Wall Street: How It Works And for Whom

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Needs an Editor

The Truth

Illuminating

An informed view of Wall Street from a leftist perspective

A must-read book on finance!

Wall Street: How It Works And for Whom
Doug Henwood
Manufacturer: Diane Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Corporate Finance | Finance | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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Book Description

A scathing dissection of the wheeling and dealing in the world's greatest financial center. Spot rates, zero coupons, blue chips, futures, options on futures, indexes, options on indexes. The vocabulary of a financial market can seem arcane, even impenetrable. Yet despite its opacity, financial news and comment is ubiquitous. Major national newspapers devote pages of newsprint to the financial sector and television news invariably features a visit to the market for the latest prices. Does this prodigious flow of information have significance for anyone except the tiny percentage of people who have significant holdings of stocks or bonds? And if it does, can non-specialists ever hope to understand what the markets are up to? To these questions Wall Street answers an emphatic yes. Its author Doug Henwood is a notorious scourge of the stock exchange in the pages of his acerbic publication Left Business Observer. The Newsletter has received wide acclamation from J.K. Galbraith, among others, and occasional less favorable comment. Norman Pearlstine, then executive editor of the Wall Street Journal, lamented, `You are scum ... it's tragic that you exist.' With compelling clarity, Henwood dissects the world's greatest financial center, laying open the intricacies of how, and for whom, the market works. The Wall Street which emerges is not a pretty sight. Hidden from public view, the markets are poorly regulated, badly managed, chronically myopic and often corrupt. And though, as Henwood reveals, their activity contributes almost nothing to the real economy where goods are made and jobs created, they nevertheless wield enormous power. With over a trillion dollars a day crossing the wires between the world's banks, Wall Street and its sister financial centers don't just influence government, effectively they are the government.

Customer Reviews:

Needs an Editor.......2004-03-03

Journalist Doug Henwood has produced an interesting book on U.S. financial markets. Written from a left-wing point of view, Henwood contends that these markets do not raise capital for new investments or improve corporate governance. Instead, he argues that their primary function is to enable manic corporate restructurings that accomplish little besides shifting additional wealth to rentiers who already have plenty of it. Henwood relies mainly on the research of others.

The good news about "Wall Street" is that Henwood is witty and iconoclastic. The bad news is that having these traits doesn't mean that he can put together a good book. His bloated and repetitive text mixes statistics, polemics, anecdotes, biz school research, and potted discussions of Keynes, Marx and Minsky (and Freud!). The mish-mash of data definitely informs and entertains the reader (hence my rating of 4 stars) but never systematically establishes Henwood's core thesis about the parasitism of Wall Street. The book is worth reading but mainly for readers with a background in finance or economics who can separate the wheat from the chaff.

The Truth.......2003-08-26

First a word about the publishing house: Verso Publishing is probably the finest publishing house in the world. When in a bind simply pick up any one of their titles and one cannot go wrong. It's imperative to read at least a few of their books at least once.

Henwood's "Wall Street" blows the lid off high finance like few other works. It's the definitive critical analysis (along with some of William Greider's books) of the high circles of wealthy investors.

Throughout "Wall Street" it rips apart the Federal Reserve Board and exposes its gritty innards. Henwood demonstrates that the Fed is an undemocratic institution that's obsessed with any hints of labor militancy, its biggest fear being wage inflation.

The Monetary School is also dissected by Henwood, being exposed as the fraudulent theory it truly is (or clever ruling class idealogy). He points out that the Monetarist's ostensibly blamed the federal government for the Great Depression. Of course this has the fascinating effect of letting capitalism completely off the hook. The concepts of over productivity and income polarization, which were the defining characteristics of the 1920s, are rarely to be found in their school of thought.

Constant pressure by Wall Street for ever higher stock prices is what spurred most of the downsizing during the last decade according to Henwood. He smartly points out that this pressure for quick profit growth can often squelch research and development and investment projects which would benefit society. Because shareholders may very well deem these projects irrelevant to short-term profit growth.

