Economic Armageddon: Gretchen Morgensen on How Wall Street Broke the Economy

Written on July 26th, 2011

NYT business reporter Gretchen Morgensen discusses her new book and the corruption of the mortgage lending industry.

July 26, 2011  | Gretchen Morgensen was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her “trenchant and incisive” coverage of Wall Street and has been on that beat ever since. Her new book, Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon (written with Joshua Rosner), lays out the toxic interplay between Washington, Wall Street and corrupt mortgage lenders that led to the meltdown. It examines how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect us from financial harm were actually complicit in creating the crisis.

Gretchen Morgenson is a business reporter and columnist at the New York Times, where she also serves as assistant business and financial editor. Prior to joining the Times in 1998, she worked as a broker at Dean Witter in the 1980s, and as a reporter at Forbes, Worth, and Money magazines.

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Q&A: GRETCHEN MORGENSON – 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner

Written on July 3rd, 2011

 

 

Aired 06/26/11

GRETCHEN MORGENSON was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her "trenchant and incisive" coverage of Wall Street. She has been on that beat ever since and now has a book on the recent meltdown. Though we've had in depth conversations with Michael Lewis, Joseph Stiglitz, Simon Johnson, William Greider and others about the crisis, it's been a while since we covered it, and so this week we will have a chance to get an update on where things stand and look at some of the implications. 
RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT lays out how the financial meltdown resulted from the toxic interplay of Washington, Wall Street, and corrupt mortgage lenders. It reveals how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect us from financial harm were actually complicit in creating the financial crisis, and focuses on the abuse of Fannie May and Freddie Mac.

http://www.nytimes.com/