‘Black Edge’ Recounts The Biggest Insider-Trading Scandal In History
Fresh Air, 07 February 2017
Sheelah Kolhatkar discusses the investigation of billionaire hedge-fund trader Steven A. Cohen. She says the ways Wall Street elites accumulate wealth often negatively affect the rest of the country.
This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who’s off this week visiting family. Remember when you made your first 10 million? It’s a ridiculous question for most of us, but to the most successful Wall Street hedge fund managers that’s just not a lot of money. Our guest, Sheelah Kolhatkar, writes that in 2006, the lowest-paid person on the list of the top 25 earning hedge fund managers made $240 million just that year. One of the top earners was Steven A. Cohen, whose firm was at the center of a massive insider trading scandal Kolhatkar writes about in a new book.
It’s a story of a hedge fund managers spreading cash around to get information and government investigators running wiretaps and leaning on traders to help them crack down on what they suspect is widespread cheating in the financial sector. And it’s a story of inequality in financial markets and the economy and what that means for the country.
