DOCSLIB.ORG

@Ttalibrary @Ttalibrary BULL! Ba History of the Boom and Bust, 1982–2004

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
@Ttalibrary @Ttalibrary BULL! Ba History of the Boom and Bust, 1982–2004 @ttalibrary @ttalibrary BULL! Ba history of the boom and bust, 1982–2004 maggie mahar @ttalibrary To Raymond, who believes that everything is possible @ttalibrary — Contents — Acknowledgments vii Prologue Henry Blodget xiii Introduction Chapter 1—The Market’s Cycles 3 Chapter 2—The People’s Market 17 Beginnings (1961–89) Chapter 3—The Stage Is Set 35 (1961–81) Chapter 4—The Curtain Rises 48 (1982–87) Chapter 5—Black Monday (1987–89) 61 @ttalibrary iv Contents The Cast Assembles (1990–95) Chapter 6—The Gurus 81 Chapter 7—The Individual Investor 102 Chapter 8—Behind the Scenes, 123 in Washington The Media, Momentum, and Mutual Funds (1995–96) Chapter 9—The Media: CNBC Lays 153 Down the Rhythm Chapter 10—The Information Bomb 175 Chapter 11—AOL: A Case Study 193 Chapter 12—Mutual Funds: 203 Momentum versus Value Chapter 13—The Mutual Fund 217 Manager: Career Risk versus Investment Risk The New Economy (1996–98) Chapter 14—Abby Cohen Goes to 239 Washington; Alan Greenspan Gives a Speech Chapter 15—The Miracle of 254 Productivity The Final Run-Up (1998–2000) Chapter 16—“Fully Deluded 269 Earnings” @ttalibrary Contents v Chapter 17—Following the Herd: 288 Dow 10,000 Chapter 18—The Last Bear Is Gored 304 Chapter 19—Insiders Sell; 317 the Water Rises A Final Accounting Chapter 20—Winners, Losers, and Scapegoats 333 (2000–03) Chapter 21—Looking Ahead: What 353 Financial Cycles Mean for the 21st-Century Investor Epilogue (2004–05) 387 Notes 397 Appendix 473 Index 481 about the author credits cover copyright about the publisher @ttalibrary @ttalibrary — Acknowledgments — More than a hundred people contributed to this book, sharing their expe- riences, their insights, and their knowledge. I would like to thank the many who agreed to be interviewed, often more than once, including Gail Du- dack, Bob Farrell, Byron Wein, Henry Blodget, Richard Russell, Steve Leuthold, Ralph Acampora, Jim Chanos, Jim Grant, Jay Diamond, Abby Joseph Cohen, David Tice, Bill Gross, Peter Bernstein, Marc Faber, Jean- Marie Eveillard, Marty Whitman, Ralph Wanger, A. Michael Lipper, Don Phillips, Fred Sheehan, Jeremy Grantham, Maureen Allyn, Mark Headley, Clyde McGregor, Bill Fleckenstein, Martin Barnes, David Shulman, Lau- rence Tisch, Steven Einhorn, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, John Di Tomasso, Jim Awad, Jim Bianco, Paul Saffo, Robert Shiller, Hank Herrmann, Charles Biderman, Rick Ackerman, Bob Davoli, George Noble, John Collins, Edward Wolff, Bob Nurock, Charlotte Herr, Elizabeth Rivera, Lise Buyer, Jonathan Cohen, George Kelly, Stephen Roach, Neil Barsky, Bill Seidman, Arthur Levitt, Senator Jon Corzine, Joseph Stiglitz, David Ruder, Bert Ely, Harold Bierman, Allan Sloan, Jane Bryant Quinn, Mark Hulbert, Kate Welling, Jeff Madrick, William Powers, Herb Greenberg, Dave Kansas, Jonathan Weil, Ed Wyatt, Steven Lipin, Joe Nocera, Doug Hen- @ttalibrary viii Acknowledgments wood, Shirley Sauerwein, Jim Tucci, Ed Wasserman, Gary Wasserman, and Michael Malone. Many reporters and financial writers contributed to this book. Since this is both a social history and a financial history, I turned to the media for a record, not just of what happened, but of what investors thought was hap- pening during the Great Bull Market of 1982–99. In many ways, the media served as a mirror for investor sentiment, and sometimes as a lamp, illumi- nating the facts. I am indebted to the many reporters who kept that record and have tried to acknowledge that debt in my endnotes. I also would like to thank Barron’s for giving me the time and space to explore so many aspects of the financial world, in depth and in detail, in the stories that I wrote while working there from 1986 to 1997. During those years I learned much of what I know about both Wall Street and Washington. I developed many of the ideas in this book in the late nineties while writing for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Personal Finance. I especially want to thank my editors at Bloomberg Personal, Chris Miles and Steve Git- telson, for giving me the opportunity to explore themes that were not al- ways popular at the time: market timing, bear markets, value investing, the importance