Learning to cover Wall Street from the bottom

Chris Hodenfield of New Canaan-Darien Magazine profiles Fox Business Network reporter Charles Gasparino, whose career has included stints at the Tampa Tribune to trade publications to The Wall Street Journal and CNBC.

Here is an excerpt:

It seems you did something right when managing your career.

No one ever gave me  break in this business. I came out of university and was a beat reporter for the Tampa Tribune. But I left because I hated living in Tampa. I started working for trade magazine on Wall Street where I learned, from the bottom, how Wall Street works, how  information is used, how sleazy the Street can be.

When the financial crisis was going on, there was a lot of esoteric stuff that led to it. I’ll give you an example: the repo market. Firms essentially finance themselves because they repo in money. They lent out collateral and took in cash. They took in thirty times more cash than they lent out. It’s called leverage. It’s the way the Street worked. It caused their downfall. They borrowed much more than they had on hand in collateral.

Read the rest of the interview here.