Wall Street: A History - Softcover

Geisst, Charles R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195170601 ISBN 13: 9780195170603

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

In the seven years since the publication of the first edition of Wall Street, America's financial industry has undergone a series of wrenching events that have dramatically changed the nation's economic landscape. The bull market of the 1990's came to a close, ushering in the end of the dot com boom, a record number of mergers occurred, and accounting scandals in companies like Enron and WorldCom shook the financial industry to its core.
In this wide-ranging volume, financial historian Charles Geisst provides the first history of Wall Street, explaining how a small, concentrated pocket of lower Manhattan came to have such enormous influence in national and world affairs. In this updated edition, Geisst sums up the recent turbulence that has threatened America's financial industry. He shows how in 1997 thirty NASDAQ market makers paid a record $1.3 billion fine for price irregularities in stocks. He makes sense of the closing of the bull market, and explains a major change in the accounting rules for mergers that caused monumental losses for companies like AOL Time Warner. And he recounts how in the aftermath of the speculative fever that swept Wall Street in the 1990's, the scandals at Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, and Conseco represent a last gasp of mergermania and a fallout from a bubble-like market.
Wall Street is at once the story of the street itself, from the days when the wall was merely a defensive barricade built by Peter Stuyvesant, to the modern billion-dollar computer-driven colossus of today. In a broader sense it is an engaging economic history of the United States, the role Wall Street played in making America the most powerful economy in the world, and the many challenges to that role it has faced in recent years.

About this title

About the Author:

Charles R. Geisst is Professor of Finance in the School of Business, Manhattan College, and author of Wheels of Fortune and Deals of the Century.

Review:

Praise for the first edition:
"A thorough retelling of a critical--though often overlooked--aspect of U.S. history."--The Wall Street Journal

"A quick-reading history of the United States as told through the doings of bankers and brokers."--The Washington Post

"Geisst has produced a sweeping history of Wall Street, from its inception as an outdoor market to its current status of global financial center.... This lively narrative is a good survey of American economic history that puts Wall Street at the forefront."--History

"An important and entertaining commentary for anyone interested in understanding the role of Wall Street in the development of the U.S. into an economic superpower."--James R. Barth, Lowder Eminent Scholar in Finance, Auburn University

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0195170601
• ISBN 13: 9780195170603
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 488