The SQUEEZE: Gillian Tett is infamous for enraging Wall Street leaders. Tett reported on warnings of a crisis more than a year ahead of the curve in 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. Tett, who is an award-winning Financial Times journalist, explores the 2008 financial meltdown that rocked global nations. The focus of Tett’s study is J.P. Morgan and the company’s bold new ideas that created financial alchemy, which ignited a revolution in banking, one that escalated out of control. Tett’s narrative offers a “behind-the-scenes” look regarding the shadow banking world, with the story beginning in 1994 at a pool in Boca Raton. The J.P. Morgan team created a dazzling idea for an exotic financial product, namely credit derivatives. It is within this context that Tett suggests the derivatives dream collided with the housing boom. Fool’s Gold is ideal reading for anyone who wants clarity about risks that precipitated the financial meltdown.

Notable Endorsement: “Tett's complex and well-written narrative of J.P. Morgan's role in the financial meltdown lends itself awkwardly to the audio format, in part because general readers who are not specialists in the workings of financial derivatives will find themselves lost in a sea of acronyms and specialized terminology without the useful glossary at the back of the print book.” –Reed Business Information

Common Q’s Answered by this Book:

• What effects did the 2008 financial crisis have on the banking and investment industry?
• What techniques did the J.P. Morgan team consider as central to ensuring greater company stability while producing enormous profit potential, ignoring potential risks?
• How did financial risk-taking get out of control?

About the Author: Gillian Tett covers the financial markets for the Financial Times. Tett was awarded the Wincott Prize, which is a British award for financial journalism. In 2008, Tett was named British Business Journalist of the Year. During her career, Tett has served as a British newspaper deputy chief, a Tokyo bureau chief, an economic correspondent, and a foreign correspondent. Today, Tett speaks on such topics as finance and global markets. Recent titles of Tett’s work include: Saving the Sun: How Wall Street Mavericks Shook Up Japan’s Financial World and Made Billions. Tett completed doctoral studies in social anthropology at Cambridge University.

Book Vitals:

Publisher: Free Press (April 2010)