Just finished "The Sellout" By Charles Gasparino. He is the the tall guy who dropped the f-bomb on CNBC. He also wrote "King of the Club" about Dick Grasso which was good.
Although this book seemed to get some bad reviews by the financial media, I thought it was like a 500 page version of "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis. The books starts on Wall Street in the 1980 with Solomon Brothers and Credit Suisse. Although the book is basically a story of the excessive build up of leverage by the I-Banks from 1980-2007, there are separate stories revolving around Larry Fink(CEO of Blackrock), Lewis Ranieri(the co-inventor of the mortgage back security), Dick Fuld (ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers), Jamie Dimon (CEO of JPMorgan), and Jimmy Caynes (ex-CEO of Bear Sterns). Gasparino seems to have weird inside knowledge about all of these characters (from their sexual habits to Caynes pot-smoking in his office at BS).
In the end, the book tells a decent story about the lead up the the subprime crisis, and the major players that got us here. I believe he is one of the only good investigative journalist left (certainly at CNBC, but in general, in the entire financial media). Its a big book, so give yourself a few weeks to read this one.
