Skip to Main Content
The Financial Crisis in Perspective (Collection)
book

The Financial Crisis in Perspective (Collection)

by Satyajit Das Mark Zandi John Authers
May 2012
Beginner content levelBeginner
1040 pages
27h 16m
English
Pearson
Content preview from The Financial Crisis in Perspective (Collection)

20. Masters of the Universe

During the Great Depression, finance was unfashionable: “Don’t tell my mother I’m a banker, she thinks I play piano in a brothel.” Now, the best and brightest business school, mathematics, science, and computing graduates take jobs on Wall Street: “When it’s profit you’re after, why go after it the hard way? I intend to be a stockbroker...One attempts to make the most money with the least work.”1

In Lucy Prebble’s play Enron, the character Jeffrey Skilling, Harvard MBA, CEO of Enron and soon to be convicted felon, outlines the basis of the new economy: “the only difference between me and the people judging me is they weren’t smart enough to do what we did.”2 Money and brilliance became synonymous: “One of our culture’s ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

The Escape from Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap: A Hazardous Road for the World Economy

The Escape from Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap: A Hazardous Road for the World Economy

Richard C. Koo

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780133087536