The Triple-A Trap is the story behind the financial meltdown and credit crisis. It is a unique behind the scenes look at the dangerous delusions that humbled America's largest financial institutions and plunged the country into recession. Christine Richard, a Bloomberg News reporter, spent five years talking to Bill Ackman, a short seller who stood to gain millions from the bankruptcy of MIBA, a little known insurance company that guaranteed nearly a trillion of debt, as part of an investigation into the interworking of companies that few outside of Wall Street knew existed and even fewer understood. Ackman had sounded the warning for the credit industry long ago when he announced his short of MBIA. He then spent several years telling anyone who'd listen that the world would soon come crashing down. Not only was he ignored, he was punished for speaking out. This story goes to the root of the Wall Street meltdown: greed ran amok, those who tried to question or regulate the situation were pushed to the margins and punished, and in the end, the taxpayer holds the bill. Richard's search for the truth is a window into how greed and arrogance laid the groundwork for the current disaster. The Triple-A Trap explores a financial system grown increasingly opaque and dangerously overconfident. It's about the rising influence of hedge funds and about the creation of the most toxic financial instrument in history - the credit default swap. And really, now that every tax payer in the country is the owner of billions of dollars worth of these instruments, don't they want to know why?
- ISBN10 047047288X
- ISBN13 9780470472880
- Publish Date 28 October 2008
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Publish Country US
- Imprint John Wiley & Sons Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 304
- Language English