What Goes Up
Eric J. Weiner
(Reviewer - Wayne Turmel)
2005 Little, Brown & Co.
ISBN: 0316929662

The Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, & Scoundrels Who Made It Happen.

“I can make you money” are the magic words that will open just about any door along Wall Street, & Eric Weiner, a former Dow Jones journalist, offers an insider's perspective of this fabled terrain through interviews with financial superstars like Peter Lynch, Charles Schwab & many of others.

What Goes Up begins during the Great Depression, when Wall Street's slate was wiped clean & brokerage firms were like secret societies in which “diversity” meant hiring a Dartmouth grad instead of from Harvard, Yale or Princeton. It ends with 9/11, when the market closed for the longest stretch since the 1930s.

In between, Eric Weiner digs for what financiers really thought about Wall Street's biggest stories. He finds surprising sympathy for “junk bond king” Michael Milken; envious appreciation for the record-breaking profits of Warren Buffett's investment company & the antipathy for the financial media, which “led a lot of investors like lambs to the slaughter” during the tech bubble.

Associate Business Reviewer Wayne Turmel writes:

Little in this world affects Americans as strongly as the inner workings of what we call Wall Street -- the (mostly) New York financiers who make the decisions that impact our jobs, our retirements & our government policy. Yet most of us know very little about it. This book aims to help us make sense of what's going on by telling us how we got here.

What Goes Up is a unique book because it's not a ponderous history of Wall Street -- it's a collection of interviews, written more as a stage play than a regular history book. The people who took Wall Street -- & the rest of the world -- from the Great Depression to the Silicon Valley Tech melt-down tell their own stories, in their own words, to a respected, knowledgeable & (a bit too) sympathetic journalist.

Eric Wiener has broken his interviews down into digestible chunks, telling stories such as how big banks & investment houses were forced to part ways after the Great Depression, how the financial world was broken up into “white shoe” (Gentile, WASP) companies & “our firms” (predominantly Jewish), & the rise of players such as Charles Schwab, all in the words of those who were there.

The most fascinating part of the story to me was the rise of Sanford ‘Sandy’ Weill. I only knew him as the president of Citigroup & perhaps the most prominent face in the financial world. What Goes Up reveals his story as having been the weak link in an early partnership, surviving bad decisions, disastrous mergers & brutal office politics to emerge at the top of the heap. Whether this is an encouraging story or a condemnation of the system depends on your personal perspective.

What Goes Up: The Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, and Scoundrels Who Made It Happen is a gossipy history to those who know the story, & a gentle eye-opener to those of us who had no idea how the world of high finance operates.

More from Eric J. Weiner: Private Learning, Public Needs: The Neoliberal Assault on Democratic Education.
(01/29/06)

Wayne Turmel
2006©Wayne Turmel
A RebeccasReads.Com Reviewer

Reviewer's Bio:
Wayne Turmel is the Business Book Reviewer for Rebecca's Reads. Besides being a corporate drone, he's a published writer in the field of business communication & training, as well as the author of A Philistine's Journal: An Average Guy Tackles the Classics. He can be heard on the web as the host of the popular podcast: The Cranky Middle Manager Show at (www.thepodcastnetwork.com/cmm).