Take on the Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don't Want You To Know and How You Can Fight Back

Arthur Levitt

Jun 2002 · Penguin Random House Audio · Kimesimuliwa na Scott Brick

Kuhusu kitabu hiki cha kusikiliza

Investors today are being fed lies and distortions, are being exploited and neglected. In the wake of the last decade’s rush to invest by millions of households and Wall Street’s obsession with short-term performance, a culture of gamesmanship has grown among corporate management, financial analysts, brokers, and fund managers, making it hard to tell financial fantasy from reality, salesmanship from honest advice.

In Take on the Street, Arthur Levitt—former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission—shows how you can take matters into your own hands. At once anecdotal (names are named), informative, and prescriptive, Take on the Street expounds on, among other subjects: the relationship between broker compensation and your trading account; the conflicts of interest inherent in buy-hold-or-sell recommendations of analysts; what exactly happens—and who gets a piece of the action—when you place an order; the “seven deadly sins” of mutual funds; the vagaries and vicissitudes of 401(k) investments; how accountants engage in sleight of hand to fake impressive company performance; how to find the truth in a company’s financial statements; the real reason for the Street’s hostility to full disclosure; the crisis in corporate governance, and, given these shenanigans and double-dealings, what specific steps you can take to safeguard your financial future.

With integrity and authority, Levitt gives us a bracing primer on the collapse of the system for overseeing our capital markets, and sage, essential advice on a discipline we often ignore to our peril—how not to lose money.

Kuhusu mwandishi

First appointed in 1993, Arthur Levitt was the longest-serving chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He was also chairman of the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the American Stock Exchange. He cofounded the brokerage firm that eventually became Citigroup. He lives in Connecticut and is currently a director of Bloomberg LP.

Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. His stage appearances throughout the US include Cyrano, Hamlet, and MacBeth. In the audio industry, Scott has won over 20 Earphones Awards, as well as the 2003 Audie Award in the Best Science Fiction category for Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. After recording nearly 250 books in five years, AudioFile Magazine named Scott “one of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxy” and proclaimed him one of their Golden Voices. Brick’s range is unparalleled as he reads thrillers to narrative nonfiction, from biographies to science fiction with aplomb.