Selling America Short: The SEC and Market Contrarians in the Age of Absurdity »

RICHARD C. SAUER has been, among other things, an Assistant Director with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a partner in an international law firm, and an analyst with a Northern California hedge fund. In his dozen years as an SEC attorney and administrator, he was responsible for some of the agency's most memorable financial fraud cases. Sauer's articles on legal and financial topics have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Barron's. He is also a published novelist and holds a doctorate in law (SJD) from Harvard Law School. Sauer lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Eileen Killory.

As an SEC attorney, author Richard Sauer initiated and supervised landmark financial cases that took him to numerous countries and returned hundreds of millions of dollars to American investors. While a partner at an international law firm and, later, a hedge fund manager, he saw firsthand the follies and failures of our system. Now, in Selling America Short, Sauer shares his remarkable experiences with you.

Selling America Short is a chronicle of crooked companies, colorful but clear-eyed skeptics whose warnings went unheeded, and overmatched enforcers, all seen through the eyes of personal experience. It sheds a bright light on some of the darkest corners of the financial world and details the damage wrought by the deep biases and lack of worldly experience common among those who hold the reins of our capital markets.

Pro??viding a unique look at how our capital markets work and, quite often, don't, Selling America Short skillfully reveals the tragic missteps of the American financial behemoth as it marches boldly from one crisis to another. Along the way, this insightful and often wryly humorous guide also:

• Takes you on a journey through a rogue's gallery of bent executives, professional fraud enablers, and blinkered technocrats


• Offers a firsthand account of the many ways contrarian views of public companies are suppressed and punished, depriving the market of critical information


• Highlights the inner workings of the agencies that attempt to control our financial markets


• Perceptively describes the illusory asset valuations, myopic business strategies, and feckless public policies that led to the recent crack-up of our financial system


• And much more

Prologue.

Chapter One Rude Awakenings.

Chapter Two The SEC Steps Out.

Chapter Three Short People.

Chapter Four Belgian Waffles.

Chapter Five AremisSoft and the Deemster from Hell.

Chapter Six Taking Out the Eurotrash.

Chapter Seven In the Shadow of Enron.

Chapter Eight The Easter Bunny Cometh.

Chapter Nine Mired in Muck.

Chapter Ten Our Tax Dollars at Work.

Chapter Eleven Benched.

Chapter Twelve The Overstock Flame Wars.

Chapter Thirteen The Bird in the Bush.

Chapter Fourteen The Collapse of the American Financial Sector in One Easy Lesson.

Chapter Fifteen Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down.

Epilogue Picking up the Pieces.

About the Author.

Index.