Gary Weiss Quotes
At their worst, message boards can subject you to mindless braying or outright stock scams. But at their best, they provide meaty insights on just about every stock imaginable.
Weiss, Gary. Wall Street Versus America: The Caring Profession. Portfolio, 2006.
The then attorney general had begun a series of investigation which discovered that most of the major Wall Street brokerage houses were engaged in systematic frauds to cheat small investors. One dramatic fraud he uncovered was that the research expert analysts of major firms would recommend the stock of businesses that their firm was doing investment banking for even when they knew that the companies were not doing well or were even in deep financial trouble. See {627544}.
While not every person in the stock market was dishonest, a large number were, and the system itself was inherently unfair and disadvantaged the average investor. Despite the many reforms attempted over the years, as the 2008 meltdown proved, the same problem was still with us. Capone was essentially right then and even today.
Greenspan was not the amoral fool that this quotation makes him seem. Despite the fact that he was the most important financial officer of the country, he had an ideological faith that a free market was self-corrective in a democracy. The financial industry would police itself he believed. He also trusted the self interest of the financial corporations to restrain them from getting too greedy -- {637989}. He and many others were wrong and most Americans paid the price.
At the time of this article there was noting illegal in most states about some third party with no connection with a candidate or a campaign whatsoever, to describe a candidate and his/her opposition and just like a campaign in a direct-mail solicitation, ask for funds to help the candidate win. They just pocked the money and never help the candidate. In the most egregious cases the same outfit send solicitations to Democrats and Republicans for the SAME contest with different appeals so they can deceptively collect money from supports of both candidates and help neither—only enrich themselves. Scare tactics, like saying an opponent wants to reduce Social Security benefits or increase Medicare charges, are particularly difficult to identify as so much right wing direct mail uses scare tactics the raise funds for campaigns. The left does also, but not as frequently adn they are not as good at it.
Gary Weiss is an American investigative journalist, columnist and author of two books that critically examine the ethics and morality of Wall Street. He was also a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. His Businessweek articles exposed organized crime on Wall Street and the Salomon Brothers bond trading scandal in the 1990s, and more recently he has covered the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath. Weiss is co-founder of The Mideast Reporter.
