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Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe
  
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Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe (Paperback)

by Gillian Tett (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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Product details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Abacus (6 May 2010)
  • ISBN-10: 0349121893
  • ISBN-13: 978-0349121895
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 287,800 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

** 'A truly gripping narrative ... The fact that Tett is able to reproduce such raw private communications is a tribute to her journalistic abilities' Dominic Lawson, SUNDAY TIMES ** 'Her blow-by-blow story is an impressive piece of detective work. She pulls back the curtain on a closed, unaccountable world of finance' Will Hutton, GUARDIAN ** 'An absorbing 15-year gallop across the Wild West of the world's financial markets ... Tett sketches a system in the grip of a great error, emanating outwards from a cadre of elite traders who were able to repel any attempt to monitor, question or restrain them' Stephen Foley, INDEPENDENT ** 'A very readable, well-informed account of the way investment bankers invented, promoted and profited from the ... financial products that were at the heart of the financial collapse' Vince Cable, Daily Telegraph


Review

`Her blow-by-blow story is an impressive piece of detective work. She pulls back the curtain on a closed, unaccountable world of finance' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews

19 Reviews
5 star:
 (12)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (19 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
55 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Insight into the human drama, 8 May 2009
By Tim Scott (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe (Hardcover)
This is the first properly considered book about the financial crisis to be published. Gillian Tett is well known as a financial journalist (working for the FT in London). Accordingly, you might think this book has been rushed out to simply rehearse the emerging consensus view on the causes of the financial crisis. Not so! This is a very impressive volume. To start with - Gillian Tett knows the spider's web of complex structured products at the heart of this story well enough to be able to describe it simply. That is the mark of true mastery. What is best about this book, however, is the way it tells the human story. That is the story of the innovators at J.P. Morgan who created these products and realised at an early stage that they left behind a kind of nuclear waste that needed to be properly contained - particularly so in relation to derivatives based on residential mortgages (the default pattern of which was essentially unknowable until recently). Other banks didn't realise this (or didn't care) and just left that waste sitting on their balance sheets, or worse, shifted it to quasi-subsidiary vehicles where it was hidden and supported by short-term funding that quickly evaporated at the first sign of trouble. Ultimately, the book shows that financial innovation is not a problem per se - it's the use to which such innovation was put that created problems.

Overall - this is a very informative and interesting read which has clearly been in the planning for some time. A well considered book.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars She should have called it: The story of the J.P. Morgan CDO desk, 9 Sep 2009
This review is from: Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe (Hardcover)
The book's content is less ambitious that its titles suggests. It is about how a team of derivative experts at J.P. Morgan contributed to the development of the securities, including credit default swaps and options, which led to the financial crisis. That's reasonably interesting, but it's a fairly narrow perspective on what happened. The collapse of Lehman is covered in a few pages. She doesn't even mention that the major banks were manipulating Libor. At points it sounds like she is writing to protect her sources. There is a lot about what a great CEO Jamie Dimon is at JP Morgan chase. She says the JPM team shouldn't be blamed for other banks misusing the derivatives they created. I've never heard anyone blame them for it.
There are a few mistakes: the internet bubble of 1999 was equity driven, not debt fueled. She uses acronyms too often, and there are no anecdotes explaining why the subprime default rates were so high. Indeed, she is very light on what happened in the subprime sector. The corruption there could have really livened up her book, and illuminated the causes of the crash. I learnt more about the crisis from the introduction to Niall Ferguson's Financial History of the World.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Heads they win, Tails we lose, 4 Jul 2009
By J. M. Goldthorpe (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe (Hardcover)
This is a gripping read from an author who is sure of her facts and can tell the true story of the banking crisis clearly and dramatically. Because she was one of the first to forecast financial disaster she has become a pundit on the subject and there is rarely a day when Gillian Tett is not on television or radio. Thanks to a useful glossary the reader is guided through the murky world of what Vince Cable dubbed "casino banking" with explanations of "Credit Default Swaps", "Mortgage-Backed Bond Security", the surreal sounding "Gaussian Copula" and the like. What started out as a well-thought out investment strategy turned into a glorified pyramid selling spree in order to generate bank profits, and therby bonuses. The author has a degree in anthropology and this gives the book a human interest beyond the world of high finance. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to understand the greatest economic trauma of our times.
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