How did Wall Street become a self-serving and ultimately destructive profit machine that imploded? Wall Street's real job is to be our "financial utility"—good financial plumbers that funnel capital to companies so the economy can expand and create jobs and also provide the means for individual investors to build portfolios that will increase personal wealth. But Wall Street went haywire and became (in Jon Stewart's words) a "bizarro" place that lost touch with most of America. Suzanne McGee provides a penetrating and disturbing look at forces that have transformed Wall Street into a risk-taking behemoth that spun out of control and took the economy and millions of 401(k)s down with it. Primary among these forces was "Goldman Sachs envy." The demons that drove Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, Stanley O'Neil of Merrill Lynch, and the rest of Wall Street to ever-greater risk were perverse incentives and the illusion that they could make even more money than Goldman Sachs (where $11.6 billion in profits in 2007 led to an average bonus of $660,000). Firsthand reporting from veteran Wall Street journalist McGee provides riveting storytelling and a narrative that will grab both Wall Street insiders and people on "Main Street." She is the perfect guide through the labyrinth that is Wall Street, which now reaches from the actual street to Greenwich-based hedge funds, investment banks, venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, the futures pits of Chicago, and sovereign wealth funds.
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"Read "The Big short" for a micro level look at the crisis... read this book for the macro level book. A terrific and unique look at the crisis and companies/people who lead us to it." — Ken (4 out of 5 stars)
"Read "The Big short" for a micro level look at the crisis... read this book for the macro level book. A terrific and unique look at the crisis and companies/people who lead us to it."
“McGee has taken it upon herself to make the case less through assertion or argument than through anecdote and appeal to authority.”
A timely analysis of why Wall Street came so close to destruction.
“McGee’s book is full of entertaining and enlightening material.”
" good audio book, good premise--everyone is trying to make that dollar dollar bill. lots of greed.. "
" Read if you dont understand what people in the financial sector are talking about. "
" Not a great read, a bit slow. Lots of numbers in a range that I can't comprehend so they quickly lost their meaning. It did give me some insight into the finacial meltdown that occured. "
Suzanne McGee spent more than thirteen years as a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal in Toronto, New York, and London. After leaving the Journal in 2002, she became a freelance contributor to more than a dozen business publications, including Barron’s, the Financial Times, Institutional Investor, and INC. She is currently the New York Post’s markets corespondent, a contributing editor at Barron’s, and a Loeb Award winner for a multimedia series on consumer culture in China.
Hillary Huber, a Los Angeles–based voice talent with hundreds of commercials and promos under her belt, was bitten by the audiobook bug in 2005. She now records books on a regular basis and has been nominated for several Audie Awards and won numerous Earphones Awards.
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