Moral-hazard

editorial and customer reviews on this very small book are gushing so we bought it. poor style, story not very interesting,
nothing comes alive. but the author obviously knows how to pick her subjects: alzheimer and the stock-market: you can not get more topical! all in all just a college 101 essay.

Cath is a 40ish woman who was once a freelance writer who has been forced into becoming a speechwriter for big business in early 1990s New York. Her husband, who is 20 years older than her, has been stricken with Alzheimer's, and she is in dire need of money to cover the expenses of his care. Some of her connections get her a job with Niedecker Bereche, an investment bank. When she gets to her new job she thinks "I was in the belly of the beast:observe, listen, learn." You see, her problem is that she is a feminist liberal idealist, so she is out of her element in the cutthroat world of high finance. She soon finds that a lot of what goes on at her work are scams and schemes much like those that brought down Enron. She does manage to find an ally to stem the tide of corruption from infecting her. Mike, a coworker, is also aware of the dangers of capitalism run amok and plans to take down the company from the inside out. The problem is that after working there for a while, Cath has perhaps changed her mind about the evils she once perceived.

Moral Hazard by Kate Jennings is an excellent work. It was critical of big business behavior without sacrificing story or preaching. It also retains a human element in the scenes with Cath and her stricken husband as he gradually deteriorates into a man she no longer knows. The satire in it is also humorous. It explodes the myth that Wall Street bankers know what they are doing and reveals them as paranoid, helpless, and corrupt investors who blow with the wind of rumors. I think we have already seen in real life what happens when markets are left to regulate themselves. This book is a great short read.

MORAL HAZARD

Read this book. Even by the second chapter, you'll understand you are entering a world that is mad as a hatter, only that the diagnosed alzheimer patient (the author's husband) is way more lucid than the bulls (the author's bosses) who ram Wall Street down our economic throats. Moral Hazard blinks yellow warning lights even when the words slice into neat little pats of cold butter on warm toast at breakfast. This makes the story edible in deceptively gentle prose. What seems like a peculiar combination of subjects is - dementia on Wall Street countered by a beloved husband's alzheimers' trials and indignities. Somehow the two stories fit hand in glove and come out swinging the reader into black-eyed shame for our dual neglect of an aging population, and withering pension funds ground into dust by tassle-shoed Big Toes. There's more, but then, that would be telling. Read Moral Hazard for yourself. I did. Twice.