Summary of John Brooks's The Go-Go Years

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 On April 22, 1970, Henry Ross Perot of Dallas, Texas, suffered a paper stock-market loss of about $450 million. He still had, on paper, almost a billion dollars left after the loss, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that his one-day loss amounted to more than the total assets of any charitable foundation in the country.
#2 On April 22, Earth Day, a group of conservationist leaders had picked April 22 as a day of national dedication to the cause of eliminating pollution.
#3 The first My Lai revelations were five months old, and the New Haven riot was about to begin that same day. The stock market had fallen drastically, and the dollar was in bad shape in the international markets.
#4 The parallels between the crashes of 1929 and 1969 are clear. In each case, there were insider manipulators who used privileged information and superior market technique to manipulate stock prices and deceive the public.

Sujets

• Securities
• Investments
• Economie gestion
• General officer
• Economics
• Business
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 08 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822504264
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on John Brooks's The Go-Go Years
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

On April 22, 1970, Henry Ross Perot of Dallas, Texas, suffered a paper stock-market loss of about $450 million. He still had, on paper, almost a billion dollars left after the loss, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that his one-day loss amounted to more than the total assets of any charitable foundation in the country.

#2

On April 22, Earth Day, a group of conservationist leaders had picked April 22 as a day of national dedication to the cause of eliminating pollution.

#3

The first My Lai revelations were five months old, and the New Haven riot was about to begin that same day. The stock market had fallen drastically, and the dollar was in bad shape in the international markets.

#4

The parallels between the crashes of 1929 and 1969 are clear. In each case, there were insider manipulators who used privileged information and superior market technique to manipulate stock prices and deceive the public.

#5

On April 29, 1970, a group of medical students and faculty members from several New York City colleges came to Wall Street to demonstrate for peace. They were greeted warmly by the vicar of Trinity Church, Donald R. Woodward.

#6

On Friday, May 4, 1970, thousands of students from New York University, Hunter College, and the city’s public high schools descended on Wall Street to protest the war in Vietnam and the imprisonment of Panthers. They were met by construction workers wearing orange and yellow hard hats, who were there to protect the financial district.

#7

The Wall Street riot of 1970 occurred just before noon, when most of the elite working population was not on the street. The market was unaffected. Most of Wall Street’s elite working population watched the carnage from high, safe windows.

#8

There was little Wall Street could have done to help the protesters that day, but the symbolic aspect of their role as spectators was clear: they sympathized with the underdogs, but kept their hands clean.

#9

Wall Street, as a political issue, was dead. The Old Left had stopped attacking Wall Street long ago, and the New Left simply ignored it.

#10

Wall Street was the embodiment of everything America was beginning to reject. It was a simplified, idealized version of the older and now largely discredited America, unrelated or even antipathetic to the new America that was struggling to come into being.

#11

Wall Street, which had been the first place in the nation to be physically ungreened, was also the first place in the nation to be spiritually ungreened. While the Wall Street kings played out their classic dramas behind the high windows, the vassals, footmen, and ladies-in-waiting were short of the little satisfactions that make life bearable.

#12

Ross Perot, the billionaire who ran for president in 1992 as a third-party candidate, was a perfect Western populist. He felt a fear and suspicion toward city slickers, including those in Wall Street. He had grown up believing that the frontier still dominated American life.

#13

Perot was a pioneer who made his way upriver and overland to New Boston, Texas, where he had hacked out a clearing, hewed timber, and built a trading post and general store. He had no investors or backers, and his initial investment was $1,000. But persistence and salesmanship paid off.

#14

Perot’s education in the ways of the slickers began in 1968 when the investment bankers began trying to sell his company’s stock. He agreed to sell it at $16. 50 a share, which was 118 times current E. D. S. earnings and an infinite number times current dividends.

#15

Perot’s interest in Wall Street grew as his wealth grew. He would talk to Langone by phone from Dallas every working day, and visit in person whenever he could.

#16

Perot was a moral billionaire who gave away his fortune to improve American life. He was a hypocrite, however, because he did not have knowledge that he was committing an offense.

