Mark W. Geiger is an independent scholar and historian. He has served as vice president for special projects at Kidder, Peabody in New York. His previous book, Financial Fraud and Guerilla Violence in Missouri’s Civil War, 1861–1865, won the Tom Watson Brown Book Award and the Francis B. Simkins Award.
“Geiger explains how and why ‘inside players’ created crises out of financial innovations in the past and recent past. All ‘outsiders’ should read this book before the next crisis!”—Larry Neal, professor emeritus of economics, University of Illinois “Mark Geiger blends history with personal experience to provide a revealing look into the unchanging and peculiarly amoral culture of ‘the market crowd’ operating at the center of world financial markets.”—Richard Sylla, author of Alexander Hamilton on Finance, Credit, and Debt “As a sociologist who has studied financial markets for years, I can attest to the veracity of Mark W. Geiger’s analysis of how these markets really operate. With remarkable clarity and insight, he peels back layers of misinformation and misconception to reveal the enduring counterculture of market insiders.”—Wayne Baker, author of All You Have to Do Is Ask “Studies in skullduggery via histories of behavior among finance insiders, this book will fascinate and inform people serious about the enduring social organization of finance.”—Ron Burt, author of Structural Holes and coeditor of the Oxford book series on Social Network Mechanisms