Lauren Meller of Bloomberg’s public relations staff spoke with Bob Ivry, an editor-at-large for Bloomberg News, about covering the economic downturn in 2008 and writing a book that details its aftermath.
Here is an excerpt:
What is your current focus in terms of financial coverage?
As editor-at-large for global markets, I have a chance to help reporters do stories internationally. That’s exciting for me because most of my attention until now has been on the U.S.
Bloomberg News is in a unique position because we have skilled news gatherers all over the world. So I plan to exploit that by marshaling stories about oil, rice crops, currency trading and emerging-market economies, among other topics, on all six continents.
My opinion is that the biggest finance story may be migrating away from the major banks, where it’s been for about a decade, and will be for a while longer, to the less regulated so-called shadow banking system; hedge funds and other investors who shift billions of dollars on a daily basis. Keep an eye on Bloomberg News’ global markets team if you’re concerned about the next big thing.
You have a new book out, “The Seven Sins of Wall Street.” What was the genesis of this book and how important were the events of the last five years in providing inspiration?
“The Seven Sins of Wall Street” is based on my reporting from 2008 to 2013. It’s not always easy to detect trends when you’re in the middle of them, but at some point in 2010 it became clear to me that the biggest banks, which had gotten even bigger due to the bailouts, were acting as if the financial crisis had never happened. They were behaving badly. They were still getting billions of dollars in an endless bailout that hasn’t stopped even now, in January 2014.
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