405:
Inside Job
Originally aired 04.09.2010
For seven months a team of investigative journalists from ProPublica looked into a story for us, the inside story of one company that made hundreds of millions of dollars for itself while worsening the financial crisis for the rest of us.
Ira talks about a friend who for years had a very trusted business partner and bookkeeper, until one day when he ran away with all of her money. (1 minute)
A hedge fund named Magnetar comes up with an elaborate plan to make money. It sponsors the creation of complicated and ultimately toxic financial securities...while at the same time betting against the very securities it helped create. Planet Money's Alex Blumberg teams up with two investigative reporters from ProPublica, Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, to tell the story. Jake and Jesse pored through thousands of pages of documents and interviewed dozens of Wall Street Insiders. We bring you the result: A tale of intrigue and questionable behavior, which parallels quite closely the plot of a Mel Brooks musical. (40 minutes)
If you have any questions after hearing this story, you can email the ProPublica team for an answer.
We commissioned a Broadway song to go along with this story, which you can listen to here. (Click to stream; right click or control click to download.)
You can also download the sheet music.
And here is a video of the recording session for the song:
Music and Lyrics: Robert Lopez
Vocalists: John Treacy Eagan and Christian Borle
Music Supervisor/Producer: Stephen Oremus
Orchestrator: Bruce Coughlin
Studio Engineer: John Kilgore. Music Contractor: Michael Keller. Copyist: Karl Mansfield
Act Two. Taking a Big Pink Eraser to the Thin Blue Line
Michael May tells the story of Barry Cooper, a former crooked narcotics cop who has turned his interest elsewhere...to busting crooked narcotics cops. But after Cooper and a rich benefactor team up to set a trap for the police, Barry's plans are put in jeopardy—including his dream of creating a reality show called "Kop Busters." Michael May is the Culture editor at the Texas Observer. You can watch videos of Barry's police raids at their website. (15 minutes)
