Wall Street Behaving Badly – Summer Reads
Summer is finally here! It’s time to pack up the car get out of town! The summer months are a great time to unwind, disconnect, and break open a good book. This year, why not go for a juicy tale of financial scandal? We’re talking about infamous Wall Street cover-ups and wrongdoings, of course!
Here are three of the best non-fiction books that center on Wall Street cover-ups and scandals.
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management. The 1998 collapse of a hedge fund might not sound like a captivating topic, but then you’d miss out on what some characterized as a dress rehearsal for 2008’s financial crisis. LTCM managed around $100 billion at its peak, and at one point, lost $1.9 billion in a month. Find out what went wrong!
Enron: The Smartest Guys in Room. Authors Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind cover the rise and fall of the Enron Corporation. The ensuing scandal resulted in criminal trials for several of the company’s top executives and the estimated loss of $11 billion by retail investors and Enron employees. Enron wasn’t the first domino to fall in the Dotcom bubble, but it was one of the biggest.
The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust. His name is infamous now. How did Bernie Madoff pull off the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time, swindling friends, coworkers, and families out of $65 billion? The Wizard of Lies chronicles Madoff’s ascension to the highest peak of New York finance and his ignominious fall, including interviews with Madoff himself. It’s a tragedy that puts a face to the 2008 financial crisis.
Though all are set to a backdrop of finance, ultimately they are a collection of human stories about the lure of quick profits, the power of persuasion, and, in each case, confronting the biases that can ultimately lead to ruin. The good news is, from these scandals, came laws and regulations designed to protect investors in the future.
Pick one of them up this summer! And let us know if you enjoyed it or learned something!