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Confidence Game

So yesterday we find out that a foreclosure processor signed off on 10,000 documents per month without reading them. Does this stuff never end?

Speaking of financial chicanery, I recently was introduced to an excellent book called Confidence Game, written by Bloomberg News Reporter Christine Richard. It is a history of a multi-year campaign by hedge fund manager named Bill Ackman to warn us of the vulnerabilities in the $2.5 trillion bond insurance market--you know like the fact that their AAA ratings didn't mean squat with their $40 of debt for every dollar they had in the piggy bank. Yeah, you read that right.

At least people listened to him. Oh no, wait, for speaking out he was investigated by the SEC and smeared by Rupert Murdoch's most recent plaything, The Wall Street Journal.

You want Ludlum or Grisham or perhaps more accurately Stephen King, but as it would read if about the financial markets? Get the book.