First published 2005
Charles Gasparino chronicles the massive Wall Street deception of the 1990s that stripped ordinary investors of billions in life savings. The award-winning journalist who first broke this story reveals how research analysts at major investment firms issued fraudulent positive stock ratings to secure lucrative investment banking deals. Gasparino takes readers inside the schemes that generated hundreds of millions in illegal profits during the dot-com boom. He profiles the key figures who orchestrated this corruption: Salomon Smith Barney's Jack Grubman, a high-paid braggart; Merrill Lynch's Henry Blodget, a Yale graduate who climbed the research hierarchy through hype; and Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker, the "Queen of the Internet" who succumbed to industry pressures despite foreseeing disaster. The book details how regulators like SEC chairman Arthur Levitt allowed these practices to flourish, creating an opening for New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer to build his career by prosecuting Wall Street's biggest names. Drawing on exclusive depositions, internal documents, and email exchanges reaching Citigroup CEO Sanford Weill, Gasparino delivers the complete account of this financial catastrophe that affected millions of Americans.
Genres: history, business, crime, non-fiction, finance, journalism
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: corporate-corruption, investigative-journalism
Setting: Wall Street
Period: 1990s
368 pages · Kindle Edition · Free Press