Synopses & Reviews
"Hell is empty, and
all the devils are here."
-Shakespeare, The Tempest
As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers?
According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. And the full story, in all of its complexity and detail, is like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Almost everyone has missed the big picture. Almost no one has put all the pieces together.
All the Devils Are Here goes back several decades to weave the hidden history of the financial crisis in a way no previous book has done. It explores the motivations of everyone from famous CEOs, cabinet secretaries, and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers, analysts, and Wall Street traders. It delves into the powerful American mythology of homeownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature.
Among the devils you'll meet in vivid detail:
• Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, who dreamed of spreading homeownership to the masses, only to succumb to the peer pressure-and the outsized profits-of the sleaziest subprime lending.
• Roland Arnall, a respected philanthropist and diplomat, who made his fortune building Ameriquest, a subprime lending empire that relied on blatantly deceptive lending practices.
• Hank Greenberg, who built AIG into a Rube Goldberg contraption with an undeserved triple-A rating, and who ran it so tightly that he was the only one who knew where all the bodies were buried.
• Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, aloof and suspicious, who suffered from "Goldman envy" and drove a proud old firm into the ground by promoting cronies and pushing out his smartest lieutenants.
• Lloyd Blankfein, who helped turn Goldman Sachs from a culture that famously put clients first to one that made clients secondary to its own bottom line.
• Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae, who (like his predecessors) bullied regulators into submission and let his firm drift away from its original, noble mission.
• Brian Clarkson of Moody's, who aggressively pushed to increase his rating agency's market share and stock price, at the cost of its integrity.
• Alan Greenspan, the legendary maestro of the Federal Reserve, who ignored the evidence of a growing housing bubble and turned a blind eye to the lending practices that ultimately brought down Wall Street-and inflicted enormous pain on the country.
Just as McLean's The Smartest Guys in the Room was hailed as the best Enron book on a crowded shelf, so will All the Devils Are Here be remembered for finally making sense of the meltdown and its consequences.
Review
"Even if there weren't a prostitution thread, this would be a page-turner. Elkind's style is journalism at its best: well-reported but pared down, and full of colorful scenes."
-Samantha Henig, Newsweek.com
"The Eliot Spitzer story plays like a novel that might have been plotted by Theodore Dreiser and peopled with characters by Tom Wolfe. The governor of New York, aka "Mr. Clean", aka "the Sheriff of Wall Street", is transformed by a prostitution scandal into "the Luv Gov" and "Client 9." The tireless reformer compared to Batman's alter ego, Bruce Wayne; the moralistic square, who carried a briefcase in junior high, finds his much ballyhooed future as a possible presidential contender smashed to pieces, and the word "disgraced" seemingly permanently stapled to his name like a Homeric epithet."
-The New York Times
"Peter Elkind's Rough Justice, [is] an absorbing account of Spitzer's improbable journey from New York rich kid to celebrated Wall Street scourge - to infamous Client No. 9 of the Emperor's Club.
An editor at large at Fortune magazine and co-author of a book about the downfall of Enron Corp., Elkind captures the conflicting sides of Spitzer. He was an idealist who was genuinely outraged by the Wall Street pandemic. Yet Spitzer was also plagued by a volcanic temper and an over-caffeinated ego that was unable to keep his worst impulses in check."
-Los Angeles Times
"[Elkind] is a fantastic researcher who has used both his powers of persuasion and the freedom of information laws to full advantage. Readers are treated to the frantic e-mails of aides as they coped with Spitzer's foul-mouthed tirades and wild mood swings. The book also has the first interviews with the governor's favorite date from the Emperors Club prostitution ring."
-Washington Post
Review
and#8220;The best book about the Enron debacle to date.and#8221;
and#8212;BusinessWeek
and#160;
and#8220;The authors write with power and finesse. Their prose is effortless, like a sprinter floating down the track.and#8221;
and#8212;USA Today
and#160;
and#8220;Well-reported and well-written.and#8221;
and#8212;Warren Buffett
Synopsis
In this tenth-anniversary edition, acclaimed investigative journalists Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind deliver the definitive account of the fall of Enron, one of the biggest scandals in corporate America history. Meticulously researched and character driven, The Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron's past--and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron's rise from obscurity to the top of the business world to its disastrous demise. It reveals as never before major characters such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, as well as lesser-known players like Cliff Baxter and Rebecca Mark.
It is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit--a microcosm of all that can go wrong with American business. Above all, it's a fascinating human drama that has proven to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal. In this tenth anniversary edition, McLean and Elkind revisit the fall of Enron and its aftermath in a new chapter.
Synopsis
Peter Elkind presents an in-depth look at the ambitious career and sudden disgrace of former New York governor Eliot Spitzer. The result is a gripping narrative of one man's noble intentions and fatal flaws and the powerful forces that destroyed him.
