New Releases by Joshua Rosner

★普立茲獎財經記者葛雷琴‧摩根森與金融分析師羅斯納化身金融偵探深入探查私募股權世界內幕。 ★醫院、療養院、玩具反斗城、新秀麗行李箱、諾蘭達煉鋁廠等，他們的魔掌從搖籃延伸到墳墓。 ★誰都無法置身事外的金融恐怖遊戲，人人都需要防護的居住、醫保、勞退權益。 底層民眾和中小企業的資產正被掠奪 揭密私募股權產業，如何富了自己，窮了全世界 普立茲得獎財經記者暨《紐約時報》暢銷作家葛瑞琴・摩根森和金融政策分析師約舒亞・羅斯納化身金融偵探，攜手調查負債累累的私募股權產業，揭發他們如何榨乾市井小民的錢、傷害被收購的企業，並讓整個經濟體制陷入險境。 貧富差距日益擴大的討論早已甚囂塵上，但過去從未有書如此詳盡剖析一小群精英金融家如何在這場不平等中扮演關鍵角色。本書宛如偵探小說般曲折，兩位作者撕下華爾街知名金融家的假面具，曝光他們利用過度舉債和可疑手段致富卻傷害整體經濟的真相──這就是「服用了類固醇的資本主義」的私募股權掠奪者。 本書以清晰的思緒追查過去三十年來美國企業收購的歷史，以及私募股權在金融世界日益提升的主導地位。兩位作者調查了幾家最為人所知的私募股權公司，包括KKR、凱雷集團、阿波羅全球管理公司和黑石集團等等，揭發他們如何收購企業、讓企業背債，再吸乾他們的資產和利潤，員工面臨福利與退休金被砍或失業危機。而萊昂‧布萊克、蘇世民等億萬富豪也將輪番上陣，說著「有兩千五百個家庭要靠我們，我們得把事情做對」，實際上卻「躲在背後，絕少負責」，根據作者研究指出，私募股權收購的公司，申請破產的數量是一般公司的十倍之多。 私募股權是靠許許多多債務支撐起來的，這些掠奪者們攫取財富到個人金庫，而非創造財富。作者揭發被私募股權收購的公司如何對每一個人造成傷害，卻讓金融家們坐收其利。私募股權買下了保險公司，保戶收到的理賠與退休金卻越來越少；他們買下了療養院、醫院、診所，醫療費用提高了，病患死亡率也提高了；他們買下了電廠、煉鋁廠、水廠，結果消費者的水電帳單齊漲；他們也買下了玩具反斗城、新秀麗等知名零售品牌，但最終都走向破產之路。可以確定的是，只要沾上私募股權，人生就會暗淡無光。 【各界推薦】 Miula｜M觀點創辦人 林茂昌｜財經作家 麥克風的市場求生手冊｜專業投資人 陳鳳馨｜資深媒體人、News98《財經起床號》主持人 許繼元｜Mr.Market 市場先生、財經作家 游庭皓｜財經直播主 聯合推薦（按首字筆畫排序） 【各界讚譽】 「《財富掠奪者》是調查報導的傑作。摩根森與羅斯納揭露了一場有組織、無情且獲利驚人的進攻，對象正是美國的中產階級。如果你想了解為什麼華爾街欣欣向榮，好工作卻日漸稀少，老字號企業紛紛倒閉，這本書追查金流，指名道姓，包含一切你想知道的故事。」 ——克里斯多福‧倫納德，《紐約時報》暢銷書《科氏工業》（Kochland）和《撒錢之王》（The Lords of Easy Money）作者 「對美國金融世界中一個勢力強大但鮮為人知的領域所做出的驚人調查報導。」 ——《調查記者與編輯協會》（Investigative Reporters & Editors） 「該死的好看……摩根森和羅斯納擅長以簡潔易懂的筆觸捕捉複雜的金融運作，並講述了收購如何欺騙安養院居民和壽險保戶的恐怖故事，這些故事充分展現了私募股權商業模式的冷血無情。本書內容火力全開、洞見犀利，一本對華爾街如何掠奪普通美國人口袋的精彩之作。」 ——《出版人週刊》（Publishers Weekly），星級評論 「兩位作者的敘事方式引人入勝，即使是對金融領域不太熟悉的讀者也能理解這個主題。這是一本所有人都應該閱讀的作品，有助於看清資本主義的另一面貌。」 ——《書單》（Booklist），星級評論 「正如摩根森和羅斯納清楚的說明，這些『現代海盜』無非是洗牌的莊家，而這些牌早就做了記號。在他們玩的這場高風險美國資本主義遊戲中，這副牌注定對我們其他人不利。」 ——美國《書架通報》電子報（Shelf Awareness） 「讓人憂心的私募股權故事，離公平正義相去甚遠……一本資料詳實、令人憤怒的著作，迫切呼籲立法改革與監管。」 ——《柯克斯書評》（Kirkus Reviews） 「針對西方資本主義掠奪力量的致命抨擊，帶著恰如其分的憤怒，控訴弱勢群體如何承擔了絕大部分的沉重代價。」 ——布萊德．史東（Brad Stone），《貝佐斯新傳》（Amazon Unbound）和《貝佐斯傳》（The Everything Store）作者 「這是第四權的最佳體現：向讀者解釋私募股權公司如何一再從社會攫取財富，而非創造財富，最終只有少數特定人士得利。如果運用得當，私募股權公司可以對我們的經濟發揮積極作用；如果運用不當，其後果將是毀滅性的，本書展示的正是活生生的例子。」 ——希拉・貝爾（Sheila Bair），前美國聯邦存款保險公司（FDIC）主席、《直面危機》（Bull by the Horns，暫譯） 「以批判又迫切的視角，深入揭露那些日益左右社會影響力、權力和金錢體系的幕後人物和機制。摩根森和羅斯納化繁為簡——至關重要。」 ——瑪麗・蔡爾姿（Mary Childs），NPR《金錢星球》（Planet Money）共同主持人、《債券天王》（The Bond King）作者 「一本權威的內幕紀實，揭露了今日『贏家通吃』的經濟是如何形成的。你將在迷人書頁上遇到的這些私募股權億萬富豪，正是新時代的強盜大亨。當監管者還在沉睡時，兩位作者揭示了他們如何掠奪美國，並追究他們的責任。調查記者的先驅艾達‧塔貝爾一定會為他們感到驕傲。」 ——吉兒・艾布蘭森（Jill Abramson），《真相的商人》（Merchants of Truth）作者、《紐約時報》前執行主編

