About this product: Harry Markopolos and his team of financial sleuths discuss first-hand how they cracked the Madoff Ponzi scheme
No One Would Listen is the exclusive story of the Harry Markopolos-lead investigation into Bernie Madoff and his $65 billion Ponzi scheme. While a lot has been written about Madoff's scam, few actually know how Markopolos and his team-affectionately called "The Fox Hounds" by Markopolos himself, uncovered what Madoff was doing years before this financial disaster reached its pinnacle. Unfortunately, no one listened, until the damage of the world's largest financial fraud ever was irreversible.
Since that time, Markopolos openly has testified and questioned the enforcement and fraud investigation capabilities of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), shared a sliver of this page-turning story with 60 Minutes, and become perhaps the world's most visible and insightful whistleblower on fraud and conflicts of interest in financial markets.
Throughout the book, Markopolos and his Fox Hounds tell their first-hand story of investigating Madoff-with the help of bestselling author David Fisher. They explain how they discovered the fraud, and then how they provided credible and detailed evidence to major newspapers and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) many times between 2000 and 2008, only to have his warnings ignored repeatedly by the SEC.
Provides a firsthand account of how Markopolos uncovered Madoff's scam years before it actually fell apart
Discusses how the SEC missed the red flags raised by Markopolos
Describes how Madoff was enabled by investors and fiduciaries alike
The only book to tell the story of Madoff's scam and the SEC's failings by those who saw both first hand
Despite repeated written and verbal warnings to the SEC by Harry Markopolos, Bernie Madoff was allowed to continue his operations. No One Would Listen paints a vivid portrait of Markopolos and his determined team of financial sleuths, and what impact they will have on financial markets and financial regulation for decades to come.
A Timeline of a Take-Down Amazon-exclusive content from author Harry Markopolos
How long did it take to uncover and expose a $40 billion crook? Ten years.
1998-1999 • 1998: My Firm “discovers” Bernie Madoff • Late 1999: I am asked to reverse engineer Madoff’s returns
2000 • I knew he was a fraudster in 5 minutes • May: Submission to SEC Boston Regional Office’s Director of Enforcement with 12 Red Flags
2001 • January: Team Member Frank Casey recruits MAR Hedge investigative journalist Michael Ocrant onto the team during a chance meeting in Barcelona, Spain • March: My 2nd SEC Submission on how I think Madoff is running the scheme and his investment process • I offer to go undercover to assist the SEC • Apr: Michael Ocrant interviews Madoff • May: MAR Hedge publishes Madoff expose, “Madoff Tops Charts; skeptics ask how”; Barron’s publishes, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Bernie Madoff is so secretive, he even asks investors to keep mum”
2002 • Jun: Key trip to UK, France & Switzerland; met with 20 Fund of Funds & Private Client Banks: 14 have Madoff and report “special access to Madoff”; two have admitted Madoff losses – Dexia Asset Management and Fix Family Office; 12 have not admitted Madoff losses and all 12 were turned into SEC Chairwoman on Feb. 5, 2009; off-Shore funds attract three types of investors who won’t report losses or file SIPC claims with the US government
2003-2004 • E-mail records of investigation lost; attempting to recover data from non-functioning hard drives
2005 • Jun: Frank Casey discovers Madoff attempting to borrow money from European banks (first sign that Madoff scheme is in trouble) • Oct: Boston SEC’s Ed Manion arranges for 3rd SEC Submission • Oct: Meeting with Boston SEC Branch Chief Mike Garrity, who quickly investigates, finds irregularities, and forwards my submission to SEC’s New York Office • Nov: Boston Whistleblower calls NYC Branch Chief Meaghen Cheung and reveals his identity • Nov: 29 Red Flags submitted • Dec: I doubt NYC SEC’s ability, fear for my life, and contact Wall Street Journal and go to local law enforcement for protection
2006 • Jan: Integral Partners’ $40 million derivatives Ponzi Scheme goes to trial five years and five months after discovery, causing us to further doubt SEC competence • Sep: Chicago Board Options Exchange VP tells me that several OEX option traders also think Madoff is a fraudster; if SEC had called the CBOE’s marketing office, they would have cooperated
2007 • Feb 28: Neil Chelo obtains a Madoff portfolio which shows zero ability to earn a return • Jun: Casey obtains Wickford Fund LP prospectus showing Madoff is short of cash and offering a 3:1 leverage via bank loans, another clear warning sign that Madoff is running short of cash • Jul: Chelo obtains Fairfield Greenwich Sentry LP financial statements for 2004 – 2006 and discovers three year-end audits with three different auditors in three different countries! • Aug: Chelo conducts a 45 minute telephone interview with Fairfield Greenwich’s head of risk management; hedge funds all lose money except for Madoff!
