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
New York : Free Press, 2009.
Format: Book
Edition: First Free Press hardcover edition.
Description: x, 293 pages ; 24 cm
Peter Hancock viewed almost every aspect of the world around him as a complex intellectual puzzle to be solved, and he especially loved developing elaborate theories about how to push money around the world more efficiently. When it came to his staff, he obsessively ruminated on how to build the team for optimal performance. Most of all, though, he loved brainstorming ideas. The team called his exuberant outbursts of creativity "Come to Planet Pluto" moments, because most of the notions he tossed out were better suited to science fiction than banking. But they loved his intensity, and they were passionately loyal to him. They were also bonded by the spirit of being pioneers. The J.P. Morgan derivatives team was engaged in the banking equivalent of space travel. Computing power and high-order mathematics were taking finance far from its traditional bounds, and this small group of brilliant minds was charting the outer reaches of cyber-finance. Like scientists cracking the DNA code or splitting the atom, the J.P. Morgan swaps team believed their ideas were solving the most foundational riddles of their discipline. "There was this sense that we had found this fantastic technology which we really believed in and we wanted to take to every part of the market we could," Bill Winters later recalled. "There was a sense of mission." Book jacket.
Contents:
The derivatives dream -- Dancing around the regulators -- The dream team -- The cuffs come off -- Merger mania -- Innovation unleashed -- Mr. Dimon takes charge -- Risky business -- Leveraging lunacy -- Tremors -- Bank run -- Meltdown -- The end of investment banking as we know it.
Subjects:
J.P. Morgan & Co.
Credit derivatives -- United States -- History.
Housing -- United States -- Finance.
Financial crises -- United States.
J.P. Morgan & Co.
Credit derivatives -- United States -- History.
Housing -- United States -- Finance.
Financial crises -- United States.
ISBN:
141659857X
Availability | |||
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
BUSINESS Economics History Tet | Southeast | Nonfiction | In |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-274) and index.