Chasing Goldman Sachs, Suzanne McGee
Chasing Goldman Sachs, Suzanne McGee
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Chasing Goldman Sachs
How the Masters of the Universe Melted Wall Street Down…and Why They'll Take Us to the Brink Again

Author: Suzanne McGee

Narrator: Hillary Huber

Unabridged: 13 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/22/2010


Synopsis

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.

About Suzanne McGee

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sajith on January 11, 2016

A great book on the American economy that does not economize on words! Wall Street is the synonym of America’s financial muscle, where the most lavishly paid bankers and traders in the world decide the direction in which corporate enterprise moves. Occasionally, hiccups arise in the banking communit......more

Goodreads review by Susan on May 17, 2017

This is an excellent recap of the mortgage bubble and crash of 2008 which gives the history and underlying causes without getting bogged down in the details. I've read other books about the 2008 meltdown and found that McGee approaches the problem by examining the risk taking behaviors of Wall Stree......more

Goodreads review by Steven on July 31, 2024

AN EDITOR OF BARRON'S LOOKS AT ONE OF THE MAJOR SURVIVING BANKS Suzanne McGee is a contributing editor at Barron's. She wrote in the Introduction to this 2010 book, "Instead of just rehashing every detail of WHAT happened to Wall Street, I'll take you behind the scenes and show you just WHY our fina......more

Goodreads review by Alberto on February 22, 2017

As the seemingly perpetual performance leader, Goldman Sachs became the one others had to follow. This author offers a different angle on a well narrated story about the recent financial collapse. Nonetheless and despite my high familiarity with the subject, the author succeeds at sharing unique ins......more

Goodreads review by Richard on March 06, 2014

Suzanne McGee is a contributing editor to "Barron's" who worked for thirteen years as a staff writer for the "Wall Street Journal." "Chasing Goldman Sachs" is not a history of the financial crisis that messed up the American economy; other authors have covered that ground. This book is directed more......more