Critical, independent voices are seldom found within the citadels of
international finance. That's what makes Nomi Prins unique. During
fifteen years as an executive at skyscraping banks like Goldman Sachs,
Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers, Prins never lost her ability to see
the broader picture. She walked away from the game in 2002 out of
disgust with the burgeoning corporate corruption, just as its magnitude
was becoming clear to the public.
In this acclaimed exposé, named one of the best books of 2004 by The
Economist, Barron's, Library Journal, and The Progressive, Prins
provides fascinating firsthand details of day-to-day life in the
financial leviathans, with all its rich absurdities. She demonstrates
how the much-publicized fraud of recent years resulted from deregulation
that trashed the rules of responsible corporate behavior, and not simply
the unbridled greed of a select few. While the stock market roared on
the back of phony balance sheets, executives made out like bandits and
Congress looked the other way. Worse yet, as the new foreword to this
edition makes clear, everything remains in place for a repeat
performance.