Insider trading and other financial crimes are complex, hard to detect, very lucrative and, in absence of strong government regulation, it could also become rampant!
This is a crime thriller story featuring a ring of high profile Wall Street financiers who racked up billions in illegal profits at the expense of tax payers and small investors in the 1980's, before crashing and burning at the hands of dedicated, honest and lowly paid law enforcement officers.

The book has a satisfying level of technical details for finance gurus and a satisfying level of character development details for drama aficionados.

It is a great read

James B. Stewart makes the world of insider trading, arbitrage, junk bonds, parking cash and hostile takeovers understandable and even exciting. This book reads more like a mystery thriller than an expose of financial crimes in the mid-80s. It is rich in amazing detail, so much so that sometimes you lose track of all the conspirators, government agents, and attorneys.
Embarrassingly, many of the high-rollers who committed these crimes were Jews, driven by unmitigated greed and without moral compass. Given all the many millions of dollars these insiders made at taxpayer expense and the detriment of the economy as a whole, these perpetrators received relatively light sentences of having to pay back some of the ill-gotten gains and serving a short time in jail. Grand theft auto of a few thousand dollars would have earned these criminals a harsher sentence than they received for these financial crimes.

One of the finer books that deals with securities fraud because it describes the ways in which the players committed their crimes and then in the second part goes into the legal machinations of how the players dealt with their prosecutions in this insider trading scandal of Milken, Boesky, Siegel, Levine, in the 1980s. Reads like a Michael Lewis account of the greed and criminality involved in illegally trading non-public information to manipulate stock prices and leverage buy-outs; parking stocks to evade taxes. This is a detailed, well-written book about securities fraud, the first part describing the illegal actions of the players, and the second part about the prosecution of such players. This is an invigorating and illuminating book, dense but intriguing.

This book is very dense and at times dry with such significant levels of detail. I enjoyed that aspect, however, as this book is an incredibly thorough account of a shocking ring of insider trading. It reads as more of a history book, but still offers suspense. Some of the (true) events in the book are so outlandish, it felt like I was reading a fictional crime novel. It took a while to get through this book, but it was worth every minute.

Great read about the junk bond industry that dominated the 80s.

Main players:
Ivan Boskey - Arb
Michael Milken
Martin Siegel
Dennis Levine

It was interesting to see Rudy Giuliani involved in this lawsuit.

I always wonder how much more widespread things were. Like, the justice system will only bring charges on individuals who have enough evidence to charge. What % of the rest of the industry was participating in the same behaviors? Did other big names (Akerman, Ichan, Rosenthal, etc) just throw these people under the bus?

A lesson from this book: don't snitch. The people who gave info to the gov were blackballed from the industry and had to find new jobs.

Infuriating account of the brazen crime committed on the notorious Wall Street of the 80s. Tightly written, and filled with historical details. If not for the efforts of the good folk at the SEC and the justice department who fought through public vilification and corporate smear campaigns to ultimately do what was right, this would have been a very depressing read. And yet, different flavors of crime committed by those who seek and wield power on Wall Street undoubtedly continue to happen today, robbing the millions of Americans who earnestly invest their money to realize their hopes and dreams and retirements.

I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads, even though it wasn't a 5-star read. It was, however, a very important read. The extent of corruption in the securities market is something every American should be aware of. The multitude of ways people can hide their money in foreign accounts, make investments under false names and get away with it is horrifying. Yes, this "den of thieves" got caught, but I'm certain there are smaller fish out there earning less money, and getting away with it

I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads, even though it wasn't a 5-star read. It was, however, a very important read. The extent of corruption in the securities market is something every American should be aware of. The multitude of ways people can hide their money in foreign accounts, make investments under false names and get away with it is horrifying. Yes, this "den of thieves" got caught, but I'm certain there are smaller fish out there earning less money, and getting away with it.

In the end, even though these men were caught, paid huge fines, and spent time in prison, they returned to society very wealthy and able to live a lavish life again. Michael Milken, the biggest fish caught, spent 2 years in prison, of his 10-year sentence, and it 2016 had a net worth of $2.5 billion. Was the punishment enough? Not for me.

Apparently he has changed his style, and is now working for "good". "In a November 2004 cover article, Fortune magazine called him "The Man Who Changed Medicine" for changes in approach to funding and results that he initiated." (Wikipedia, 24-Mar-2018). It's well and good that he's now putting his genius mind toward worthy causes, but it still isn't fair that he destroyed the finances of so many people, affected the US economy to such an extent, and is now living a life style that most people dream of.

This book is long, and full of details about who put how much money into which security, who leaked inside information to who, and who is covering whose back, etc. Parts of it grab your attention so that you can't put it down, but for a layperson like me, there were more details than I cared to read.

Just like the movies, the tale of the crime is far more engaging than the final indictments and legal fallout. For the first 300 pages, Stewart perfectly creates a thorough and complete historical document and an engrossing financial thriller. Ultimately, once all the crime and initial detective work had been accounted for, the final 200 pages of prosecution and trials became a bit of a slog to read.

I'd still recommend anyone interested in financial crimes read this book even while knowing how difficult it was to finish. Stewart's account remains thorough throughout and the most important takeaway is acknowledging how difficult it was for prosecutors to finalize sentence Milken, despite the enormity of the conspiracy built up over the engaging half of the book.

Fascinating history of the 1987 stock market crash. As a young professional, I remember the event but certainly didn't understand what was behind it. the punchline is in the middle of this book: "Black Monday didn't usher in a Nationwide recession. It was a psychological breakdown rather than an economic one. Corporate earnings remained strong." This is the story of a network of traders conspiring to manipulate stock prices by orchestrating corporate takeovers and profiting from that manipulation. The book is dense and the network was extremely complex, so it was a challenge to fully understand, which is partially helped by the "cast of characters" at the beginning and the chronology at the end. A bit of googling of the characters revealed that while they did some time (very little) and paid enormous fines, they have ultimately lived lives of extreme wealth and privilege.

Good account of the insider trading scandal that rocked the financial markets in the late 80's (greed is good). The first half of the book outlines all the deals that were made whilst the second half deals with the fallout of this and the legal cases that followed. Good but at times can get a bit ponderous and dragging (especially in the first half where it's deal after deal involving lots of zeroes), and despite the heavy penalties imposed upon the guilty parties we still ended up with the GFC of 2007 and sub-prime mortgage crises - same greed and avarice just a different area.

This was a struggle! If you're a reader who only feels right when they can leave a book at a chapter mark, you will too! :)

A seriously in-depth and well constructed analysis of the Wall Street shenanigans of the late 80's, it's easy to be completely floored by the sheer amount of funds being thrown around on every page. Stewart has clearly done his homework and compiled an excellent inside-story of greed, arrogance and ignorance.

I was enthralled as the house of cards was built higher and higher than it was every designed to go, and it was exhilarating to watch the cards near the bottom removed one by one before the whole thing came tumbling down.

The books' main narrative largely covers an even more exciting one for this reader: the tension and relationships between the criminals and those charged with ensuring they pay for the damage they've caused. The line can so easily be blurred or forgotten when any party prioritises its own gains above the others. While you can understand the rationale for some decisions, they were ominously close to the outcome of the actions by the people under investigation.

To paraphrase George Shaw: If you try to wrestle with a pig, you're going to get dirty.

This would have attracted five stars if the chapters were half the length.