Shares his battle scars from calling truth to power at some of the largest banks in the world and how he survived challenging the status quo to be credited as one of the few who saw the crisis coming Blows the lid off the true inner workings of the big banks and shows the ways in which Wall Street is just as bad today as it was pre-crash. Analyzes the fallout stemming from the market crash, pointing out the numerous holes that still exist in the system, and offers practical solutions. While it provides an education, this is no textbook. It is also an invaluable resource for finance practitioners and citizens alike.

Watch a Video Watch a video Download the cheat sheet for Roger Lowenstein's The End of Wall Street » The roots of the mortgage bubble and the story of the Wall Street collapse-and the government's unprecedented response-from our most trusted business journalist. The End of Wall Street is a blow-by-blow account of America's biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. Drawing on 180 interviews, including sit-downs with top government officials and Wall Street CEOs, Lowenstein tells, with grace, wit, and razor-sharp understanding, the full story of the end of Wall Street as we knew it. Displaying the qualities that made When Genius Failed a timeless classic of Wall Street-his sixth sense for narrative drama and his unmatched ability to tell complicated financial stories in ways that resonate with the ordinary reader-Roger Lowenstein weaves a financial, economic, and sociological thriller that indicts America for succumbing to the siren song of easy debt and speculative mortgages. The End of Wall Street is rife with historical lessons and bursting with fast-paced action. Lowenstein introduces his story with precisely etched, laserlike profiles of Angelo Mozilo, the Johnny Appleseed of subprime mortgages who spreads toxic loans across the landscape like wild crabapples, and moves to a damning explication of how rating agencies helped gift wrap faulty loans in the guise of triple-A paper and a takedown of the academic formulas that-once again- proved the ruin of investors and banks. Lowenstein excels with a series of searing profiles of banking CEOs, such as the ferretlike Dick Fuld of Lehman and the bloodless Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, and of government officials from the restless, deal-obsessed Hank Paulson and the overmatched Tim Geithner to the cerebral academic Ben Bernanke, who sought to avoid a repeat of the one crisis he spent a lifetime trying to understand-the Great Depression. Finally, we come to understand the majesty of Lowenstein's theme of liquidity and capital, which explains the origins of the crisis and that positions the collapse of 2008 as the greatest ever of Wall Street's unlearned lessons. The End of Wall Street will be essential reading as we work to identify the lessons of the market failure and start to reb...

Rigged financial markets and hopeless under-regulation on Wall Street are not new problems. In this book, Susanne Trimbath gives a sobering account of naked short selling, the failure to settle, and her efforts over decades, trying to get this fixed. Twenty-five years ago, Trimbath was working “backstage at Wall Street” when a group of corporate trust specialists told her about a problem in shareholder voting rights. When she went to senior management at Depository Trust Company (DTC), then and still the largest securities depository in the world, they brushed it off saying, “You can’t balance the world.” Ten years later, a lawyer from Texas would tell her that the same problem was about to blow up the financial markets: Wall Street brokers are using short sales and fails to deliver to grab the assets of American entrepreneurs. This is a cautionary tale. What started as a regulatory failure turned into a regulatory crisis. Shareholder democracy is in shambles. The institutions that were established to correct a problem of trade settlement failures have instead exacerbated the problem. Global financial markets may not survive what comes next.

In the fall of 2008, America suffered a devastating economic collapse. Once valuable securities lost most or all of their value, debt markets froze, stock markets plunged, and storied financial firms went under. Millions of Americans lost their jobs; millions of families lost their homes; and good businesses shut down. These events cast the United States into an economic recession so deep that the country has yet to fully recover. This Report is the product of a two-year bipartisan investigation by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into the origins of the 2008 financial crisis. The goals of this investigation were to construct a public record of the facts in order to deepen the understanding of what happened; identify some of the root causes of the crisis; and provide a factual foundation for the ongoing effort to fortify the country against the recurrence of a similar crisis in the future.

The classic examination of the 1929 financial collapse, with an introduction by economist James K. Galbraith Of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash 1929, the Atlantic Monthly said: "Economic writings are seldom notable for their entertainment value, but this book is. Galbraith's prose has grace and wit, and he distills a good deal of sardonic fun from the whopping errors of the nation's oracles and the wondrous antics of the financial community." Originally published in 1955, Galbraith's book became an instant bestseller, and in the years since its release it has become the unparalleled point of reference for readers looking to understand American financial history."

Based on reporting for which the author was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Gerald Loeb Award, this book traces the rise and spectacular fall of Washington Mutual.