New Releases by Gretchen Morgenson

Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times bestselling financial journalist Gretchen Morgenson and policy analyst Joshua Rosner investigate the insidious debt-laden world of private equity, revealing how it leeches profits from everyday Americans, tanks the companies it acquires, and puts our entire economic system at risk. Much has been written about the widening gulf between rich and poor, the pernicious effects our deepening income inequality has on the US’s well-being, and how our style of capitalism has failed to provide a living wage for so many Americans. But nothing has fully detailed the crucial role a small cohort of elite financiers has played in this dispiriting outcome over the past thirty years. Until now. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Gretchen Morgenson, with coauthor Joshua Rosner, unmask the small group of celebrated Wall Street financiers who use excessive debt and dubious practices to undermine our nation’s economy while enriching themselves: private equity. These Are the Plunderers lucidly and maddeningly traces the thirty-year history of corporate takeovers in America and private equity’s increasing dominance. Morgenson and Rosner investigate some of the biggest names in private equity, exposing how they buy companies, load them with debt, and then bleed them of assets and profits. Private equity relies on debt—and lots of it. Morgenson and Rosner show how companies absorbed by private equity have worse outcomes for everyone but the financiers: patients at private equity-owned nursing homes are more likely to die; companies owned by private equity are more likely to go bankrupt; healthcare costs are higher at private equity-owned operations; workers at private equity-owned companies across the nation are more likely to have their benefits and pensions slashed or lose their jobs; retirees from private industry as well as school teachers, firefighters, medical technicians, and other public workers have lower returns on their pensions because of the fees private equity extracts from their investments. You’re worse off because of private equity. These Are the Plunderers exposes the greed and pillaging in private equity, revealing the many ways these billionaires have bled our economy.

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011 One of The Economist''s 2011 Books of the Year The New York Times''s Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist reveals how the financial meltdown emerged from the toxic interplay of Washington, Wall Street, and corrupt mortgage lenders In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson, the star business columnist of The New York Times, exposes how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy. Drawing on previously untapped sources and building on original research from coauthor Joshua Rosner—who himself raised early warnings with the public and investors, and kept detailed records—Morgenson connects the dots that led to this fiasco. Morgenson and Rosner draw back the curtain on Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance giant that grew, with the support of the Clinton administration, through the 1990s, becoming a major opponent of government oversight even as it was benefiting from public subsidies. They expose the role played not only by Fannie Mae executives but also by enablers at Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, the FDIC, and the biggest players on Wall Street, to show how greed, aggression, and fear led countless officials to ignore warning signs of an imminent disaster. Character-rich and definitive in its analysis, this is the one account of the financial crisis you must read.

The Capitalist’s Bible, edited by Gretchen Morgenson, an award-winning journalist with the New York Times, is the essential guide to capitalism and its many languages, customs, and practices. Including thinkers like Adam Smith, concepts like supply and demand, and developments like globalization, The Capitalist’s Bible is an essential primer that clarifies, informs, and answers all the questions that need to be addressed and fully understood in these difficult economic times.

America''s most authoritative markets team reveals what lessons from the past still work, what received wisdom has expired, and how to create a winning portfolio for the long run For most Americans, investing is no longer a choice, it''s a requirement. With guaranteed pensions a quaint memory, dramatic changes in the stock market over the last few years have been a wake-up call; for too long, investors have simply trusted that the market would always go up. Now that we''ve gone from boom to bear and companies that seemed like golden nest eggs have cracked, how can people invest safely and confidently for their future? In chapters written exclusively and originally for this book, Gretchen Morgenson, Floyd Norris, and other top financial correspondents of The New York Times offer classic, time-tested advice on stocks, mutual funds, bonds, international markets, and taxes. They detail new opportunities in today''s market as well as new scams, and chart investment strategies that will outlast the market''s inevitable bubbles, slumps, and fads. Filled with indispensable analysis, The New Rules of Personal Investing is the expert source for investing in the new (and old) economy.

Publisher Description

Explains how to set personal financial goals, plan investments, select stocks, choose a broker, and take advantage of tax breaks