Any bull market covers a multitude of sins, so there may be all sorts of problems with the current system that we won't see until the bear market comes.

In the 1920s you could buy stocks on margin. You could put 10 percent down and borrow the rest against your stocks.

What I find very interesting about the mutual funds managers is that here are people who are the new masters of the universe. They're managing billions, yet they're subject to this quiet daily tyranny of numbers.

I think those who invest in mutual funds want someone else to do the thinking for them. But the fact that they can move the money around the family of mutual funds just through a phone call lets them feel that they can play tycoons.

Early on, New York already had a national and even international identity.

In the 1970s we saw a massive shift of household savings from the banks to the brokerage firms.

The richly cadenced prose is hypnotic, the research prodigious, the analysis acute, the mood spellbinding, and the cast of characters mythic in scale. I cannot conceive of a better book about Capitol Hill. An unforgettable, epic achievement in the art of biography.