Best Business Crime Writing of the Year

Although it's a bit dated (the stories are from 2002), I decided to read Best Business Crime Writing Of The Year edited By James Surowiecki. Definitely a good read for those looking to make sense of an ugly period of corporate America. The book is a compilation of various columns and articles from publications over the year 2002, and they all deal with the criminal aspect of businesses like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and others. As most of the articles are "feature length", there's a solid level of coverage on each story, so you don't feel like you're just getting a taste of the real story. The chapters are grouped by section, so you get stories about the main players, the accountants and auditors who were supposed to be watching the store, and some analysis about how the companies imploded. Even though the material is a couple years old, it doesn't suffer much with the lag time. In fact, it's sort of interesting to see how things have progressed since the story was written. I think the parts that are most valuable and will continue to be are the biographies of the CEOs who led the companies to their demise. Definitely worth reading, especially if you were involved in any way with these fiascoes.

This book will help to breed healthy skepticism. 2002 was a defining year for modern business crimes, or at least reported business crimes, and this book provides a succinct and clear review of the highflying companies, the colorful players, their notorious crimes, and the pertinent issues. I finally understand how Enron schemed and ImClone conned. The editor has selected some of the best reports of each crime, crimes where greed and vice, instead of virtue, were rewarded, and he has brought each story up to date with unfolding news. In Part One, Surowiecki selected stories about the corporate hucksters, conmen, CEOs, visionaries, and villains, from the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Forbes, The New York Times, The LA Times, The WSJ, and even The Edmonton Journal. The stories illuminate the events at Enron, WorldCom, ImClone, CriticalPath, Quest, Tyco, and Adelphia. The Edmonton Journal's story on WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers is among the best I read. No Mississippi paper would touch that profile. You might never read a business press puff piece about a CEO, or trust a devoutly religious or visionary CEO the same way again. In Part Two, the stories focus on "Who Watches the Watchmen?" Stories from The New Yorker, The New York Times, BW, USBanker, and The WSJ highlight the SEC and NY Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, and the corruptions of Wall Street analysts, "independent knowers," and at the self regulating Big Five accounting firms, especially Andersen Worldwide. The profile of Jack Grubman, a disgraced telecom analyst who lacked objectivity is a delight to read. In Part Three, the selected stories concern "What Went Wrong, and How Do We Fix It?" Stories from the WSJ, Business 2.0, Slate, Bloomberg, Fortune, The Weekly Standard, and The Atlantic Monthly investigate whether corruption is an always a byproduct of bull market bubbles, whether stock options lead to the rewarding of bad behavior, and whether greedy investors themselves are to blame for what befalls them.