The Wall Street Journal has a little item on “A Corporate Beauty Contest,” a paper published earlier this year thanks to inquiring minds at Duke University and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Not only, it turns out, are the faces of chief executives perceived to be more competent than faces of non-chiefs, but Read More
House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
By William D. Cohan
Doubleday, 468pp, $27.95
Four years ago, on a grayish morning in late May, I left my Brooklyn home and made my way to Central Synagogue on Manhattan’s East Side. I came thither to pay my Read More
Wall Street Journal reporter Kate Kelly didn’t know what to expect the week before last when she opened her advance copy of House of Cards, the new book by William D. Cohan on the downfall of Bear Stearns. Would it be great or awful? A clip job or a robust work of original Read More
When Bear Stearns chairman and chief executive Jimmy Cayne sent
an internal e-mail on Oct. 18 to firm employees announcing 800 job cuts, the
news was hardly a shock to Bear Stearns bankers. Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse
First Boston, Morgan Stanley and all the major banks were very publicly
slashing away at staff. With the Read More
