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The Ultimate Money Guide for Bubbles, Busts, Recession, and Depression
book

The Ultimate Money Guide for Bubbles, Busts, Recession, and Depression

by Martin D. Weiss
February 2011
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
304 pages
6h 56m
English
Wiley
Content preview from The Ultimate Money Guide for Bubbles, Busts, Recession, and Depression

Chapter 3. WALL STREET DECEPTIONS, COVER-UPS, AND LIES

You put a big chunk of your nest egg in a life insurance policy with an A+ company. You invest another sizable amount in a portfolio of high-rated corporate bonds and tax-free municipal bonds. Then, feeling safe and secure with most of your funds, you take a flyer on a few stocks that a dozen separate research analysts have unanimously rated as a buy or at least a hold. You assume you've made informed decisions based on the best research the world has to offer.

The reality: Even in the absence of bubbles, busts, recession, or depression, you could suffer wipeout losses.

Hard to believe this could actually happen? Actually, it already has happened; and I want to help you make certain you don't get caught in Wall Street deceptions like these in the future. So in this chapter, I tell you what they are, how they emerged, and how to avoid them.

Their primary source: legalized payola and massive conflicts of interest.

The primary result: distorted research and inflated ratings on hundreds of thousands of companies, bonds, stocks, and investments of all kinds.

The threat to you: Far bigger losses in your investments than you would have anticipated otherwise.

Indeed, Wall Street's inflated ratings are, themselves, a kind of bubble, which, when fully exposed, could suffer a great bust of its own—deepening the price decline, hurting the chances of each company's survival, and aggravating any economic crisis.

Wall Street's ratings are the brains ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781118011348Purchase book