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Gary Weiss

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Gary Weiss is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of Born to Steal and Wall Street Versus America. Both books are harshly critical examinations of the ethics and morality of Wall Street, often tinged with humor.

Magazine articles

Between 1986 and 2004 Weiss wrote numerous investigative articles for Business Week magazine, including cover stories on stock fraud and Mafia infiltration of the stock market. He also wrote articles describing improper trading at the American Stock Exchange and broke the story of the bond trading scandal at Salomon Brothers in 1991.

Weiss also wrote numerous essays and articles critical of the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators, a theme he later explored in Wall Street Versus America.

His article "The Mob on Wall Street" was published in December 1996, preceding by almost four years the widely publicized June 2000 arrest of 120 Mafia figures for stock fraud.

Weiss's "Mob on Wall Street" and other Business Week stories were praised by then-FBI Director Louis Freeh, in a letter published by Business Week in December 2000. Freeh said "Gary Weiss has done our nation an invaluable service by reporting the manipulation of the stock market by elements of organized crime. By outlining specific stocks and stock brokerage firms that were controlled by organized crime, he opened the door for FBI investigations in Florida and in New York, and for that we owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude."

Books

Born to Steal, published in 2003, is the true story of a Mafia-linked stockbroker named Louis Pasciuto. The book described how Wall Street firms were infiltrated by organized crime figures during the 1990s. Often the brokers were little more than teenagers.

Wall Street Versus America, published in April 2006, is a wide-ranging, acerbic attack on the morality of Wall Street, its regulators and the financial press. The book uses humor and ridicule to drive home its points. The book is critical of hedge funds, mutual funds, and the Wall Street securities arbitration process, as well as the New York Stock Exchange. His book also provides an unflattering assessment of former Securities and Exchange Commission chairmen Arthur Levitt and William H. Donaldson.

The New York Post called Wall Street Versus America "one of the most controversial business books of 2006," and New York Times critic Janet Maslin said that "Weiss is as sharp as he is mean-spirited in his guided tour of America's investment process." Maslin said: "Even at points when his book would be helped by a glossary and a bucket of cold water, the gale force of its arguments come through."

The book is strongly critical of the campaign against naked short selling, which Weiss believes to be a harmful diversion of regulatory resources.

In books and articles, Weiss has singled out the Bear Stearns securities firm for criticism. In a March 2006 New York Times op-ed piece, Weiss chastized the SEC for what he described as inadequate penalties imposed upon the firm for mutual fund violations. In Wall Street Versus America he caustically describes the firm as the "Eddie Haskell of Wall Street."

Weiss's acerbic commentary on Wall Street has provoked controversy. His caustic attacks on anti-naked-shorting activists has provoked a vituperative response, including threats. Barron's called Weiss "an old-time gumshoe, with a soupcon of little-guy champion Jimmy Breslin and a dash of 1950s bad-boy comic Lenny Bruce."

Investigative reporting project

Weiss is a founding member of Project Klebnikov, a global media alliance investigating the July 2004 murder of Paul Klebnikov, editor in chief of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, and other subjects. Project Klebnikov was organized by investigative journalist Richard Behar, and includes such prominent journalists as Michael Isikoff and Scott Armstrong.


A quote

"The system of Wall Street self-policing known as 'self-regulation' doesn't protect the public from Wall Street. It protects Wall Street from you." -- Gary Weiss in the Introduction to Wall Street Versus America.

External links

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