Robert Kaiser was granted rare access to the action behind the scenes of the creation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Act of Congress is an enjoyable study of the enactment of that law, used as tool to explore how Congress works, and largely how it it doesn’t work. Kaiser was already an [...]
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A Manual of Style for Compliance
I’ve seen some poorly drafted compliance policies. The source of the problem is usually that they were written by lawyers, for lawyers. That is good when it comes to defending your firm against a lawsuit. But it’s a bad thing if the policy does not clearly tell the employees what they can do and what [...]
A Look Inside a Money Laundering Investigation
In The Infiltrator, Robert Mazur provides an encyclopedic account of his undercover work. Mazur spent years undercover infiltrating the criminal hierarchy of Colombia’s drug cartel, and the dirty bankers and businessmen willing to launder drug cash. His work led to the arrest of dozens of drug traffickers and money launders. It also led to the [...]
Antifragile – Things That Gain from Disorder
Taleb is back, and he is even more brash and brilliant. Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s fame grew from his second book, The Black Swan, being timely released just before the 2008 financial crisis. Antifragile continues his narrative on probability and risk. The Black Swan took on the theory that the highly improbable was a lot more [...]
A History and Analysis of Con Artists and Victims: The Ponzi Scheme Puzzle
Professor Tamar Frankel of Boston University School of Law tackles investment fraudsters and their victims in her book, The Ponzi Scheme Puzzle. As a scholar of investment fraud, Frankel has studied cases for years to find common themes and patterns. The books offers descriptions of the offers and red flags the ways in which fraudsters [...]
What I Read in 2012
The Goal One of my recurring annual goals is to finish reading at least 26 books for the year. In 2012, I managed to finish 36. Although, 6 of those were lighter reads. So maybe I should discount those and bring it down to 30. In any event, I exceeded my goal. The full list [...]
The Physics of Wall Street and its Failures
Warren Buffett famously warned, “beware of geeks bearing formulas.” After the Great Panic of 2008, many pundits placed the blame on derivatives and other “complex financial instruments.” That would lead one to believe that the blame lies with the physicists and mathematicians who dreamed them up. James Owen Weatherall decided to look behind that blame [...]
Vanderbilt: The First Tycoon
There were the rich, the super rich, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. T.J. Stiles takes you through the life of the Commodore in The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Sons are notoriously prone to exaggerate the importance of their fathers, as are biographers with their subjects… Vanderbilt founded a dynasty. The First Tycoon starts [...]
The Richer Sex: The New Majority of Female Breadwinners
Almost 40% of US working wives now outearn their husbands. Washington Post reporter Liza Mundy argues that “the Big Flip” in gender roles “is just around the corner” in her new book: The Richer Sex. Soon “women, not men, will become the top earners in households” and that will transform the dynamics of male-female relationships. [...]
The Power of Habit and Compliance
One of the keys to success in life is instilling good habits. We are creatures of habit. We may like to think that our daily actions result from deliberation and willpower. But mostly they are the products of our unconscious habits. These habits make our lives more efficient. (Try to remember how many steps it [...]
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