of dividends, the dangers of the trade deficit, and the fallibility of the Fed. From the time I began thinking about this book, Mary Bralove, a for- mer Wall Street Journal editor and loyal friend, has proved the best sound- ing board a writer could have. When I began writing, she became my first reader. Since then, she has read and reread the manuscript, bringing an ed- itor’s eye and a reader’s ear to the unending challenge of smoothing the nar- rative while keeping the argument on track. Or, as she would put it, turning spirals into straight lines. I could not have had a better reader. Gail Dudack also became a collaborator. She provided many of the charts for this book, and her remarkably lucid and often prescient analysis has helped me focus my ideas. Jim Chanos generously lent me his “New Era” files, a wonderful collec- tion of often funny, always telling clippings that he kept as a personal record of a financial mania. Susan Chace, Fred Sheehan, Bob Farrell, Gertrude Hughes, Steve Leuthold, Allan Sloan, Gail Dudack, Maureen Allyn, Jeff Madrick, William Powers, and Michael Klotz all read sections of the manuscript and provided valuable suggestions. @ttalibrary Acknowledgments ix Johanna Piazza, Gregg Wirth, Chian Choo, Viken Berberian, Charlie Katz-Leavy, John Giuffo, and Carol Dannhauser did an admirable job fact- checking a manuscript filled with facts. Most of all, I want to thank my family—Emily and Michael and Ray- mond—for their warm support and absolute faith that I could finish this project. Last, but far from least, I would like to thank John Brockman, my agent, and Marion Maneker, my editor. Without John Brockman’s pro- fessional integrity and encouragement I never would have gotten past Chapter 1. Without Marion Maneker’s faith in the manuscript, I never would have arrived at Chapter 21. A writer himself, he is a writer’s editor. I partic- ularly want to thank him for the role he played in shaping this story. He recognized, before I did, the importance of financial cycles as the underly- ing theme of the book. I also want to thank Edwin Tan for smoothing the path to publication with such diplomacy, efficiency, and finesse. @ttalibrary @ttalibrary BPrologue @ttalibrary @ttalibrary — Henry Blodget — As Henry Blodget rode the elevator to his office in the North Tower of the World Financial Center one morning in the late autumn of 1999, he had no idea that someone had left a message on his voice mail during the mid- dle of the night.1 The 34-year-old Merrill Lynch analyst was accustomed to the pressures of his job. In recent years, Wall Street firms had realized the importance of turning their analysts into brand names, and “Blodget” had become a brand. With just a few words, he could send a stock to the moon. He had made his reputation doing just that, less than a year earlier, by raising the bar for one of the New Economy’s most dazzling stars: Ama- zon.com. Henry Blodget was still a relatively unknown young analyst at CIBC Oppenheimer in December of 1998 when he boosted his forecast for Amazon from $150 to $400 a share. At the time, Amazon was trading at $240; within weeks, it blasted straight through the $400 target. He was young; he was blond; he was on his way to becoming very rich. Almost immediately, Blodget became a media darling. CNBC’s bookers wooed him; USA Today called him the “man of the moment.” By the end of 1998 even The Wall Street Journal showcased him as one of a group of “Savvy Pros” who “Had an Early Line on This Year’s Biggest Winners.” 2 @ttalibrary xviii Prologue In February of 1999, Merrill offered Blodget a plum job—first chair on the firm’s Internet research team. Before long, the press would be speculat- ing that, in 2001, Merrill Lynch paid Blodget as much as $12 million a year. Blodget was still amazed by the effect that one call had on his career. The truth was that he had not been entirely comfortable with the $400 forecast, but Oppenheimer’s sales force needed a new estimate. When he rolled out his first report on Amazon in October of 1998, the stock was trading well over $80, and he set a target of $150—adding that he thought the stock was worth anywhere between $150 and $500. By December, Amazon had shot past $200, and his firm’s sales team began pressing him for a new target. Blodget felt obliged to pick a number. Privately, he was confident that Amazon would hit $400—he just didn’t know