Charles Gasparino is an award-winning business journalist, on-air editor for CNBC, a columnist for the Daily Beast and the New York Post, and a freelance writer for Forbes and other publications. He previously wrote for Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal, where he covered issues on Wall Street, including pension funds, mutual funds, and regulatory issues. His current New York Times best-seller, The Sellout: How Wall Street Greed and Stupidity Destroyed America's Dominance of the Global Financial System (Harper) is the definitive book on the current financial crisis in the Untied States and the events that led up to what is now being called "The Great Recession." A sought after speaker at financial institutions, business conferences, and universities, he shares his inside knowledge of Wall Street and the world of finance to tell audiences how we plummeted into a Great Recession, what's really going on with the economy, and what it means for the road ahead.
Looking back three decades, Gasparino's "Sellout" talk reveals the rise of leverage and excessive risk taking on Wall Street. He introduces audiences to the coterie of cowboy bond traders from Salomon Brothers, first Boston, and other major Wall Street firms in the 1980s who went on to become some of the biggest and richest players on Wall Street by trading in early mortgage backed securities. He shows how over the next three decades Wall Street would fully embrace a business model based on excessive risk taking the would lead to its demise and the near ruination of the US economy. With access to the highest realms of Wall Street finance because of his years of experience on the beat, Gasparino brings a unique perspective to the financial crisis.
Before joining CNBC, Gasparino was a senior writer at Newsweek magazine, where he wrote features about some of the biggest issues affecting Wall Street. A former writer covering Wall Street, pension funds, mutual funds, and regulatory issues, he consistently broke news on some of the biggest financial scandals of recent times for the Wall Street Journal, including the fall of Martha Stewart, Henry Blodget, and Jack Grubman. Gasparino was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in beat reporting in 2002 and won the New York Press Club award for best continuing coverage of the Wall Street research scandals. In 2003, he was nominated for the Pulitzer as part of the Wall Street Journal's coverage of the controversy surrounding former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso's pay package and has won numerous other awards for his reporting and writing.
Gasparino is the author of Blood on the Street: The Sensational Inside Story of How Wall Street Analysts Duped a Generation of Investors, which was a BusinessWeek best-seller and was listed by Barron's as one of the best business books of 2005, and King of the Club: Richard Grasso and the Survival of the New York Stock Exchange, which was named one of the best business books of 2007 by Library Journal.
Gasparino lives in New York City.
Praise for the Work of Charles Gasparino:
"[A] splendid account of the financial meltdown."
-- Wall Street Journal on The Sellout
"Gasparino has consistently broken news on some of the biggest financial scandals of recent years, including the fall of Martha Stewart, Henry Blodget, and Jack Grubman. As anyone who reads the business pages knows, Charlie is one of the best reporters in the field."
-- Mark Whitaker, former editor, Newsweek
"Gasparino describes, in page-turning detail, a Wall Street world of ruthless financial titans... No collection of courtroom documents will ever tell the story... as well as Mr. Gasparino does."
-- Wall Street Journal, on King of the Club
"A tough outsider willing to go to battle with anyone - colleague or contact - in pursuit of the story."
-- Financial Times
"An especially aggressive reporter."
-- Vanity Fair
"Gasparino is credited with breaking some of the more titillating tales of Wall Street misconduct."
-- New York Post
"Born in the Bronx to a construction worker and a housewife, Gasparino has risen from his working-class roots to become one of the most influential business reporters at work today."
-- PR Week