GPO

Reviews & More About this Product

BOOK REVIEWS for "Ponzimonium"

1) Government Book Talk blog reviews "Ponzimonium" in:

• Ponzimonium: How Scam Artists Are Ripping Off America
• Ponzimonium Revisited: An Interview from the Front Lines of the Battle against Investment Fraud

2) From T. Kirby, on Amazon, April 27, 2012:

5/5 Stars! "Equal Parts Alarming & Informative"

Great read to understand the frauds that are happening next door. Nice emphasis on the importance of educating yourself before making investment decisions. Suitable for the casual investor to finance professional.

3) Excerpt of a review in Opalesque Futures Intelligence on January 13, 2012:

On balance the book is well written, typically focusing on retail investors.  However, nuggets of wisdom can be found for the professional investor.  Primary educational messages in the book include advice that investors not invest in un-regulated entities or individuals who trade unregulated markets and investors conduct background checks of managers before investing.

In a particularly interesting story that received national media attention, Chapter Five profiles the activities of Charles Hays, who doctored actual statements from legitimate Futures Commission Merchant Dorman Trading to perpetrate his fraud.  Chapter Six tells the story of Darren Potter, who cleverly categorized investments in his program as "loans" and was ironically victim of a Ponzi scheme himself.

Many of the stories carry basic messages to which astute professional investors would likely know to avoid.  This incldues stories of investors being guaranteed profits and ponzi scam artists exhibiting overly strong performance through all market environments.  If professional investors wished to skip the dramatic stories, they could travel right to page 53 where the "Investor Bill of Rights."  This section advises investors to question managed futures fund investments that include significant fund lock-up clauses, do not properly explain obligations and fund expenses, require additional investment capital at a future point in time and have not appropriately disclosed all risks.

After the Bill of Rights, investors can continue right to the "Red Flags of Fraud" on page 57.  While many of the red flags are basic, some of the more sophisticated flags include the fund's need for secrecy, fees and expenses are not clear, the investment has abnormal methods of accepting investments and conducting independent research on the fund is difficult.

Overall the book is strong, however, one might have wanted a discussion of the differences between a fund structure and direct account investment and perhaps questioning as to why managed future funds require total secrecy while the direct account offers total transparency.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

From CFTC.gov: 

Bart Chilton was first nominated by President Bush and confirmed as Commissioner by the U.S. Senate in 2007. In 2009, he was re-nominated by President Obama and reconfirmed by the Senate. Chilton has served as the CFTC’s Chairman of the Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee (EEMAC). His career spans 25 years in government service: working on Capitol Hill in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, and serving in the Executive Branch during the Clinton, Bush and Obama Administrations. During that time, he served as a Senior Advisor to U.S. Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic Leader of the United States Senate, and as the Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman.

Commissioner Chilton has been a vocal consumer advocate and proponent of thoughtful regulatory reform. He has often been a lone voice on the Commission for policies to rein in speculative interests and impose position limits to avoid excessive trading concentration. Many of the issues he fought for over the years became law as part of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed by President Obama in July of 2010. The Commissioner is a frequent opinion/editorial writer who has been published hundreds of times in national and international publications. He is often quoted in news stories and appears regularly on financial and business television programs in the U.S. and abroad.

Congress created the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in 1974 as an independent agency with the mandate to regulate commodity futures and option markets in the United States.The CFTC's mission is to protect market users and the public from fraud, manipulation, abusive practices and systemic risk related to derivatives that are subject to the Commodity Exchange Act, and to foster open, competitive, and financially sound markets.