Gary Weiss

There are a lot worse things you can do with all your bucks than giving them to even a mediocre mutual fund - such as, for example, giving them to a mediocre hedge fund. If supporting the lifestyle of a mediocre fund manager is your favorite charity, who am I to stop you? ”

When it comes to making laws that protect the public from the financial services industry, Congress has done a progressively worse job since the Pecora Commission hearings of the early 1930s, which led to Congress taking bold steps to regulate banking and securities firms in 1933 and 1934. ”

No other facet of American business is more corrupt, more intoxicated with illegality, more weakly regulated, and has a greater impact on poor and working people than debt collectors; not credit card companies or subprime mortgages, not even payday lenders. ”

Oil futures were originally created to give heating oil dealers, gas retailers, aviation companies and other businesses a method of hedging against adverse price changes. Instead, they've become just another Wall Street plaything. ”

MF Global used to be known as Man Financial, and it had a reasonably good reputation. It did a humdrum business placing commodities trades for fund managers as well as farmers, grain dealers and others whose livelihoods depend on the vagaries of commodity prices. ”

The flip side of humiliation is pride. ”

In the U.S., diversity is a politically correct slogan. In India, it is a historical fact. Much as we in the West may resent it, India has a lot to teach us when it comes to religious tolerance. ”

India may be the only country in the world that has been free of anti-Semitic prejudice throughout its history. ”

With 'posts' running in the millions, Internet message boards have become an essential part of the savvy investor's arsenal. ”

Humiliating events have a way of capturing the public's imagination. So it has been since antiquity, when gladiators were pitted against each other and the legions of Spartacus were crucified in endless rows on the way to Rome. ”