if he had the balls to say it. But as his very first boss on Wall Street had told him, “You’re not a portfolio manager—you’re not trying to sneak quietly into a stock be- fore someone else sees it. You’re an analyst: your job is to go out and take a position.” So he said it—$400. And Amazon turned out to be a home run. His career had turned on that one call. Three years earlier, he had been a trainee at Prudential. Now, in the small but shimmering pond called the Internet, he stood second only to Morgan Stanley’s Mary Meeker, the Internet ana- lyst Barron’s crowned “Queen of the Net.” Entering his office, Blodget glanced out the window—his office faced uptown, flanked on one side by the Hudson River, on the other side by the World Trade Center.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Notes and Sources for Evil Geniuses: the Unmaking of America: a Recent History
    Notes and Sources for Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History Introduction xiv “If infectious greed is the virus” Kurt Andersen, “City of Schemes,” The New York Times, Oct. 6, 2002. xvi “run of pedal-to-the-medal hypercapitalism” Kurt Andersen, “American Roulette,” New York, December 22, 2006. xx “People of the same trade” Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. Andrew Skinner, 1776 (London: Penguin, 1999) Book I, Chapter X. Chapter 1 4 “The discovery of America offered” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Library of America, 2012), Book One, Introductory Chapter. 4 “A new science of politics” Tocqueville, Democracy In America, Book One, Introductory Chapter. 4 “The inhabitants of the United States” Tocqueville, Democracy In America, Book One, Chapter XVIII. 5 “there was virtually no economic growth” Robert J Gordon. “Is US economic growth over? Faltering innovation confronts the six headwinds.” Policy Insight No. 63. Centre for Economic Policy Research, September, 2012. --Thomas Piketty, “World Growth from the Antiquity (growth rate per period),” Quandl. 6 each citizen’s share of the economy Richard H. Steckel, “A History of the Standard of Living in the United States,” in EH.net (Economic History Association, 2020). --Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York: W.W. Norton, 2016), p. 98. 6 “Constant revolutionizing of production” Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969), Chapter I. 7 from the early 1840s to 1860 Tomas Nonnenmacher, “History of the U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Financial Liberalization, International Monetary Dis/Order, and the Neoliberal State Timothy A
    American University International Law Review Volume 15 | Issue 6 Article 4 2000 Financial Liberalization, International Monetary Dis/order, and the Neoliberal State Timothy A. Canova Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/auilr Part of the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Canova, Timothy A. "Financial Liberalization, International Monetary Dis/order, and the Neoliberal State." American University International Law Review 15, no. 6 (2000): 1279-1319. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Washington College of Law Journals & Law Reviews at Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in American University International Law Review by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FINANCIAL LIBERALIZATION, INTERNATIONAL MONETARY DIS/ORDER, AND THE NEOLIBERAL STATE TIMOTHY A. CANOVA ° INTRODUCTION ............................................ 1279 I. THE NEW INTERNATIONAL MONETARY DIS/ORDER.. 1281 II. CENTRAL BANK AUTONOMY AND TRANSPARENCY IN THE NEOLIBERAL STATE ............................. 1294 EI. WE HAVE OTHER ALTERNATIVES .................... 1315 INTRODUCTION This International Economic Law Conference has charged itself with a rather lofty task -- that of analyzing the professed justifica- tions of the prevailing neoliberal path of globalization by asking the following question: "Will the new world economic order we de- scribe lead to greater peace, stability, fairness and justice'?"' The global monetary system constitutes perhaps the most important legal and institutional foundation of today's world economic order in an- * Assistant Professor of Law, University of New Mexico School of Law. Thanks to Stephen Zamora, Cynthia Lichtenstein, and Chantal Thomas for comments dur- ing a panel discussion that helped to inform this paper.
