Moe Tkacik of New York magazine interviewed CNBC’s Charles Gasparino about covering Wall Street and his new book, “The Sellout: How Three Decades of Wall Street Greed and Government Mismanagement Destroyed the Global Financial System,” and the discussion came around to Gasparino’s relationship with sources.
Here is an excerpt:
The tone of your book is more reflective than most of the crisis books I’ve read, and I’ve read them all.
People think because I go on TV and scream a lot I don’t have half a brain in my head, but I’ve been in this business a long time. And there’s the fact that I rewrote it eight times.
Did you find it tough, starting out in business journalism, to get people to talk to you without being deferential?
I think the last guy who really intimidated me in a reporting situation was the president of the Cortland County school board [for Newsday]. Most of these guys are cowards. Sometimes people will get mad about something I reported, mostly Lehman guys, and they’ll confront me outside a restaurant, but it’s always in packs; there will be five of them or six of them and it’s me. At first you’re nice, because these people are unemployed and that’s terrible, but if they don’t let up, that’s when you just have to tell them to point blank go fuck themselves.
In any case, some of [my sources] are good friends, but I’m not one of them, you’ll see at my party. [Blackrock CEO] Larry Fink will be there, and maybe [Morgan Stanley CEO] John Mack will show up, but I’m not gonna be holding hands with fuckin’ [JPMorgan CEO] Jamie Dimon or anything like that.
Read more here.
