Top 144 Quotes by Alex Berenson

The biggest profit center for investment banks is the hefty fees they charge for underwriting stock offerings and giving financial advice, and analysts put those profits at risk if they publish negative conclusions about the companies that pay the fees.

Sochi started with the same problem as every Winter Olympics. Forget the crass commercialism, the fake amateurism, NBC's refusal to televise important events live to all its viewers. As an event, the Winter Games fail on the most basic level. They're lousy to watch.

Hedge funds try to produce above-average investment returns using tactics ranging from traditional stock-picking to complex derivative and arbitrage plays. High minimum investments, redemption restrictions and aggressive strategies make them suitable mainly for more sophisticated and well-heeled investors.

In a Ponzi scheme, a promoter pays back his initial investors with money he has raised from new investors. Eventually, the promoter can no longer find enough new investors to pay off the people who have already put up money, and the scheme collapses.

Evidence of defendants' lavish lifestyles is often used to provide a motive for fraud. Jurors sometimes wonder why an executive making tens of millions of dollars would cheat to make even more. Evidence of habitual gluttony helps provide the answer.

The details of the personal expenses that executives put on the company tab often are not known because loopholes in federal disclosure rules let publicly traded companies generally avoid disclosing the perks they give executives along with pay and stock options.

Traditionally, companies have made major announcements before or after the close of trading so that all interested investors and analysts are apprised of the news before trading resumes in their stocks.

Microeconomics is the study of how specific choices made by businesses, consumers and governments affect the markets for different goods and services. For example, a microeconomist might examine how price changes affect sales of apples relative to oranges.