Acknowledgments

I submitted the manuscript for this book on the twentieth anniversary of my first day at the Financial Times, so I must first acknowledge my debt to the news organization where I have spent all my working life. I learned substantially all that I know about the world of investment during my career at the Financial Times, which has involved living in three countries, traveling to many more, and reporting on many of the events in this book.

I learned much from all the many colleagues with whom I have worked, and I am grateful to all of them. I thank Lionel Barber, Martin Dickson, and Daniel Bogler for allowing me the time off needed to finish this book. Keith Fray, the Financial Times deputy head of statistics who suffers daily demands from me for graphics and information at the best of times, checked all the graphics. In particular, I want to thank Philip Coggan, my mentor and predecessor, who probably helped me more than anyone else at the paper, and my current colleague in New York, who Michael Mackenzie, might know more about markets than anyone else I know.

My studies at Columbia Business School, where I received an MBA in 2000, were also formative. I want to thank all my professors there, but in particular David Beim, Joel Brockner, Franklin Edwards, Paul Glasserman, and Bruce Greenwald for the many lessons I learned that proved invaluable for writing this book. It is also appropriate to thank the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship and George A. Wiegers, for providing me with the funding for the MBA.

This book is the result of my own conclusions, but these were formed by talking to a lot of people. In particular, I want to thank the following for interviews that helped in preparing the book: Antoine van Agtmael, Robert Arnott, Robert Barbera, David Beim, Mohamed El-Erian, Gary Gorton, Robert Jaeger, Tim Lee, Jamie Lee, Andrew Lo, George Magnus, Benoit Mandelbrot, Rick di Mascio, Michael Mauboussin, James Melcher, Amin Rajan, Jeremy Siegel, Philip Verleger, and Dimitri Vayanos.

Others have provided me with regular inputs of their research and have been invaluable in guiding me through the investment maze. In particular, I want to thank David Bowers, Ian Harnett, Chis Watling, Tim Bond, Vinny Catalano, Alan Ruskin, Marc Chandler, Simon Derrick, Mansoor Mohi-Uddin, Albert Edwards, Jeremy Grantham, Elroy Dimson, Mark Lapolla, Tobias Levkovich, James Montier, Russell Napier, James Paulsen, David Ranson, Alan Rohrbach, Joseph Stiglitz, Richard Thaler, and the entire staff of London’s Capital Economics and Lombard Street Research.

This is a work of journalism, not an academic book, but the usual academic disclaimer applies. The merits are thanks to these people; the mistakes are all mine.

I relied on my own reporting, and on that of my Financial Times colleagues wherever possible. Details of the original articles appear in the Notes. I also read many books, which appear in the Bibliography.

At Pearson Education, I want to thank Chris Cudmore, Jim Boyd, and Russ Hall, who challenged me to take the book into different but better directions. Thanks also to Jovana Shirley and Lori Lyons for the finishing touches during production.

Robert Jaeger, Jennifer Hughes, Anora Mahmudova, and Paul Griffin all kindly read early drafts and gave me comments. My father, David Authers, read possibly every draft I produced and continues to be my most perceptive critic. The staff of Fort Washington Public Library provided a pleasant working environment for me.

Finally, and most important, I want to thank my wife, Sara Silver, for encouraging me while I finished this book, at a point when she had only just herself gone through the much more arduous process of giving birth to our third child, as well as for her ever exacting and invaluable editing; and my children Andie, Josie, and Jamie for giving me just enough peace to get it written and enough moments of joy to remind me that there are far more important things in life than finance.