ProPublica’s Pulitzer winners, Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, were on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday to discuss their acclaimed series, The Wall Street Money Machine. The investigation merited this year’s Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, which also happened to be the first Pulitzer awarded to a body of work that didn’t appear in print.
In the interview, Bernstein and Eisinger explain how several banks and hedge funds realized what was happening to the U.S. economy and made incredible profits by betting against the markets as the housing bubble was about to burst.
"From what we've learned, there was nothing illegal in what Magnetar did; it was playing by the rules in place at that time," Bernstein and Eisinger wrote last April. "And the hedge fund didn't cause the housing bubble or the financial crisis. But the Magnetar trade does illustrate the perverse incentives and reckless behavior that characterized the last days of the boom."
Listen to the interview, How Some Made Millions Betting Against The Market, below:
You can also listen to the duo’s interview on The Leonard Lopate Show:
