A different view of the financial crisis that raises important questions about business ethics and personal responsibility.
A former Navy fighter pilot and 24-year veteran of the armed forces applies lessons he learned from the Navy to Wall Street.
Assisted by Robinson (co-author: Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, 2007, etc.), Lay asserts that the crash of 2008 wouldn't have happened if the Navy's standards of recruitment, training and commitment to truthfulness operated in the world of business. “No amount of bleating and whining will ever let Wall Street off the hook,” he writes. “They darn near single-handedly screwed up the world. It would not have happened if they’d taken a very strong pull on what was becoming a runaway horse.” Lay examines the reckless pursuit of short-term profit and the proliferation of “evil and obfuscated” financial instruments, but his main focus is different. He worked for a Lehman Brothers subsidiary, Neuberger Berman, shortly before the 2008 crash, and he compares the firm’s former standards under the family ownership of Bobbie Lehman and his predecessors with what it became under Richard Fuld. Lehman Brothers, writes Lay, “had a rich and glittering tradition of building mighty American businesses, enormous operations that had stood the test of time—until personal greed became the only thing that mattered.” The author claims that many Wall Street firms lack any sense of “undying loyalty,” and he contrasts these companies with the Navy, in which “the past remains the custodian of the future, not the other way around.” Lay also discusses the training and education programs provided by the Naval Academy and the difficult qualification process for naval aviators. Shortcuts are simply not tolerated.
A different view of the financial crisis that raises important questions about business ethics and personal responsibility.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59315-717-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Vanguard/Perseus
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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