Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend
It was a time when anything seemed possible–instant wealth, glittering fame, fabulous luxury–and for a run of magical weeks in the spring and summer of 1920, Charles Ponzi made it all come true. Promising to double investors’ money in three months, the dapper, charming Ponzi raised the “rob Peter...
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It was a time when anything seemed possible–instant wealth, glittering fame, fabulous luxury–and for a run of magical weeks in the spring and summer of 1920, Charles Ponzi made it all come true. Promising to double investors’ money in three months, the dapper, charming Ponzi raised the “rob Peter to pay Paul” scam to an art form. At the peak of his success, Ponzi was raking in more than $2 million a week at his office in downtown Boston. Then his house of cards came crashing down–thanks in large part to the relentless investigative reporting of Richard Grozier’s Boston Post. A classic American tale of immigrant life and the dream of success, Ponzi’s Scheme is the amazing story of the magnetic scoundrel who launched the most successful scheme of financial alchemy in modern history.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780812968361 (0812968360)
ASIN: 812968360
Publish date: January 10th 2006
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Pages no: 416
Edition language: English
There is something almost admirable about the charming rouge who swindled the people of Boston out of millions in the 1920's. Zuckoff does a fine job of conveying why so many people risked their life savings on Ponzi's irrational promises of easy money. On some level Ponzi seems to have believed h...
It seems appropriate to finish this book a day after Madoff was sentenced to 150 years. The parallels to today's economic crash and Madoff are striking. A charismatic personality, connections with those in power, "too big to fail syndrome," a gullible and avaricious public coupled with an adoring m...