Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom

Abstract

Spot rates, zero coupons, blue chips, futures, options on futures, indexes, options on indexes. vocabulary of a financial market can seem arcane, impenetrable even. Yet, despite its opacity, financial news and comment is ubiquitous. Major national newspapers devote pages of newsprint to the financial sector and television news invariably features a visit to the market for the latest prices. Does this prodigious flow of information have significance for anyone except the tiny percentage of people who have significant holdings of stocks or bonds? And if it does, can non-specialists ever hope to understand what the markets are up to? To these questions, this book answers an emphatic yes. Its author Doug Henwood is a scourge of the stock exchange in the pages of his publication Left Business Observer. newsletter has received wide acclamation from J.K. Galbraith among others, and occasional less favourable comment. This book dissects the world's greatest financial centre, laying open the intricacies of how, and for whom, the market works. Wall Street which emerges is not a pretty sight. Hidden from public view, the markets are poorly regulated, badly managed, chronically myopic, and often corrupt. And though, as Henwood reveals, their activity contributes almost nothing to the real economy where goods are made and jobs created, they nevertheless wield enormous power. With over a trillion dollars a day crossing the wires between the world's banks, Wall Street and its sister financial centres don't just influence government, effectively they are the government. Doug Henwood is the author of The State of the USA Atlas.

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