    [Show full text]
  • Capitalism and Risk: Concepts, Consequences, and Ideologies Edward A
    digitalcommons.nyls.edu Faculty Scholarship Articles & Chapters 2016 Capitalism and Risk: Concepts, Consequences, and Ideologies Edward A. Purcell New York Law School Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/fac_articles_chapters Part of the Consumer Protection Law Commons, and the Law and Economics Commons Recommended Citation 64 Buff. L. Rev. 23 (2016) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at DigitalCommons@NYLS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles & Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@NYLS. Capitalism and Risk: Concepts, Consequences, and Ideologies EDWARD A. PURCELL, JR.t INTRODUCTION Politically charged claims about both "capitalism" and "risk" became increasingly insistent in the late twentieth century. The end of the post-World War II boom in the 1970s and the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union inspired fervent new commitments to capitalist ideas and institutions. At the same time structural changes in the American economy and expanded industrial development across the globe generated sharpening anxieties about the risks that those changes entailed. One result was an outpouring of roseate claims about capitalism and its ability to control those risks, including the use of new techniques of "risk management" to tame financial uncertainties and guarantee stability and prosperity. Despite assurances, however, recent decades have shown many of those claims to be overblown, if not misleading or entirely ill-founded. Thus, the time seems ripe to review some of our most basic economic ideas and, in doing so, reflect on what we might learn from past centuries about the nature of both "capitalism" and "risk," the relationship between the two, and their interactions and consequences in contemporary America.
    [Show full text]
  • The SEC and the Failure of Federal, Takeover Regulation
    Florida State University Law Review Volume 34 Issue 2 Article 2 2007 The SEC and the Failure of Federal, Takeover Regulation Steven M. Davidoff [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.law.fsu.edu/lr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Steven M. Davidoff, The SEC and the Failure of Federal, Takeover Regulation, 34 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. (2007) . https://ir.law.fsu.edu/lr/vol34/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Florida State University Law Review by an authorized editor of Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW THE SEC AND THE FAILURE OF FEDERAL TAKEOVER REGULATION Steven M. Davidoff VOLUME 34 WINTER 2007 NUMBER 2 Recommended citation: Steven M. Davidoff, The SEC and the Failure of Federal Takeover Regulation, 34 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 211 (2007). THE SEC AND THE FAILURE OF FEDERAL TAKEOVER REGULATION STEVEN M. DAVIDOFF* I. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................. 211 II. THE GOLDEN AGE OF FEDERAL TAKEOVER REGULATION.................................. 215 A. The Williams Act (the 1960s) ..................................................................... 215 B. Going-Privates (the 1970s)......................................................................... 219 C. Hostile Takeovers (the 1980s)..................................................................... 224 1. SEC Legislative
    [Show full text]
  • Cuaderno De Documentacion
    SECRETARIA DE ESTADO DE ECONOMÍA, MINISTERIO SECRETARÍA GENERAL DE POLÍTICA ECONÓMICA DE ECONOMÍA Y ECONOMÍA INTERNACIONAL Y HACIENDA SUBDIRECCIÓN GENERAL DE ECONOMÍA INTERNACIONAL CUADERNO DE DOCUMENTACION Número 89º ANEXO I Alvaro Espina Vocal Asesor 31 de Julio de 2009 BACKGROUND PAPERS: 1. Interbank and Credit Markets Improving: The Commercial Paper Test, RGE Monitor … 11 2. Federal Reserve Board, Press release…13 3. Big Banks paid billions in bonuses amid Wall St. Crisis The New Yor Times by Louise Story and Eric Dash …14 4. Health care realities, The New York Times by Paul Krugman…17 5. The lessons of 1979-82, The Conscience of a Liberal …18 6. Industry is generous to influential bloc, The Washington Post by Dan Eggen …20 7. New poll finds growing unease on health plan, The New York Times by Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee-Brenan…22 8. Lucrative fees may deter efforts to alter troubled loans, The New York Times by Peter S. Goodman …25 9. House seems to be set on pork-padded defense bill, The Washington Post by ByR Jeffrey Smith …28 10. RGE Monitor’s Newsletter, RGE Monitor…30 11. The financial truth commission, The New York Times …32 12. Call to curb speculators in energy, The New York Times, by Edmund L Andrews…33 13. Is the decline in US home prices easing? RGE Monitor …35 14. Obama opens policy talks with China, The New York Times by Mark Landler…38 15. Politicians accused of meddling in bank rules, The New York Times by Floyd Norris…40 16. Small Banks at Center of Overhaul Debate, The Washington Post by Brady Dennis…42 17.
