More Books.

Finished "Greed: Investment Fraud in Canada and Around the Globe" (no link available) this weekend. It was...ok. The author's claim to fame is she knew Chris Horne--a broker with RBC Dominion Securities who was convicted for fraud (taking $7 million out of client accounts, to be exact). I remember the story as I was with DS at the time of his conviction. Everyone was surprised, but when us brokers heard he is gay we breathed a collective sigh of relief. Thankfully he wasn't one of us! (Some of us will do anything to shield ourselves from a sensational and ugly story.) I would have liked to have learned more about his methods (as they did in Free Rider) so a bit of a disappointment.

Seemingly to make up for her lack of depth, she illustrated a few of the other big fraud cases in Canada and elsewhere: bucket-shop traders A.E. Manning, Nick Leeson and Mister Five Percent to name a few. I remember almost all of these events and it was good to get more than the papers were reporting (not to mention having it all in one place). That part was cool.

Now I'm on to Belly Up: The Spoils of Bankruptcy, which I probably should have read before The Vulture Investors as it seems to (with a few fits of what I found to be hilarious writing) lay down the history of bankrupcy and its preceedings for the last 2,000 years or so. (Did you know the limited liability company is only 150 years old: enacted by British statue in 1855?) Should be good.