Underlying "Wall Street" throughout Henwood continually pays homage to Karl Marx and some of his incredibly accurate predictions. He also demolishes old shibboleths such as the well worn canard that higher wages automatically translate into reduced employment opportunities, or that rising stock prices always mean a rosy economic picture for the general population. "Wall Street" proves that rising stock prices can often coincide with a poor economy for the masses.

Henwood documents the fraudulent work done by professional money managers who'd be better off throwing darts at a dart board than using their investment "skills" when making investment decisions for clients.

Some of the most important and informative sections deal with the rising consumer debt of the average American citizen. Being leveraged to the hilt, the family unit has basically been turned into a player in a giant Ponzi scheme. Capitalism in the United States desperately relies on credit-financed consumption to stay afloat.

Most books dealing with such an overarching topic give a paltry and dissatisfying "What is to be Done" final chapter. This isn't the case for "Wall Street." Henwood offers up many concrete and plausible solutions. Finally at one point asserting that an authentic financial transformation must be made along with an attack on capitalist social power in general.

Illuminating.......2002-11-24

Critics of America's financial system (capitalism) have pointed to economic deficiencies such as recessions, depressions, unemployment (and underemployment) and so forth as cracks in the system, and with a lot of these cracks popping up recently I've become more interested in the financial system and what's wrong with it. Doug Henwood's book "Wall Street" is very helpful in that respect. We also see a picture of economic history that for some reason we don't see in the news much: over the past thirty years, hours worked have increased, productivity has increased enormously, wealth for the rich has increased enormously but household debt has exploded as hourly wages (inflation-adjusted) have fallen. This is a very interesting trend which I didn't even know about until I read Henwood's book. I guess I'd heard people mention it in passing, but until he lays out the data, where it came from (BLS, Federal Reserve, NBER etc.), puts it on charts etc. it doesn't really hit you as being real as opposed to rhetoric.

Economic books can be dry reading, thus Henwood's wit helps make the reading more enjoyable. Henwood's sympathies also seem to lay with working class people over the rich who the financial markets usually serve, which makes reading easier as well as I don't have to read every passage critically wondering if he is trying to BS me into believing something that's against my interest to believe. This book got me interested in Henwood's other ventures - his newsletter, magazine, radio show, web site, mailing list etc. and they are all interesting as well. I hope every American reads this so they can understand better how this economic system works - after all, the fact that you spend most of your time in life working in order to get money means that *understanding* how money works is one of the more important things in life, right?

An informed view of Wall Street from a leftist perspective.......2001-12-18

I have worked on Wall Street and I have to say this gives a pretty decent macroeconomic view of Wall Street. He explains stocks, bonds, derivatives, currencies, the Federal Reserve, Bretton Woods, the (in)efficiency of markets and many other topics. He then interprets what these things mean from a leftist perspective. The financial world is heavily right wing and accuses the left wing of not understanding how economics work and thus why the right wing is right about economics. This book will demystify acronyms like LIBOR, GDP and CAPM, and explain to you in Wall Street terminology how the rich are robbing the working class in this country (and the world) blind. Henwood's book, like Marx's Capital, is at heart an economic treatise with political ideas sandwiched in between the economic data and analysis. I said at the beginning I have worked on Wall Street and that is the truth - once you see the machine up close, or even become a cog in the machine, you realize how right people like Mr. Henwood really are.

A must-read book on finance!.......2000-08-22

Toward the end of the second Big Bull market of the 20th century U.S. (the first was in the 1920s), it's refreshing to read a book whose author doesn't fall for the hype. Henwood's critical analysis is extremely illuminating even to those who disagree with his political perspective (which is unfashionable left-of-center). His prose is as clear as can be. His focus is all-important: what is the impact of Wall Street's prosperity on the rest of us?

Wall Street: How it Works and for Whom. (book reviews): An article from: Multinational Monitor

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Wall Street: How it Works and for Whom. (book reviews): An article from: Multinational Monitor
Robert Weissman
Manufacturer: Essential Information, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000986Q1K
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Multinational Monitor, published by Essential Information, Inc. on January 1, 1998. The length of the article is 947 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Wall Street: How it Works and for Whom. (book reviews)
Author: Robert Weissman
Publication: Multinational Monitor (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1998
Publisher: Essential Information, Inc.
Volume: v19 Issue: n1-2 Page: p38(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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