    [Show full text]
  • The Global Financial Crisis and Proposed Regulatory Reform Randall D
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Brigham Young University Law School BYU Law Review Volume 2010 | Issue 2 Article 9 5-1-2010 The Global Financial Crisis and Proposed Regulatory Reform Randall D. Guynn Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/lawreview Part of the Banking and Finance Law Commons Recommended Citation Randall D. Guynn, The Global Financial Crisis and Proposed Regulatory Reform, 2010 BYU L. Rev. 421 (2010). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/lawreview/vol2010/iss2/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Brigham Young University Law Review at BYU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in BYU Law Review by an authorized editor of BYU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DO NOT DELETE 4/26/2010 8:05 PM The Global Financial Crisis and Proposed Regulatory Reform Randall D. Guynn The U.S. real estate bubble that popped in 2007 launched a sort of impersonal chevauchée1 that randomly destroyed trillions of dollars of value for nearly a year. It culminated in a worldwide financial panic during September and October of 2008.2 The most serious recession since the Great Depression followed.3 Central banks and governments throughout the world responded by flooding the markets with money and other liquidity, reducing interest rates, nationalizing or providing extraordinary assistance to major financial institutions, increasing government spending, and taking other creative steps to provide financial assistance to the markets.4 Only recently have markets begun to stabilize, but they remain fragile, like a man balancing on one leg.5 The United States and other governments have responded to the financial crisis by proposing the broadest set of regulatory reforms Partner and Head of the Financial Institutions Group, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, New York, New York.
    [Show full text]
  • The Great Telecom Meltdown for a Listing of Recent Titles in the Artech House Telecommunications Library, Turn to the Back of This Book
    The Great Telecom Meltdown For a listing of recent titles in the Artech House Telecommunications Library, turn to the back of this book. The Great Telecom Meltdown Fred R. Goldstein a r techhouse. com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the U.S. Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Goldstein, Fred R. The great telecom meltdown.—(Artech House telecommunications Library) 1. Telecommunication—History 2. Telecommunciation—Technological innovations— History 3. Telecommunication—Finance—History I. Title 384’.09 ISBN 1-58053-939-4 Cover design by Leslie Genser © 2005 ARTECH HOUSE, INC. 685 Canton Street Norwood, MA 02062 All rights reserved. Printed and bound in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized. Artech House cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. International Standard Book Number: 1-58053-939-4 10987654321 Contents ix Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) Gave Cable Providers an Advantage on “Triple Play” 122 RBOCs Took the Threat Seriously 123 Hybrid Fiber-Coax Is Developed 123 Cable Modems
    [Show full text]
  • Marc Faber Limited May 26, 2003
    THE GLOOM, BOOM & DOOM REPORT ISSN 1017-1371 A PUBLICATION OF MARC FABER LIMITED MAY 26, 2003 Do Great Investment Opportunities Knock on Your Door Only Once??? It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (1890) INTRODUCTION from the list of most livable cities. people’s homes. The danger in According to a survey conducted by Thailand isn’t violence, but poor As some of my readers may know, Mercer Human Resources driving. Most drivers in the north almost three years ago I moved my Consulting, Zurich has the world’s don’t observe road rules, and few family to Chiangmai, where we have highest quality of life, ahead of even have a driver’s licence. Each remodelled an old Thai house by the Vancouver and Vienna. In the US, year during Sonkran (the week-long river that runs through the city. Now, San Francisco was the top-rated city Thai New Year’s festival during my office building is also 99% (placed number 18), while New York which people throw water at each completed (in Thailand, nothing is was rated number 44 and Los Angeles other, and which is actually a lot of ever 100% finished) and this is the 53.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter Notes
    Chapter Notes Preface 15 Abraham Lincoln, speech at Clinton Illinois, September 8, 1858 15 Michael DeGolyer, “Friend, we’re so confused,” The Standard, February 15, 2007, p.A25 16 Jacob Weisberg, “This time, the mud may fail to stick,” Financial Times, November 2, 2006, p.15 16 Editorial, “The Foley Report,” The Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2006, p.15 17 Krishna Guha, Edward Luce and Andrew Ward, “Anxious middle: why ordinary Americans have missed out on the benefits of growth,” Financial Times, November 2, 2006, p.13 18 Thomas L. Friedman, “Show ‘em we’re not stupid,” International Herald Tribune, November 4-5, 2006, p.5 18 Roger Cohen, “Right-wing nut jobs vs. pinko Commies: Take 2,” International Herald Tribune, November 4, 2006, p.2 18 Editorial, “Their final bow,” The Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2006, p.15 18 Jane Bryant Quinn, “The Economic Perception Gap,” Newsweek, November 20, 2006, p.39 18 Adam Nagourney