#17

The over-the-counter market, which was the market in which E. D. S. was traded, was a perfect arena for the feeding of lions and the ingestion of Christians. It was policed only negligently by the overworked and understaffed S. E. C.

#18

The stock market crash of 1987, known as the 1987 crash, was the result of a bear raid on E. D. S. stock. The price fell sharply, and the company was vulnerable. No one can prove that there was an organized raid, but it appears that there was.

#19

The investing public, with its thousands rather than billions, had suddenly become interested in hot stocks at the height of the boom, and had bought E. D. S. near its top. However, many small investors had come in later, buying from the professionals after the stock had been talked about in brokerage offices and pushed by the eager commission producers.

#20

The E. D. S. crash and Perot’s dizzying personal loss were symbolic of the 1970 panic. It was a single event that stood out in memory, like Richard Whitney’s appearance on the Exchange floor to bid 205 for Steel on behalf of the bankers’ pool, at the height of the panic on October 24, 1929.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

In 1960, the market was in a euphoric New Year’s Eve mood, and on the last day of 1960, the stock averages were up 15 percent from their October lows. By mid-February, the market was up almost 25 percent from its lows.

#2

The classic way of bull markets is to begin when investors become preoccupied with the idea that the market is undervalued. The preoccupation and appetite are just beginning to build up. In the second quarter, there came a sharp business recovery, but that did not matter to avid stock purchasers.

#3

The American Stock Exchange, Wall Street’s second largest exchange, was scandalized in 1961. It was the successor to the old Curb Market, which had been conducted outdoors since the Civil War until 1921. In 1953, under the leadership of its new, modern-minded president, Edward T. McCormick, it renamed itself the American Stock Exchange and became a pillar of Wall Street.

#4

The Amex had been infiltrated by two particularly implausible swindlers, Lowell McAfee Birrell and Alexander Guterma, alias Sandy McSande. Birrell was the son of a small-town Presbyterian minister who had left the gilded cage of Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft to become perhaps the leading wrecker of corporations and deluder of investors in the postwar era.

#5

The Amex drama of 1961 began when the S. E. C. charged the Re family, who together formed the largest firm of specialists, with stock market manipulation. It was generally accepted that the specialist was necessary to supply liquidity on stock exchanges, so long as most specialists were able to make a decent living while discharging their public responsibilities fairly.

#6

The Res were not the only ones guilty of manipulating the stock market. The S. E. C. charged that the father and son had abused their fiduciary duties in just about every conceivable way, reaping a personal profit of $3 million. They had made special deals with unethical company heads to distribute unregistered stock.

#7

The Amex scandal showed that the Res had copied the methods of the manipulators in the bad old days. The authorities were a breed, with President Ted McCormick, Arizona-born of an Irish father and a Spanish mother, being one of the most prominent examples.

#8

The reasons why the Establishment sheltered the Res brothers can only be speculated on. It was not chauvinism, as the Res were of Italian extraction. It was not a case of conspiracy for profit, as there is no evidence that the Amex officials shared in the Res’ money.

#9

The S. E. C. report pointed out that as early as 1957, a federal court had enjoined the Res against further violations of the Securities Acts and trading in the stock of Swan-Finch. In 1958, the Amex’s Business Conduct Committee had voted to suspend Jerry Re from trading.

#10

Wall Street is a world of big men, those who came to it from outside with a driving need for money and power. They are the ones who bring innovations and variations to the craft of money-making, and they become the richest.

#11

Jackson, as the president of the Amex, was largely responsible for the company’s moral decline. He was a liberal by instinct and a philosopher by choice. He had always liked Jerry Re, in the rough-and-ready manner of Amex friendships, but now he was concerned about McCormick.

#12

Jackson demanded that McCormick resign, and the president refused. The two went on to argue their case in the newspapers, and Jackson was warned not to press the matter of McCormick’s resignation any further.

#13

The House hearings in July 1957 were held to investigate the stock market manipulation of the Res, and both Reilly and McCormick testified in public.