Sign says Washington Mutual is a has-been originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

CNBC offered a list of some must-read exposés on the inner workings of Corporate America. Among the picks: Conspiracy of Fools, about Enron (and my second favorite book of all time behind A Separate Peace), Barbarians at the Gate, Liar's Poker and The Predator's Ball. These are all excellent books, and I'm embarrassed to say I've read every book on CNBC's list, which is probably part of the reason I don't have a girlfriend. However, I have some additional favorite Wall Street exposés. Oftentimes, you can learn as much about investing reading these books as you can reading the more expository books; and these ones are about 20 times more interesting:

Andy Kessler's Running Money and Wall Street Meat: These two cover the author's exploits as an analyst working alongside the likes of Jack Grubman, and his later career as a hedge fund manager focused on Silicon Valley stocks. They read crisply, and are great for the beach.

Once in Golconda and The Go-Go Years, both by John Brooks: These two, along with anything else published under the Wiley Investment Classics label are great. The first covers Wall Street from the Roaring Twenties through the Great Depression, and the second covers the Go-Go 1960s, when momo-managers like General Tsai rose rapidly, and then crashed just as quickly. Order the Wiley edition so you get Michael Lewis's foreword.

Continue reading Books that expose Corporate America

Books that expose Corporate America originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 02 Apr 2007 19:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The "Net Neutrality" debate is confusing, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Andy Kessler from The Weekly Standard calls the issue "bizarre" and "hard to understand" and opines: "both sides are off their rocker." He argues that the answer is not regulation. The telcos and cable companies, he says, are loathe to upgrade their networks -- it's expensive, and, why would they without the government stepping in? They want neutrality regulations to be quelled because "without the ability to extract money from the webbies for the use of their not-so-fast Alexander Graham Bell-era wires (forget that you and I already overpay for this), AT&T or Verizon might not have any business model going forward."

Kessler's "modest proposal" is creative and a little diabolical (ergo: I love it). "Maybe the incumbent network providers--the Verizons, Comcasts, AT&Ts--can be made to compete; threatening to seize their stagnating networks via eminent domain is just one creative idea to get them to do this. A truly competitive, non-neutral network could work, but only if we know its real economic value. If telcos or cable charge too much, someone should be in a position to steal the customer. Maybe then we'd see useful services and a better Internet. Sounds like capitalism."

What does the blogerati think about the idea of seizing broadband in the name of eminent domain?

Continue reading Net Neutrality: 'both sides are off their rocker'

Net Neutrality: 'both sides are off their rocker' originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 19 Jun 2006 15:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The question on everyone's lips today, as they watched Vonage stock sink lower and lower, until it was nearly $2.50 below its $17 offering price, was: is it all Skype's (and therefore, eBay's) fault? More to the point, was it all Andy Kessler's fault?

When Skype first announced their free SkypeOut calling in the U.S. and Canada, Kessler wrote for GigaOm, wondering if this move was a catlike (in the sense that cats are evilly playful, like Tom of Tom & Jerry, but smarter): "Vonage is begging customers to buy 20% of the deal - not a great sign. Ebay knows this, why not toy with the mouse before you kill it. What better way to do away with the Vonage IPO and raise their cost of capital then scare investors even more," he wrote.

Commenters excoriated him, complaining that he was both bitter and wrong. Today he had the last word, and wrote, "Here's how not to do a deal. Citigroup raised the number of shares in the deal, but not the price." That, Kessler, says, was the wrong move in an uncertain climate (investors hardly knew whether Vonage had any value when SkypeOut is free). What's more, pricing at the middle of the $16-$18 range, always a questionable strategy, proved to be egg all over Citigroup's face. Vonage has money, Citigroup has its fee, and all the investors who bought at $17 now have lots of places toward which to shake their fists.

Vonage IPO sinks below offer: all eBay's fault? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 24 May 2006 18:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.