and John O’Neil, “Democrats take command of House,” International Herald Tribune, November 9, 2006, p.1 19 John Harwood, “U.S. public wants Congress to lead, poll shows,” The Wall Street Journal, December 15-17, 2006, p.11 19 Edward Luce, “Pelosi vows to toughen ethical guidelines,” Financial Times, December 15, 2006, p.5 20 Chris Wood, “Globalization long off the mainland’s trade agenda,” South China Morning Post, March 19, 2007, p.B4 21 Thomas Friedman, “American facts and folly,” International Herald Tribune, March 30, 2006, p.7 21 Richard Luscombe, “US set to greet 300-millionth resident,” South China Morning Post, October 16, 2006, p.A17 21 Martin Wolf, “Integration marches onward despite growth in imbalances,” Financial Times, January 25, 2006, p.8 22 Ed Pilkington, “New U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Rethinking the Federal Securities Laws
    Florida International University College of Law eCollections Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship 2003 Accountants Make Miserable Policemen: Rethinking the Federal Securities Laws Jerry W. Markham Florida International University College of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/faculty_publications Part of the Banking and Finance Law Commons Recommended Citation Jerry W. Markham, Accountants Make Miserable Policemen: Rethinking the Federal Securities Laws, 28 N.C.J. Int'l L. & Com. Reg. 725, 812 (2003). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at eCollections. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of eCollections. For more information, please contact [email protected]. +(,121/,1( Citation: Jerry W. Markham, Accountants Make Miserable Policemen: Rethinking the Federal Securities Laws, 28 N.C.J. Int'l L. & Com. Reg. 725 (2003) Provided by: FIU College of Law Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline Tue May 1 11:26:02 2018 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at https://heinonline.org/HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: Copyright Information Use QR Code reader to send PDF to your smartphone or tablet device Accountants Make Miserable Policemen: Rethinking the Federal
    [Show full text]
  • Enron and Co
    Enron and Co. - the fiasco of the new USA-style economy Eric Toussaint (*) Twenty years of deregulation and market liberalization on a planetary scale have eliminated all the safety barriers that might have prevented the cascade effect of crises of the Enron type. All capitalist companies of the Triad and emerging markets have evolved, some with their own variations, on the same lines as in the USA. The planet's private banking and financial institutions (as well as insurance companies) are in a bad way, having adopted ever riskier practices. The big industrial groups have all undergone a high degree of financialization and they, too, are very vulnerable. The succession of scandals shows just how vacuous are the declarations of the US leaders and their admirers in the four corners of the globe (see Ahold, Parmalat,…). A mechanism equivalent to several time -bombs is under way on the scale of all the economies on the planet. To name just a few of those bombs: over indebtedness of companies and households, the derivatives market (which in the words of the billionaire Warren Buffet, are « financial weapons of mass destruction »), the bubble of property speculation (most explosive in the USA and the UK), the crisis of insurance companies and that of pension funds. It is time to defuse these bombs and think of another way of doing things, in the USA and elsewhere. Of course, it is not enough to defuse the bombs and dream of another possible world. We have to grapple with the roots of the problems by redistributing wealth on the basis of social justice.
    [Show full text]
  • Americans for Tax Fairness Selected Opinion Pieces on Corporate Inversions
    AMERICANS FOR TAX FAIRNESS SELECTED OPINION PIECES ON CORPORATE INVERSIONS As of October 1, 2014 NATIONAL Fortune – Positively un-American Tax Dodgers, Allan Sloan, July 7, 2014 “Undermining the finances of the federal government by inverting helps undermine our economy. And that’s a bad thing, in the long run, for companies that do business in America.” Fortune – Foreign Tax Ploys Raise a Question: What is an American Company?, Allan Sloan, June 2, 2014 “But in the past few years, as the world has become more global and other countries have cut their corporate rates, a new exodus wave has started. ‘For the past 20 years, there’s been an arms race between the companies on the one hand and the IRS and Congress on the other, and the companies always seem to come up with better weapons,’ says tax expert Bob Willens.” The New York Times – Cracking Down on Corporate Tax Games, The Editorial Board, September 23, 2014 “New rules from the Treasury Department[2] are likely to slow the offensive practice that allows American companies to avoid taxes by merging with foreign rivals. Known as corporate inversions, these are complex, modern variations on the practices of yesteryear, when companies dodged their taxes by moving their addresses to post office boxes in the Caribbean.” The New York Times – At Walgreen, Renouncing Corporate Citizenship, Andrew Ross Sorkin, June 30, 2014 “In Walgreen’s case, an inversion would be an affront to United States taxpayers. The company, which also owns the Duane Reade chain in New York, reaps almost a quarter of
    [Show full text]