Pump and Dump

Book excerpt: Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing - the mere mention of these companies brings forth images of scandal, fraud, and large-scale corruption. But do these dark stars in media stories represent a few isolated cases or does their extensive nature of the misconduct provide evidence of a regulatory black hole in the so-called New Economy? In Pump and Dump: The Rancid Rules of the New Economy, Robert H. Tillman and Michael L. Indergaard argue that these scandals represent only the symptoms of corporate governance problem that began in the 1990s as New Economy pundits claimed that advances in technology and forms of business organization were changing the rules. A decade later, it looked more like a case of no rules. Endless revelations fraud in the wake of corporate bankruptcies left ordinary investors bewildered a employees with little or nothing. Tillman and Indergaard observe that victims were taken in by organized behavior that calls mind pump and dump schemes where shadowy swindlers push penny stocks. (financial analysts, bankers, and accountants) illegible] used powerful institutional levers to pump the value of stock - duping investors while insiders illegible] their holdings for fantastic profits. The authors explain how it was that so much of corporate America came to resemble a two securities scam by focusing on the rules that mattered in three critical industries - energy illegible] telecommunications, and dot-coms. Free-market hype and policies at the national level set the to While Wall Street wrapped itself in star-spangled packaging and celebrated its illegible] democratization, in the real halls of democracy congressional allies of business gutted protection for ordinary investors. In the regulatory vacuum that resulted, regulators and auditors who illegible] supposed to watch corporations instead promoted New Economy doctrines and worked with illegible] to endorse their firms as New Economy contenders. Ringleaders in the inner circles that illegible] fraud made their own rules, which they enforced through a mix of bribery and bullying. like Social illegible] Pump and Dump offers a path-breaking analysis of America's most urgent economic problems: a system that relies on self-regulation and the rancid politics that continue to support the short-term illegible] of financial elites over the long-term interests of most Americans.