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On March 5, 2008, at 10:15 A.M., a hedge fund manager in Florida wrote a post on his investing advice Web site that included a startling statement about Bear Stearns & Co., the nation's fifth-largest investment bank: "In my book, they are insolvent."
This seemed a bold and risky statement. Bear Stearns was about to announce profits of $115 million for the first quarter of 2008, had $17.3 billion in cash on hand, and, as the company incessantly boasted, had been a colossally profitable enterprise in the eighty-five years since its founding.
Ten days later, Bear Stearns no longer existed, and the calamitous financial meltdown of 2008 had begun.
How this happened - and why - is the subject of William D. Cohan's superb and shocking narrative that chronicles the fall of Bear Stearns and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street. Bear Stearns serves as the Rosetta Stone to explain how a combination of risky bets, corporate political infighting, lax government regulations and truly bad decision-making wrought havoc on the world financial system.
Cohan's minute-by-minute account of those ten days in March makes for breathless reading, as the bankers at Bear Stearns struggled to contain the cascading series of events that would doom the firm, and as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, New York Federal Reserve Bank President Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke began to realize the dire consequences for the world economy should the company go bankrupt.
But HOUSE OF CARDS does more than recount the incredible panic of the first stages of the financial meltdown. William D. Cohan beautifully demonstrates" why" the seemingly invincible Wall Street money machine came crashing down. He chronicles the swashbuckling corporate culture of Bear Stearns, the strangely crucial role competitive bridge played in the company's fortunes, the brutal internecine battles for power, and the deadly combination of greed and inattention that helps to explain why the company's leaders ignored the danger lurking in Bear's huge positions in mortgage-backed securities.
The author deftly portrays larger-than-life personalities like Ace Greenberg, Bear Stearns' miserly, take-no-prisoners chairman whose memos about re-using paper clips were legendary throughout Wall Street; his profane, colorful rival and eventual heir Jimmy Cayne, whose world-champion-level bridge skills were a lever in his corporate rise and became a symbol of the reasons for the firm's demise; and Jamie Dimon, the blunt-talking CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who won the astonishing endgame of the saga (the Bear Stearns headquarters alone were worth more than JP Morgan paid for the whole company).
Cohan's explanation of seemingly arcane subjects like credit default swaps and fixed- income securities is masterful and crystal clear, but it is the high-end dish and powerful narrative drive that makes HOUSE OF CARDS an irresistible read on a par with classics such as LIAR'S POKER and BARBARIANS AT THE GATE.
Written with the novelistic verve and insider knowledge that made THE LAST TYCOONS a bestseller and a prize-winner, HOUSE OF CARDS is a chilling cautionary tale about greed, arrogance, and stupidity in the financial world, and the consequences for all of us.

2009 Reprint of the original 1949 edition. Paperback. 149pp. William Delbert Gann (6 June, 1878 - 14 June, 1955) also known as W. D. Gann, was a finance trader who developed the technical analysis tool known as Gann angles. Gann market forecasting methods are based on geometry, astrology, and ancient mathematics. Opinions are sharply divided on the value and relevance of his work. Gann wrote a number of books on trading, the classic text being 45 Years in Wall Street. Gann has developed a very faithful group of followers and adherents.

In this survey of international economic thought, Michael Hudson rewrites the history of trade, development and debt theorizing. He shows that mainstream free-trade surveys are censorial in excluding the protectionist logic that has guided the trade policy of Europe and the United States, especially by leaving out discussion of the transfer problem and payment of international debts. He points out that most economists throughout history have focused as much on war financing as on trade and development. Free-trade ideology and IMF-style financial austerity under today's rules, rather than benefiting all parties and maximizing welfare, leave "client" nations severely indebted. By excluding dynamics that used to be central to trade theory such as emigration and technology transfer, today's global production and financial policies tend to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of dominant nations. Prof. Michael Hudson (Economics Department, University of Missouri, Kansas City) is a frequent contributor to The Financial Times, Counterpunch, and Global Research.

Born in the wake of World War II, RAND quickly became the creator of America's anti-Soviet nuclear strategy. A magnet for the best and the brightest, its ranks included Cold War luminaries such as Albert Wohlstetter, Bernard Brodie, and Herman Kahn, who arguably saved us from nuclear annihilation and unquestionably created Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex." In the Kennedy era, RAND analysts and their theories of rational warfare steered our conduct in Vietnam. Those same theories drove our invasion of Iraq forty-five years later, championed by RAND affiliated actors such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Zalmay Khalilzad. But RAND's greatest contribution might be its least known: rational choice theory, a model explaining all human behavior through self-interest. Through it RAND sparked the Reagan-led transformation of our social and economic system but also unleashed a resurgence of precisely the forces whose existence it denied -- religion, patriotism, tribalism.
With Soldiers of Reason, Alex Abella has rewritten the history of America's last half century and cast a new light on our problematic present.

