Gretchen C. Morgenson (born January 2, 1956) is an American, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist notable as longtime writer of the Market Watch column for the Sunday “Money & Business” section of the New York Times. In November, 2017, she moved from the Times to the Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal investigations editor Michael Siconolfi announced that Morgenson was joining that paper’s investigative team as a senior special writer, working closely also with reporters in the money and investing group and the financial enterprise group.
Article: Case Sheds Light on Goldman’s Role as Lender in Short Sales
Article - MediaCase Sheds Light on Goldman’s Role as Lender in Short Sales
Gretchen Morgenson
The New York Times, 29 January 2016
It would be easy to overlook the case against Goldman Sachs filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Jan. 14. It involved a complex piece of Wall Street plumbing, led to a minuscule $15 million fine and came on the same day that Goldman agreed to pay up to $5 billion to settle prosecutors’ claims that it sold faulty mortgage securities to investors.
Article: Anger at Goldman Still Simmers
Article - MediaAnger at Goldman Still Simmers
Gretchen Morgenson
New York Times cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 26 March 2012
Just before the financial crisis began in September 2008, a prominent hedge fund appeared well positioned to take advantage of any turmoil in the markets. That fund, Copper River Partners, had made sizable bets months earlier against companies whose stocks it expected to suffer.
Within weeks, however, Copper River, once a successful $1.5 billion hedge fund, was out of business, having unexpectedly absorbed losses on the very bets it thought would be profitable.
Article: Financial Finger-Pointing Turns to Regulators
Article - MediaFinancial Finger-Pointing Turns to Regulators
Louise Story, Gretchen Morgenson
New York Times, 22 November 2011
In the whodunit of the financial crisis, Wall Street executives have pointed the blame at all kinds of parties — consumers who lied on their mortgage applications, investors who demanded access to risky mortgage bonds, and policy makers who kept interest rates low and failed to predict a housing market collapse.
But a new defense has been mounted by a bank executive: my regulator told me to do it.
Paper: The Deep Capture Story by Mark Mitchell
PaperThe Story of Deep Capture
By Mark Mitchell, with reporting by the Deep Capture Team
The Columbia School of Journalism is our nation’s finest. They grant the Pulitzer Prize, and their journal, The Columbia Journalism Review, is the profession’s gold standard. CJR reporters are high priests of a decaying temple, tending a flame in a land going dark. In 2006 a CJR editor (a seasoned journalist formerly with Time magazine in Asia, The Wall Street Journal Europe, and The Far Eastern Economic Review) called me to discuss suspicions he was forming about the US financial media. I gave him leads but warned, “Chasing this will take you down a rabbit hole with no bottom.” For months he pursued his story against pressure and threats he once described as, “something out of a Hollywood B movie, but unlike the movies, the evil corporations fighting the journalist are not thugs burying toxic waste, they are Wall Street and the financial media itself.” His exposé reveals a circle of corruption enclosing venerable Wall Street banks, shady offshore financiers, and suspiciously compliant reporters at The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, CNBC, and The New York Times. If you ever wonder how reporters react when a journalist investigates them (answer: like white-collar crooks they dodge interviews, lie, and hide behind lawyers), or if financial corruption interests you, then this is for you. It makes Grisham read like a book of bedtime stories, and exposes a scandal that may make Enron look like an afternoon tea.
Introduction By Patrick M. Byrne, Deep Capture Reporter
PDF (69 Pages): Deep Capture Story
Article: S.E.C. Inquiry on Hedge Fund Draws Scrutiny
Article - MediaS.E.C. Inquiry on Hedge Fund Draws Scrutiny
Walt Bogdanich, Gretchen Morgenson
New York Times, 22 October 2006
By the evening of June 20, 2005, the government’s investigation of possible insider trading by Pequot Capital Management, a prominent hedge fund, had reached a critical stage.
Throughout the day, Robert Hanson, a branch chief in the Washington office of the Securities and Exchange Commission, had been questioning his lead investigator in the case about taking the testimony of John J. Mack, an influential Wall Street executive.