Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Current Events and General Interest Bits & Pieces -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (57)	11/24/2002 7:54:09 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 603

'Take on the Street': Advice From a Wall Street Insider and Critic nytimes.com [ on an old topic from elsewhere, a review of Arther Levitt's new book ] Levitt and his journalist co-author Paula Dwyer have written a first-rate financial primer. The description of how stock markets actually trade stocks and his lessons on how to read financial statements are worth the price of admission alone. Yet there is a strange dissonance as various parts of the book undermine the sunny advice given in other parts. In one chapter Levitt recommends that Aunt Edna buy mutual funds. In the following chapter he details the ''seven deadly sins'' (hidden fees, portfolio churning, tax liabilities and so on) that allow these funds to make money at Aunt Edna's expense. He celebrates the ''information bonanza'' that technology makes available to investors, and then he devotes a chapter to explaining how this information is corrupted by corporate accountants. In the end he describes so many financial casualties and details so much corporate chicanery that the only place poor Aunt Edna will want to invest is under her mattress. The book presents itself as a Take Back the Night rally for small investors, who are exhorted not to leave Wall Street to muggers and stockbrokers. Vigilant investors, by demanding transparent balance sheets and narrow spreads, will make the markets safe again for little old ladies. While the good doctor Levitt is offering this advice, his book is detailing enough horror stories to scare the willies out of you. The scariest of all is the fact that not even the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission knew half the mischief that was afoot on the dark side of the Street. [ sardonic aside: personally, I think "Glengarry Glen Ross" should be required viewing before investing in the stock market. ABC, always be closing. The idea that the investment "industry", at least at the retail level, is something other than a glorified sales operation is counterintuitive. ]

To: Lane3 who wrote (57)	12/9/2002 12:16:10 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 603

Lisa Belkin, Just Money nytimes.com [ In case you're still interested and hadn't seen this. ] Question after question. But the most important questions are left unasked. How did the government get into the business of saying that one victim's life is worth three times as much as another's? Or that the grief of these families is worth millions, while the grief of other crime victims, or accident victims, or even other terror victims, is not? Should an emissary with unlimited power be granting children money when their father chose to leave them nothing? Should an emissary with unlimited taxpayer funds -- current projections put the cost as high as $6 billion -- have such power over people's lives at all? And what about next time? Are we going to be making these sorts of payoffs -- for that is what they are -- every time we are attacked? [ Then there's the Special Master versus the Masters of the Universe . . . ] At the heart of the Cantor rebuttal, however, is that the charts chosen by Feinberg do not accurately reflect the potential earning power of Cantor employees. In other words, the projected lifetime-income numbers, before any offsets, are wrong, they say. The Cantor culture was unlike the more traditional insurance companies and government agencies with which they shared a building, and salaries jumped at a more rapid yearly clip (even, they argue, in recession years) than Feinberg's projections reflected. Feinberg has publicly welcomed Cantor's revisions, but he also knows well that public support for the plan fades as the arguments center more and more on money. He is not shy about pointing that out to those who seek the largest amounts. ''I saw a lawyer the other day, and he said, 'My client wants $12 million,''' he says. ''I said, 'That client's not getting $12 million.' He said, 'Well, then, he'll litigate.' I said: 'Go ahead. Go litigate. And do me a favor, hold a press conference, O.K.? And tell everyone how that $4 million I was willing to give you was too low, and say you wanted 12. Go on national TV and all the networks and let people know how unfair Feinberg's been in not giving you $12 million.'''