This highly readable book from Lou Richard, a 50 year veteran of International Corporate buisness and founder of Newport Capital, provides a practical explanation of key technical and tactical aspects of mergers and acquisitions, and also provides insightful real-life descriptions - "digressions" - of transactions as they happened, proving that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

A narrative history of one of IBM's most illustrious and secretive organizations -- IBM's Federal Systems Division -- that protected America, helped NASA put men on the moon, and spawned such technology as today's Internet, ATM transactions, ebay operations and online banking. Included in the book are space-age computer and weapons systems details never before shown to the public. Federal Systems developed such things as a dispatch system for New York City's police force, international banking systems in the UK, Japan and other countries, and a special operations system for the New York Stock Exchange. This is the first book ever written about this semi-clandestine organization operating under the IBM umbrella that supported NASA's projects from Project Mercury to Space Shuttles and Skylab. Federal Systems was also a major part of the development of modern weapons technology. Each chapter of the book focuses on one aspect of Federal Systems' 50-year history of service to the government. The organization changed hands during an IBM selloff in the early 1990s to Loral Corporation, which in turn sold it to Lockheed Martin in 1996.

This book explores a century of business development of The South African Life Assurance Company, from a specific local focus to a national conglomerate expanding into global insurance markets. Established as a strategic vehicle to address Afrikaner economic marginalization and abject poverty at the beginning of the twentieth century, Sanlam has displayed both path dependence and a dynamic adaptability to complex changing contexts to become a global player. The strategic convergence of economic empowerment through the mobilization of savings into insurance products, as well as Afrikaner nationalism, assisted this growth. Sanlam has played an a-typical role in the economic empowerment of an ethnic entity through extensive investments into the industrializing South African economy. This strategic diversion created operational limitations that were only resolved early in the twenty-first century. As globalization, financial deregulation, and weakened Afrikaner political and social hegemony manifested, strategic change management relied on the path dependence of empowerment strategies to address new markets with similar needs to those of the early stakeholder market of 1918. The former mutual life office demutualized operations to become a diversified financial services group of companies operating across almost the entire African continent, as well as in India, Malaysia, and the UK. This volume presents a business history of strategic management of an insurance enterprise, and its transformation from a defined cultural context into an international empowerment strategy through innovation on all levels of business operation and organization. This book is an Open Access publication, available online under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

The pharmaceutical revolution that gathered pace in the 1930s delivered a plethora of almost magical new drugs such as penicillin, streptomycin, cortisone, and the birth control pill. This revolution grew from academic-business relationships in five countries: USA, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, and France. Many other countries tried and failed to replicate this success, yet a handful of Scandinavia companies made important breakthroughs in a narrow band of specialities. This is the story of how one Norwegian company- Nyegaard & Co. -achieved international success from the 1970s onwards with a breakthrough product facilitating X-ray pictures of the soft tissues of the body. The company succeeded by harnessing research skills and creating scientific and business alliances abroad, building its own momentum step by step: the corporation as entrepreneur. It thereby broke with the conventional way a national medical ecosystem facilitated the crucial scientific progress. This is a story both of personal initiatives and great organizational transformations in several stages. In the 1950s, Nyegaard & Co. was a small hierarchical home market-oriented generics company. By the end of the 1990s, it had developed into a fairly large and multinational hierarchical company, preoccupied as much with shareholder value as scientific progress. It has also become a company that no longer had the same ability to innovate as before and therefore became merged into another one.

Hidden Under the Corporate Ladder gives a brutally honest look inside a scandalous Fortune 100 company. The story takes place in Dallas, Texas, in the mid 1990s, as told firsthand by an employee hired to work for a corporation's branch location to figure out why its operation isn't productive. Jackie expects misconduct; however, she finds more than she bargained for. When one of the perpetrators uncovers her mission and confides in her that he is in a Witness Protection Program with past Mob ties, he threatens to "do away" with her if she reports any wrongdoing-just as he did with the last person who ratted on him. The story is compelling as the reader is riveted to each chapter's no-holds-barred description of scandal, deception, sexual misconduct, misappropriation of funds, discrimination, and even death. Although the book is driven by scandal that is dark, twisted, or just plain vulgar, it is also filled with life's sometimes sad and disappointing situations as well as love and devotion. Most of all, it is filled with life itself. Destined to have a profound effect, the story is always powerful and keeps the reader turning the page as it details and describes misuse of management in unimaginable and incomprehensible ways.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, a fascinating look at the crossroads of kin and coin David S. Landes has earned a reputation as a brilliant writer and iconoclast among economic historians. In his latest acclaimed work, he takes a revealing look at the quality that distinguishes a third of today's Fortune 500 companies: family ownership. From the banking fortunes of Rothschild and Morgan to the automobile empires of Ford and Toyota, Landes explores thirteen different dynasties, revealing what lay behind their successes-and how extravagance, bad behavior, and poor enterprise brought some of them to their knees. A colorful history that is full of surprising conclusions, Dynasties is an engrossing mix of ambition, eccentricity, and wealth.

During Wall Street's crime wave in the 1980s, no single brokerage firm, banker or trader destroyed the financial security of more people than Prudential Bache Securities. The losses from all the celebrated insider scandals add up to a fraction of the damage caused by The Rock-- the costliest securities fraud ever. Why did the nation's third largest brokerage firm, whose very name conveyed rock-solid respectability, launch such a vicious fraud? "Serpent on the Rock" has the answer. Using hundreds of exclusive sources and thousands of internal, confidential records, it reveals the shocking true story behind the wrongdoing, the cover-up, and the investigations of the real-life thriller that shook the nation and the world.

