Drive-by Summaries of Each Chapter


Chapter One: Out of Control

What happens when a giant dies...the financial disaster...Lehman, Bear, Merrill, and GM...Alexander Hamilton, greedy CEO...the history of boards and the historical failure of regulation and reforms....


Chapter Two: Ripple Effects

Bear Stearns and Countrywide...corporate failures in New York bring devastation to California and rural Australia


Chapter Three: Networks of Power

What ever happened to the military-industiral complex...revolving door between boards and government... America in denial about its elites...the F22 Raptor fiasco...Chiquita’s dilemma


Chapter Four: Hand in Glove

Rapacious CEOs and docile boards... board capture by CEOs...Chesapeake...Fannie Mae’s rotten culture...the compensation disgrace...Tyco’s Kozlowski speaks from prison


Chapter Five: Extraordinary Delusions

The neurobiology of boards...cognitive traps...the psychology of groups...hormones and power....


Chapter Six: The Myth of Shareholder Rights

The Friendly Ice Cream saga...one man’s battle to reclaim his company seventy years later...how the system cheats shareholders...kabuki theater meetings...pervasive conflicts of interest


Chapter Seven: Another Tangled Web

Sleeping gatekeepers, and worse...obscene profits from governance...comp consultants...how your mutual funds vote...the Pfizer fiasco...accountants: conflicted at birth...lawers: a law unto themselves....


Chapter Eight: Solutions

Process solutions to behavioral problems...The Tyco success story...heroes of governance....thirty-plus recommendations

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