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Book Jacket THE MATCH KING
Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals
FRANK PARTNOY
SUMMARY   |  AUTHOR'S NOTE   |  QUOTES
An all-too prescient parable of how unregulated markets, greed, and unchecked ambition can wreak havoc on our economic system

At the height of the roaring '20s, Swedish émigré Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression.

Yet after Kreuger's suicide in 1932, the true nature of his empire emerged. Driven by success to adopt ever-more perilous practices, Kreuger had turned to shell companies in tax havens, fudged accounting figures, off-balance-sheet accounting, even forgery. He created a raft of innovative financial products— many of them precursors to instruments wreaking havoc in today's markets. When his Wall Street empire collapsed, millions went bankrupt.

Frank Partnoy, a frequent commentator on financial disaster for the Financial Times, New York Times, NPR, and CBS's "60 Minutes," recasts the life story of a remarkable yet forgotten genius in ways that force us to re-think our ideas about the wisdom of crowds, the invisible hand, and the free and unfettered market

Frank Partnoy is the author of F.I.A.S.C.O.: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader and Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Greed Corrupted the Financial Markets. He has worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and a corporate lawyer, and has testified as an expert before both the United States Senate and House of Representatives. A graduate of Yale Law School, he currently teaches law at the University of San Diego.

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HARDCOVER
ISBN 978-1-58648-743-0
Pub date: 05/04/09
Price: $26.95/31.00 Canada
6 1/8 x 9 1/4
288 pages
Carton Quantity: 18
Business, History
Selling Territory: US, C
Rights: First Serial, Electronic, Audio: PublicAffairs
Performance, Translation: Theresa Park, Park Literary Group

PAPERBACK
ISBN 978-1586488123
Pub date: 03/09/10
Price: $15.95/20.00 Canada
5 1/2 x 8 1/4
288 pages
Carton Quantity: 40
Business, History
Selling Territory: USC
Pub history: 978-1586487430

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