"Corporate Survival: The Critical Importance of Sustainability Risk Management" thoroughly examines the rising sustainability risks that affect thriving businesses, the environment, various societies, people in foreign lands, and our children.

Author Dan Anderson, a professor of risk management and insurance, has been observing sustainability risk management issues for his entire career. In "Corporate Survival" he presents guidelines for various professionals in the risk management and insurance industries. In his view, corporations need to establish sound sustainability risk management systems in order to survive potentially major financial and professional damages. These damages can arise from liability suits, customer boycotts, shareholder actions, new regulations, and international pressures.

Anderson provides well-timed direction for establishing risk management systems, as well as numerous examples of how companies successfully employ sustainability risk management strategies. He also demonstrates the advantages of following his advice for corporate survival, including reducing sustainability risk costs, improving competitive advantage, attracting both reliable customers and productive employees, augmenting the firm's reputation and community image, and increasing profits.

"Corporate Survival" will help all corporations and those in the fields of risk management and insurance improve business systems while enhancing environmental quality and social justice conditions.

Violet Crown Award, Writers League of Texas, 2007 Citation, San Antonio Conservation Society, 2009 Scarred by the deaths of his mother and sisters and the failure of his father's business, a young man dreamed of making enough money to retire early and retreat into the secure world that his childhood tragedies had torn from him. But Harry Luby refused to be a robber baron. Turning totally against the tide of avaricious capitalism, he determined to make a fortune by doing good. Starting with that unlikely, even naive, ambition in 1911, Harry Luby founded a cafeteria empire that by the 1980s had revenues second only to McDonald's. So successfully did Luby and his heirs satisfy the tastes of America that Luby's became the country's largest cafeteria chain, creating more millionaires per capita among its employees than any other corporation of its size. Even more surprising, the company stayed true to Harry Luby's vision for eight decades, making money by treating its customers and employees exceptionally well. Written with the sweep and drama of a novel, House of Plenty tells the engrossing story of Luby's founding and phenomenal growth, its long run as America's favorite family restaurant during the post-World War II decades, its financial failure during the greed-driven 1990s when non-family leadership jettisoned the company's proven business model, and its recent struggle back to solvency. Carol Dawson and Carol Johnston draw on insider stories and company records to recapture the forces that propelled the company to its greatest heights, including its unprecedented practices of allowing store managers to keep 40 percent of net profits and issuing stock to all employees, which allowed thousands of Luby's workers to achieve the American dream of honestly earned prosperity. The authors also plumb the depths of the Luby's drama, including a hushed-up theft that split the family for decades; the 1991 mass shooting at the Killeen Luby's, which splattered the company's good name across headlines nationwide; and the rapacious over-expansion that more than doubled the company's size in nine years (1987-1996), pushed it into bankruptcy, and drove president and CEO John Edward Curtis Jr. to violent suicide. Disproving F. Scott Fitzgerald's adage that "there are no second acts in American lives," House of Plenty tells the epic story of an iconic American institution that has risen, fallen, and found redemption-with no curtain call in sight.

In this collection of thirty-eight essays, Paul Bodine chronicles the often tumultuous history of key American companies from their inception to their dynamic present. From prominent industry giants like Qualcomm and Bloomberg to lesser-known leaders like Alex Lee Inc. and Standex International, these essays capture major trends, technologies, and personalities that have helped make the American business model the envy of the world. From the rise of DVDs, mobile telephony, and digital data to the evolution of steel minimills, enterprise resource planning software, and the convenience store, this collection provides vivid slices of the spirit, ingenuity, and drama of America's business history. A bonus section includes profiles of six leading European firms.

CONTENTS: Charters and Chartered Corporations -- The Hanseatic League -- Regulated and Joint Stock Companies The Merchants of the Staple The Fraternity (Brotherhood) of St. Thomas B Becket, Later Called the Company of the Merchant Adventurers of England The Russia Company The Eastland Company The Turkey (Levant) Company The East India Company (1600-1858) The Hudson Bay Company The Virginia and New England Companies and Provincial Charters Summary Account of the Guinea (Royal African) and Minor Chartered Companies

Reinventing the Wheel is the riveting, behind-the-scenes story of the enigmatic and cocksure inventor Dean Kamen and the Segway Human Transporter.

When Kamen invented the two-wheeled vehicle known to many by its code name, Ginger, he promised it would transform the face of personal transportation forever. But when this brilliant and driven inventor attempted to become an entrepreneur, a colossal power struggle ensued. Here, Steve Kemper takes you along for the wild ride. In Reinventing the Wheel, Kemper goes inside Kamen's world of technology development, where nerve and ingenuity collide with high finance and the bottom line.

This reprint of a classic work, originally published in 1878, documents the experience of a number of attempts to set up utopian "communistic" communities in America. It includes Shakers, the Amana community, Oneida, Ephrat, Harmonists, Robert Owen, the Perfectionists, and many others.