2008 • Apr 2: Undelivered e-mail to Sokobin, SEC’s Director of Risk Assessment, entitled, “$30 Billion Equity Derivatives Hedge Fund Fraud in New York” • Dec 11: Madoff runs out of money, turns himself in • Dec 12: SEC insider calls me and warns “watch your back, Operation Cover-up has begun.”
2009 • Feb 4: My U.S. House testimony followed by SEC’s senior staff and FINRA acting CEO • Sep 4: 477-page SEC IG Report on the Madoff Fiasco released • Sep 10: I testify before US Senate Banking Committee with SEC IG
About this product: “Beware of geeks bearing formulas.” --Warren Buffett  In March of 2006, the world’s richest men sipped champagne in an opulent New York hotel.  They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with million-dollar stakes, but those numbers meant nothing to them.  They were accustomed to risking billions.   At the card table that night was Peter Muller, an eccentric, whip-smart whiz kid who’d studied theoretical mathematics at Princeton and now managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDTâ¦when he wasn’t playing his keyboard for morning commuters on the New York subway.  With him was Ken Griffin, who as an undergraduate trading convertible bonds out of his Harvard dorm room had outsmarted the Wall Street pros and made money in one of the worst bear markets of all time.  Now he was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Investment Group, one of the most powerful money machines on earth. There too were Cliff Asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund AQR, a man as famous for his computer-smashing rages as for his brilliance, and Boaz Weinstein, chess life-master and king of the credit default swap, who while juggling $30 billion worth of positions for Deutsche Bank found time for frequent visits to Las Vegas with the famed MIT card-counting team.   On that night in 2006, these four men and their cohorts were the new kings of Wall Street.  Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a  new breed, the quants.  Over the prior twenty years, this species of math whiz --technocrats who make billions not with gut calls or fundamental analysis but with formulas and high-speed computers-- had usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk-takers who’d long been the alpha males the world’s largest casino.  The quants believed that a dizzying, indecipherable-to-mere-mortals cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets.  And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift billions around the globe with the click of a mouse.   Few realized that night, though, that in creating this unprecedented machine, men like Muller, Griffin, Asness and Weinstein had sowed the seeds for history’s greatest financial disaster.   Drawing on unprecedented access to these four number-crunching titans, The Quants tells the inside story of what they thought and felt in the days and weeks when they helplessly watched much of their net worth vaporize – and wondered just how their mind-bending formulas and genius-level IQ’s had led them so wrong, so fast.  Had their years of success been dumb luck, fool’s gold, a good run that could come to an end on any given day?  What if The Truth they sought -- the secret of the markets -- wasn’t knowable? Worse, what if there wasn’t any Truth?  In The Quants, Scott Patterson tells the story not just of these men, but of Jim Simons, the reclusive founder of the most successful hedge fund in history; Aaron Brown, the quant who used his math skills to humiliate Wall Street’s old guard at their trademark game of Liar’s Poker, and years later found himself with a front-row seat to the rapid emergence of mortgage-backed securities; and gadflies and dissenters such as Paul Wilmott, Nassim Taleb, and Benoit Mandelbrot.   With the immediacy of today’s NASDAQ close and the timeless power of a Greek tragedy, The Quants is at once a masterpiece of explanatory journalism, a gripping tale of ambition and hubrisâ¦and an ominous warning about Wall Street’s future.  Â
About this product: A brilliant accountâcharacter-rich and darkly humorousâof how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff. Truth really is stranger than fiction. Who better than the author of the signature bestseller Liarâs Poker to explain how the event we were told was impossibleâthe free fall of the American economyâfinally occurred; how the things that we wanted, like ridiculously easy money and greatly expanded home ownership, were vehicles for that crash; and how shareholder demand for profit forced investment executives to eat the forbidden fruit of toxic derivatives.
Michael Lewisâs splendid cast of characters includes villains, a few heroes, and a lot of people who look very, very foolish: high government officials, including the watchdogs; heads of major investment banks (some overlap here with previous category); perhaps even the face in your mirror. In this trenchant, raucous, irresistible narrative, Lewis writes of the goats and of the few who saw what the emperor was wearing, and gives them, most memorably, what they deserve. He proves yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times. .
About this product: A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in Americaâs financial history by an acclaimed New York Times Reporter
Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the worldâs economy.
âWeâve got to get some foam down on the runway!â a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the worldâs financial system would experience.
Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing never disclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were âtoo big to fail,â it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail.
Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. This book proves that premise wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes--from medieval currency debasements to today's subprime catastrophe. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, leading economists whose work has been influential in the policy debate concerning the current financial crisis, provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations. The authors draw important lessons from history to show us how much--or how little--we have learned.
Using clear, sharp analysis and comprehensive data, Reinhart and Rogoff document that financial fallouts occur in clusters and strike with surprisingly consistent frequency, duration, and ferocity. They examine the patterns of currency crashes, high and hyperinflation, and government defaults on international and domestic debts--as well as the cycles in housing and equity prices, capital flows, unemployment, and government revenues around these crises. While countries do weather their financial storms, Reinhart and Rogoff prove that short memories make it all too easy for crises to recur.
An important book that will affect policy discussions for a long time to come, This Time Is Different exposes centuries of financial missteps.
About this product: A practical guide to preparing for the next phase of the financial meltdown
From the authors who were the first to predict Phase I of our current economic downturn-in their landmark 2006 book, America's Bubble Economy-comes their insightful sequel discussing their predictions for the next phase of the Bubble Economy.
It may seem like the worst has come and gone, but it hasn't. With their proven track record of accurate predictions-which most financial professionals and economists missed-the authors explain how and why the next phase of the financial meltdown is about to hit. Things are not going back to how they were before. Instead, we are moving through uncharted territory, with new challenges and opportunities that few people can anticipate. Written in a straightforward and accessible style, Aftershock shows readers how to seek safety and profits in these dynamic economic conditions.
Discusses how to protect assets, businesses, and jobs before and during the second wave of financial meltdown
Provides clear and accurate advice on how to profit from the collapsing bubbles
Offer focused guidance regarding real estate, which will continue to be a pressing concern for many
The authors' first book was chosen by Kiplinger's as one of the 30 Best Business Books of 2006, and its accuracy has been hailed by Paul Farrell of Dow Jones MarketWatch when he said "America's Bubble Economy's Predictions, though ignored, were accurate." Don't miss out on these time tested author's proven advice for how to mange your money during the coming financial meltdown.
About this product: An incisive look at the global economic crisis, our flawed response, and the implications for the worldâs future prosperity. The Great Recession, as it has come to be called, has impacted more people worldwide than any crisis since the Great Depression. Flawed government policy and unscrupulous personal and corporate behavior in the United States created the current financial meltdown, which was exported across the globe with devastating consequences. The crisis has sparked an essential debate about Americaâs economic missteps, the soundness of this countryâs economy, and even the appropriate shape of a capitalist system.
Few are more qualified to comment during this turbulent time than Joseph E. Stiglitz. Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Stiglitz is âan insanely great economist, in ways you canât really appreciate unless youâre deep into the fieldâ (Paul Krugman, New York Times). In Freefall, Stiglitz traces the origins of the Great Recession, eschewing easy answers and demolishing the contention that America needs more billion-dollar bailouts and free passes to those âtoo big to fail,â while also outlining the alternatives and revealing that even now there are choices ahead that can make a difference. The system is broken, and we can only fix it by examining the underlying theories that have led us into this new âbubble capitalism.â
Ranging across a host of topics that bear on the crisis, Stiglitz argues convincingly for a restoration of the balance between government and markets. America as a nation faces huge challengesâin health care, energy, the environment, education, and manufacturingâand Stiglitz penetratingly addresses each in light of the newly emerging global economic order. An ongoing war of ideas over the most effective type of capitalist system, as well as a rebalancing of global economic power, is shaping that order. The battle may finally give the lie to theories of a ârationalâ market or to the view that Americaâs global economic dominance is inevitable and unassailable.
For anyone watching with indignation while a reckless Wall Street destroyed homes, educations, and jobs; while the government took half-steps hoping for a âjust-enoughâ recovery; and while bankers fell all over themselves claiming not to have seen what was coming, then sought government bailouts while resisting regulation that would make future crises less likely, Freefall offers a clear accounting of why so many Americans feel disillusioned today and how we can realize a prosperous economy and a moral society for the future. .
About this product: Personal finance author and lecturer Robert T. Kiyosaki developed his unique economic perspective from two very different influences - his two fathers. This text lays out Kiyosaki's philosophy and his relationship with money.
The success stories speak for themselves in this book from money maestro Dave Ramsey. Instead of promising the normal dose of quick fixes, Ramsey offers a bold, no-nonsense approach to money matters, providing not only the how-to but also a grounded and uplifting hope for getting out of debt and achieving total financial health.
Ramsey debunks the many myths of money (exposing the dangers of cash advance, rent-to-own, debt consolidation) and attacks the illusions and downright deceptions of the American dream, which encourages nothing but overspending and massive amounts of debt. "Don't even consider keeping up with the Joneses," Ramsey declares in his typically candid style. "They're broke!"
The Total Money Makeover isn't theory. It works every single time. It works because it is simple. It works because it gets to the heart of the money problems: you.
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