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Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe |  | Author: Gillian Tett Publisher: Free Press
List Price: $26.00 Buy New: $11.75 as of 11/8/2009 02:21 CST details You Save: $14.25 (55%)
New (42) Used (17) Collectible (1) from $11.75
Seller: anniemd1 Rating: 43 reviews Sales Rank: 2938
Media: Hardcover Edition: 1 Pages: 304 Number Of Items: 1 Shipping Weight (lbs): 1 Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 141659857X Dewey Decimal Number: 332.660973 EAN: 9781416598572 ASIN: 141659857X
Publication Date: May 12, 2009 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description From award-winning Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett, who enraged Wall Street leaders with her newsbreaking warnings of a crisis more than a year ahead of the curve, Fool's Gold tells the astonishing unknown story at the heart of the 2008 meltdown.Drawing on exclusive access to J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and a tightly bonded team of bankers known on Wall Street as the "Morgan Mafia," as well as in-depth interviews with dozens of other key players, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Tett brings to life in gripping detail how the Morgan team's bold ideas for a whole new kind of financial alchemy helped to ignite a revolution in banking, and how that revolution escalated wildly out of control. The deeply reported and lively narrative takes readers behind the scenes, to the inner sanctums of elite finance and to the secretive reaches of what came to be known as the "shadow banking" world. The story begins with the intense Morgan brainstorming session in 1994 beside a pool in Boca Raton, where the team cooked up a dazzling new idea for the exotic financial product known as credit derivatives. That idea would rip around the banking world, catapult Morgan to the top of the turbocharged derivatives trade, and fuel an extraordinary banking boom that seemed to have unleashed banks from ages-old constraints of risk. But when the Morgan team's derivatives dream collided with the housing boom, and was perverted -- through hubris, delusion, and sheer greed -- by titans of banking that included Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, and the thundering herd at Merrill Lynch -- even as J.P. Morgan itself stayed well away from the risky concoctions others were peddling -- catastrophe followed. Tett's access to Dimon and the J.P. Morgan leaders who so skillfully steered their bank away from the wild excesses of others sheds invaluable light not only on the untold story of how they engineered their bank's escape from carnage but also on how possible it was for the larger banking world, regulators, and rating agencies to have spotted, and heeded, the terrible risks of a meltdown. A tale of blistering brilliance and willfully blind ambition, Fool's Gold is both a rare journey deep inside the arcane and wildly competitive world of high finance and a vital contribution to understanding how the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression was perpetrated.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 43
Puzzled by credit default swaps and derivatives? October 28, 2009 Adam Corson-Finnerty (Philadelphia, PA United States) During the financial crisis, I found myself thinking: when this subsides I can hardly wait to read the book that will explain what the hell is happening. This book makes an excellent base for understanding the transmogrification of banking into a go-go financial house of cards. JP Morgan emerges as both villain (they invented some of the instruments that were abused) and role-model (they did not give in to the excesses of Lehman, Citibank, and Bear Sterns). The author writes for the Financial Times, and thus a sophisticated audience, so don't expect easy going--especially since the players themselves often didn't understand what they had wrought. A good companion to this is In Fed We Trust, which tells the Washington side of the story.In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic
excellent book October 14, 2009 D. Azinger (Hemet, CA) 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This woman has written an excellent book. Takes you inside the banking industry since the 1980's when the creative group at JP Morgan met down in Boca Raton, FL to "brainstorm" on new financial products. I skipped way ahead to page 167 to get right into the financial crises, then went back and read chapter 2 and so on. She really has a handle on all the creative nonsense and how it orginated, the development, and history of it all. I learned alot. One of the books she referecnes is the "$2 trillion Meltdown", which I am reading now, and also excellent. Great read, intelligent woman, good writer, well researched, very factual, very educational, excellent book. The only negative thing I will say is it is a slow read, and takes some patience depending on your knowledge going into it. But it is worth the effort. She just didn't crank out something fast to exploit the crises. It has a lot of depth and information.
An engaging and informative read September 28, 2009 A. Siu (Sammamish, WA USA) I was expecting this kind of books usually is a bit more dry or technical to read through. But the author did a good job making the book interesting enough to keep me reading to the end. The book is informative enough but not too boring nor too technical. With the story starting from the JP Morgan group started the derivative team more than 10 years ago, it gave a more in-depth background and insider point of view for the readers to comprehend the unravel of the big Financial crisis. It also got me curious and interested in reading more about the collapse of Lehman and Bear Stearns. Good read.
similar book September 22, 2009 Howard Mcpherson (Cleveland, Ohio United States) In NATURE, 464, 175 (Sept10, 2009) there is a review of "Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe" by Gillian Tett, Published by Little, Brown 2009 with 352 pages. Unless this review is a mistake the American edition (?) is missing 48 pages, or this may be a revised edition.
what you Ought to Know September 12, 2009 C. Cone (Dorset VT) 0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Excellent insider description of the various errors in judgment and oversights that led up to the financial crisis. It's fairly technical, but well worth the effort to pursue the details and understand why we're here. Well written.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 43
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