Reading excellent accounts of two of our more notorious scandals du jour – Madoff and Stanford – called to mind Yellow Kid Weil and his “Get Rich Quick Bank.”
Yellow Kid Weil was a con man, famous for saying he promised something for nothing and delivered nothing for something. As detailed in his fascinating book Con [...]
Author Archives: Mike O'Sullivan
The More Things Change
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Kafka Esq.
Franz Kafka earned his living as a corporate lawyer, toiling away in-house at the Workmen’s Accident Insurance Institute, a large Czech insurer. An academic press recently published a collection of documents he wrote on the job, described by a reviewer as including:
a panegyric welcoming … the new director of the Institute; long sections of annual [...]
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Sound and Fury
As a bookish type, my first encounter with a new word is usually by reading it instead of hearing it. I am therefore prone to mispronunciations.
So the other day when discussing bank regulation I wasn’t too surprised to learn that I’d mispronounced yet another word: apparently the “mp” in “Comptroller” is pronounced as an “n,” [...]
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As Amended
When you refer to the Securities Act of 1933, do you write “Securities Act of 1933, as amended?”
If so, what do you accomplish by appending “as amended?”
When you use the words “as amended,” do you mean as it has been amended from 1933 through today? If so, why do you use indefinite words like “as [...]
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A Modest Counterproposal
The SEC recently proposed restricting short sales through a reinstated uptick rule and/or circuit breakers (PDF). One commenter (PDF) had a better idea:
Rather than tinkering with ad hoc half-measures, the SEC should be proposing the only practical, efficient and final solution to market volatility: a ban on stock selling altogether.
The commenter supports his proposal with [...]
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