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Publishers
Weekly
October 2010
In his latest exposé
(after Tracking Treasure), Trupp, a former investigative reporter,
details his response to learning, on Valentine's Day, 2008,
that a third of his retirement investments might have been
wiped out. Two years earlier, his Wachovia broker had urged
him to park those funds in an Auction Rate Security account
("Take it, Phil, it's free money"), but now Trupp
was answering his phone to a new Wachovia broker's disturbing
hello: "We've got a problem." ARS financial instruments
were auctioned nearly every week, but now, as the economy
began to collapse, no one was buying, so there were too few
bidders to hold an auction. Major banks were unwilling to
step into the breach, and the $300 billion international ARS
market had frozen solid as the bonds' value plummeted. While
the broker called the problem a temporary illiquidity, it
became clear to Trupp that he'd been scammed. Having been
assured that ARS accounts were as safe as cash, Trupp decided
to fight back, creating a community (through blogging and
organizing with other victims) that helped expose the fraud
and put enough pressure on Wachovia and other major financial
institutions to meet depositors' claims. His hard-hitting
account of a real life David and Goliath is a page-turner.
(Sept.)
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