Can Wall Street Be Saved From Itself?

Sitting around waiting rooms needn't be time wasted, it's a chance to catch up with last month's magazine articles. Did you miss this Time cover story, based on Rana Foroohar's Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business? Take a look. We may be hearing some of its themes repeated during the election campaign.

Even staunch believers in unfettered capitalism may nod in agreement with observations such as

An IPO—a mechanism that once meant raising capital to fund new investment—is likely today to mark not the beginning of a new company’s greatness, but the end of it. According to a Stanford University study, innovation tails off by 40% at tech companies after they go public, often because of Wall Street pressure to keep jacking up the stock price, even if it means curbing the entrepreneurial verve that made the company hot in the first place.