Synopsis
An in-depth look at the ambitious career and sudden disgrace of the former New York governor With a combination of talent, hard work, connections, and family wealth, Eliot Spitzer built an amazing career. By his late forties, he'd gone from Princeton to Harvard Law to dramatic success as a prosecutor and attorney general to the governorship of New York. Many thought he would become the first Jewish president of the United States. Then came the prostitution scandal that shocked and mystified the nation.
Peter Elkind's definitive account gets at all sides of this complex man: the well-intentioned do-gooder, the aggressive lawyer, the hardball politician, the dutiful son, the loving husband and father, and the secretive "Client 9" of the Emperor's Club escort service.
Elkind interviewed dozens of key sources ranging from Spitzer's family, friends, and closest aides, to targets of his high-profile investigations, to central players in the prostitution ring. He reveals many groundbreaking new details about Spitzer's rise, his short time as governor, and the way his enemies plotted against him.
The result is a gripping, almost Shakespearean narrative-a tragedy of one man's noble intentions and fatal flaws and the powerful forces (both internal and external) that destroyed him.
Synopsis
There were dozens of books about Watergate, but only All the President's Men gave readers the full story, with all the drama and nuance and exclusive reporting. And thirty years later, if you're going to read only one book on Watergate, that's still the one. Today, Enron is the biggest business story of our time, and Fortune senior writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are the new Woodward and Bernstein.
Remarkably, it was just two years ago that Enron was thought to epitomize a great New Economy company, with its skyrocketing profits and share price. But that was before Fortune published an article by McLean that asked a seemingly innocent question: How exactly does Enron make money? From that point on, Enron's house of cards began to crumble. Now, McLean and Elkind have investigated much deeper, to offer the definitive book about the Enron scandal and the fascinating people behind it.
Meticulously researched and character driven, Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron's pastandmdash;and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron's rise from obscurity to the top of the business world to its disastrous demise. It reveals as never before major characters such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, as well as lesser known players like Cliff Baxter and Rebecca Mark. Smartest Guys in the Room is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceitandmdash;a microcosm of all that is wrong with American business today. Above all, it's a fascinating human drama that will prove to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal.
Synopsis
The New York Times bestseller hailed as andquot;the best business book of 2010andquot; (Huffington Post).
As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers?
According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. And the full story, in all of its complexity and detail, is like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Almost everyone has missed the big picture. Almost no one has put all the pieces together.
All the Devils Are Here goes back several decades to weave the hidden history of the financial crisis in a way no previous book has done. It explores the motivations of everyone from famous CEOs, cabinet secretaries, and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers, analysts, and Wall Street traders. It delves into the powerful American mythology of homeownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature.
Synopsis
The tenth-anniversary edition of the definitive account of the Enron scandal, updated with a new chapter and#160;
The Enron scandal brought down one of the most admired companies of the 1990s. Countless books and articles were written about it, but only The Smartest Guys in the Room holds up a decade later as the definitive narrative. For this tenth anniversary edition, McLean and Elkind have revisited the fall of Enron and its aftermath, in a new chapter that asks why Enron still matters. They also reveal the fates of the key players in the scandal.
Synopsis
The tenth-anniversary edition of the definitive account of the Enron scandal, updated with a new chapter and#160;
The Enron scandal brought down one of the most admired companies of the 1990s. Countless books and articles were written about it, but only The Smartest Guys in the Room holds up a decade later as the definitive narrative. For this tenth anniversary edition, McLean and Elkind have revisited the fall of Enron and its aftermath, in a new chapter that asks why Enron still matters. They also reveal the fates of the key players in the scandal.
About the Author
Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind collaborated on this book when they both were Fortune senior writers. McLean, a former investment banking analyst for Goldman Sachs, is now a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and lives in Chicago. Elkind, an award-winning investigative reporter, is now an editor-at-large for Fortune and lives in Fort Worth, Texas.
Table of Contents
The Smartest Guys in the Room Authors' Notes and Acknowledgments
Cast of Characters
Our Values
Introduction
1. Lunch on a Silver Platter
2. Please Keep Making Us Millions
3. We Were the Apostles
4. The First Prima Donna
5. Guys with Spikes
6. The Empress of Energy
7. The 15 Percent Solution
8. A Recipe for Disaster
9. The Klieg-Light Syndrome
10. The Hotel Kenneth-Lay-a
11. Andy Fastow's Secrets
12. The Big Enchilada
13. An Unnatural Act
14. The Beating Heart of Enron
15. Everybody Loves Enron
16. When Pigs Could Fly
17. Gaming California
18. Bandwidth Hog
19. Ask Why, Asshole
20. I Want to Resign
21. The and#36;45 Million Question
22. We Have No Cash!
Epilogue: Isn't Anybody Sorry?
Index