Fool's Gold

Author(s): Gillian Tett

Business & Economics

The inside story of how the credit crunch unfolded by the first journalist to predict itFalling house prices. Rising energy and food prices. Job losses. Paralysis over whether interest rates should go up or down. Everywhere we turn, the headlines are now screaming the word 'recession'. But where did it all start? And could it have been prevented? In this fast-paced, revealing book, award-winning Financial Times journalist and social anthropologist Gillian Tett takes us inside the shadowy world of complex finance and derivatives and explains how the business of slicing and dicing debt led us to the devastating global credit crunch. Following a small tribe of exceptionally talented bankers, she shows out the innovations they created initially appeared beneficial, but then led to disaster, as the world of complex credit span out of the control of regulators, politicians - and even the bankers themselves.


Product Information

Winner of Spear's Book Awards: Financial Book of the Year 2009.

** '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

Gillian Tett has worked for the Financial Times for fifteen years. In 2008 she won the British Press Award for the Financial Journalist of the Year. She often appears on high-profile discussion programmes such as TODAY and she lectures widely. She has PhD in social anthropology from Cambridge University

General Fields

  • : 9781408701676
  • : Little, Brown Book Group Limited
  • : Little, Brown
  • : 0.458
  • : March 2009
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Gillian Tett
  • : Paperback
  • : Export ed
  • : 332.7
  • : 352