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: DAVID CAY JOHNSTON Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist, Author

Written on April 5th, 2011

 

Aired 04/03/11

Today one of our two major political parties - nationally and in state capitols -- is unwilling to consider raising taxes no matter what the circumstances. Though most of Washington's officials and media are hysterical about the deficit, and willing to hurt anyone in an effort to reduce it, both parties voted in December to extend tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans for two more years.

I last interviewed today's guest, Pulitzer Prize winning tax writer, DAVID CAY JOHNSTON in January 2009 on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, We talked then about how we could make the most of the opportunity presented by the financial catastrophe. Did the bailouts make sense? and What could we do that would be smarter, more efficient, more effective - that might work?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON worked as an investigative reporter for several newspapers. He was with the Los Angeles Times from 1976 to 1988, and at the New York Times from 1995-2008 where he won a Pulitzer Prize for his innovative coverage of our tax system He now teaches the tax, property and regulatory law of the ancient world at Syracuse University College of Law and Whitman School of Management and writes a column at tax.com. He is the author of two bestsellers, Perfectly Legal and Free Lunch. His next book, The Fine Print, will be published in 2011.

http://www.tax.com/

Q&A: JACK CANFIELD, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series

Written on August 24th, 2010
 

 

Aired 08/22/10 (Part 1 of 2) EVOLUTIONARY LEADERS CALL TO ACTION

JACK CANFIELD is one of America's leading experts in the development of human potential. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen are the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling coauthors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, with over 125 different titles in print, and worldwide sales of over 100 million copies. Jack is a Harvard graduate with a Master's Degree in psychological education and one of the earliest champions of peak-performance and self-esteem. The Success Principles (coauthored with Janet Switzer), offers the principles that he's studied, taught, and lived for the past 30 years in a practical and inspiring guide.

http://www.jackcanfield.com/

http://www.evolutionaryleaders.net/laevent/

Q&A: ANDREW BACEVICH, professor of history & international relations – Author

Written on August 10th, 2010
 

 

Aired 08/08/10

ANDREW BACEVICH, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, served twenty-three years in the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of colonel. He also lost his son in Iraq last year. A graduate of the U. S. Military Academy, he received his Ph. D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of several books, including THE NEW AMERICAN MILITARISM; THE LIMITS OF POWER: The End of American Exceptionalism; and his newest, WASHINGTON RULES: America's Path to Permanent War.

Q&A: NICHOLAS KRISTOF, NY Times Columnist and Author

Written on December 1st, 2009

 

Aired 11/22/09

NICHOLAS KRISTOF, oped columnist at the New York Times, and author with his wife, former Times editor Sheryl WuDunn, of HALF THE SKY: From Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide."

Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and then studied law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with first class honors. He joined the NY Times in 1984. In 1990 Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, then also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Mr. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called "his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world."

In his column, NICHOLAS KRISTOF was an early opponent of the Iraq war, and among the first to warn that we were losing ground to the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. He was among the first to raise doubts about WMD in Iraq, he was the first to report that President Bush's State of the Union claim about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa was contradicted by the administration's own investigation. His columns have often focused on global health, poverty and gender issues in the developing world. In particular, since 2004 he has written dozens of columns about Darfur and visited the area ten times.

Prior to their newest, HALF THE SKY, Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are authors of CHINA WAKES: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF A RISING POWER and THUNDER FROM THE EAST: PORTRAIT OF A RISING ASIA.

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/

http://halftheskymovement.org/