Wall Street's minders had been predicting the imminent demise of the New York Stock Exchange as the world's premier securities market long before the SEC abolished fixed commission rates in 1975. Nearly two decades after this convulsive event, the dire forecasts have begun to come true—as the thoughtful, objective audit at hand attests. With help from Rottenberg (coauthor of Main Line Wasp, 1990), Wharton finance professors Blume and Siegel offer an accessible status report on a long-lived institution in at least partial eclipse. Drawing on NYSE archives and other sources, they first review the history of finance in the US. Getting down to business, the threesome tracks the Big Board's ascent through the go-go 60's, as well as its subsequent decline (as measured, for example, by its share of trading volume). They attribute the slide of the exchange (which turns 201 this year) to, among other causes, the development of alternative markets with cheaper, more efficient computer-based transaction systems; government regulation, which has impaired the NYSE's capacity to respond to threats from upstart rivals (or economic upheavals); the bureaucratic gridlock that can result from a brokerage-community membership with variant need; and the influential dominance of cost-conscious institutional fiduciaries rather than individual investors. Covered as well are the emergence of regional exchanges, offshore competitors, futures markets, and so-called derivatives that afford risk-averse money managers a means to pursue profit without actually committing to debt or equity issues. The authors stop short of specific prescriptions to ensure the survival of the NYSE and its valuable infrastructure, but they conclude that it still has a useful role to play as a servant, if not the master, of a widening world's increasingly interdependent economy. A perceptive, unsparing analysis of a colossus in crisis.
Pub Date: Aug. 30, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03526-3
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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