He serves on the advisory board of the University of California, Berkeley’s Financial Fraud Institute. And he was a consultant on season three of the HBO series “Succession.”
He was a regular columnist for The New York Times’s Dealbook section. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, NewYorker.com, The Washington Post, The Baffler, The American Prospect and on NPR and “This American Life.” Before joining ProPublica, he was the Wall Street Editor of Conde Nast Portfolio and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, covering markets and finance.
He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the journalist Sarah Ellison, and their daughters.
A Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission document shows Magnetar selected assets for a billion dollar Merrill Lynch mortgage securities deal, despite having long asserted otherwise.
Looking inward in the grand tradition of American self-improvement, the investment bank promises to be nicer and more transparent, but ignores the structural problems that helped ignite the financial crisis.
Rapper 50 Cent urges millions of Twitter followers to invest in an obscure penny stock, the latest in a long list of celebrities offering investment advice that’s long on risk and short on security.
Two weeks ago, Standard & Poor’s put out a press release: The credit rating agency warned it was poised to <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-15/s-p-says-it-incorrectly-analyzed-re-remic-mortgage-bonds.html">downgrade</a> almost 1,200 complex mortgage securities.
The builders of mortgage securities at industry giant Merrill Lynch couldn’t find buyers for their wares. So they paid another group at Merrill to take billions of dollars of the unwanted assets.
The regulatory overhaul of the financial system that passed last summer scored a big victory: It barred investment banks’ wagering with their own capital. Many expect Wall Street will find a way around these rules.
Across the world, there are booms. Chinese Internet companies are flourishing. Energy companies are finding new sources of power. Commercial real estate is coming back.
The SEC is investigating whether JPMorgan adequately disclosed to investors that the hedge fund Magnetar influenced a deal it was also betting against.
A European-based investment fund and a French bank are battling it out in New York state court over complex securities created at the behest of the hedge fund Magnetar
As investors left the market in the run-up to the meltdown, Wall Street created fake demand, increasing their bonuses — and ultimately making the crisis worse.
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