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From Publishers Weekly

Never mind Enron—corruption, fraud and towering incompetence are Wall Street's daily bread and butter, insists this lively j'accuse. Ex-_BusinessWeek_ reporter Weiss (_Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street_) details the myriad ways the financial industry preys on small investors. Scraping the bottom are the boiler-room operators who peddle worthless microcap stocks over the phone and the "paid research" outfits hired by companies to tout their stocks under the guise of independent analysis. But the author finds plenty of chicanery at the pinnacle of Wall Street probity, blue-chip mutual funds, which, he contends, charge exorbitant fees and pay kickbacks to brokers to steer customers their way—while yielding a markedly worse return than market indexes. He also pillories the industry's toothless watchdogs—the New York Stock Exchange, a business media addicted to hype and puffery, and a do-nothing Securities and Exchange Commission. (Weiss's savaging of oft-lionized ex-SEC chairman Arthur Levitt is particularly vicious and funny.) The author sometimes meanders, and his cures for the rot—empowered short-selling and investor grousing on the Internet—seem pretty feeble. But Weiss's wise-guy attitude and muckraking chops make for a devastating broadside. (Apr. 6)
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From

If you're like half of America, and you own stocks, either directly or through mutual funds, IRAs, or 401(k)s, you may not want to hear what Weiss has to say about the industry--but you'd better read it anyway, for your own good. Weiss, an award-winning investigative journalist, formerly with Business Week, refuses to toe the party line. He describes practices we thought were confined to the fringe dark side of The Street, such as boiler room fraud; overpaid, uncaring fund managers; ineffectual SEC regulations; and Wild West-style hedge funds. The wall that is supposed to separate CEOs, analysts, underwriters, and the media has long disappeared, according to Weiss, as these forces cozy up to form a coalition designed to separate you from your money. If this all sounds too tough to beat, Weiss describes a way to fight back--for instance, place funds in an unmanaged index fund and beat more than half the managers "playing" the market right off the bat. Traders will enjoy the behind-the-scenes look at the war between short sellers and just about everybody else. David Siegfried
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