The sellout : how three decades of Wall Street's greed and government mismanagement destroyed the global financial system

The definitive account of Wall Street's stunning collapse From critically acclaimed investigative journalist and CNBC personality Charles Gasparino comes a sweeping examination of the most recent volatile, anxiety-ridden era in our nation's socioeconomic history. The Sellout traces the implosion of the financial services business back to its roots in the late 1970s when Wall Street embraced a new business model predicated on taking enormous risks. It shows how a backwater business involving the trading of risky bonds packed with mortgages showered countless billions in profits on the financial industry but sowed the seeds of its ultimate demise. Gasparino walks readers through Wall Street's three-decades' love affair with risk, revealing a trail of culpability—from the government bureaucrats who crafted housing policies that encouraged homeownership, to the Wall Street firms that underwrote and invested in risky debt, to the mortgage sellers who handed out loans to people without the financial wherewithal to pay them back, to the homeowners who became convinced they could afford mansions on blue-collar wages. The ongoing tumult in financial markets and the global economy began when some of our most esteemed financial institutions, our government, and even average citizens abdicated their collective responsibilities, eventually selling out investors and selling off the American Dream itself. In the spirit of classics such as Barbarians at the Gate and Liar's Poker , this page-turning narrative captures how avarice, arrogance, and sheer stupidity eroded Wall Street's dominance and profoundly weakened the financial security of millions of middle-class Americans. Eye-opening and engrossing, The Sellout provides the most thorough investigation to date of this latest gilded era. In the spirit of Barbarians at the Gate and Liars Poker comes The Sellout , the definitive book on the recent collapse of Wall Street, one of the most dramatic and anxiety-ridden era in national socioeconomic history. In this powerful business narrative, Charles Gasparino, the author of Blood on the Floor and King of the Club , captures how avarice, arrogance, and sheer stupidity eroded Wall Streets dominance, made many of our countrys most fabled financial institutions vulnerable to significant new foreign control, and profoundly weakened the financial security of millions of poor and middle-class American families. Fun and games Power and perks Sex, drugs, and debt An education in risk Bigger is better Financial renaissance Paying the price One big happy family Opening the floodgates No more mother merrill Citigroup's money machine Perverse incentives Top of the world Cash stops flowing No clue The dancing stops The end begins "They're saying you guys are in trouble" Free fall The rescue. Traces the rise in power and wealth of America's largest investment banks and brokerage houses beginning in 2002. This work shows how and why several of these institutions have suffered staggering losses in assets and influence since then, triggering the vast financial crisis that is devastating individual and institutional wallets through the US. Offers an account of the most dramatic and anxiety-ridden era in national socioeconomic history--not merely a recounting of the collapse of Wall Street's legendary firms, but a broad examination of the people and the forces who killed Wall Street