The Ledger of Longing: Thirty Bites is a contemporary love story about two people finding their way back to one another through moments that are small in size but vast in meaning. Set against the backdrop of Paris, the novel follows Lila and Gabriel as they navigate the currents of desire, memory, and the quiet spaces in between. The "ledger" they share is not written in ink, but in encounters-thirty vignettes or "bites"-each carrying a turn of light, a change in breath, a shift in what is known. The story is not driven by spectacle or grand gestures, but by the charge that builds when honesty replaces performance, when touch becomes an answer, and when trust has a place to live. Lila and Gabriel''s journey is as much about presence as it is about passion. The heat here comes from truth-telling rather than theater, and the tenderness holds because no one is being handled. The book resists easy resolutions and instead offers a sustained, embodied intimacy that unfolds across the city''s streets, cafés, and apartments. Paris is not a postcard setting, but a living, breathing witness to the couple''s transformations-together and apart. Each bite is a complete moment, yet part of a larger whole. They carry forward the questions at the heart of the book: What does it mean to want without grasping? To meet without masks? To move through longing not as a problem to be solved, but as a landscape to be lived in? For readers seeking romance without clichés, The Ledger of Longing: Thirty Bites offers a love story that is both erotic and contemplative-charged without artifice, sensual without losing sight of the human core. It invites you to linger, to feel the afterglow, and to remember that sometimes the most enduring connections are measured not in years, but in moments fully inhabited.

A Wall Street Journal Bestseller Pulitzer Prizeu00adu00adu00ad–winning and New York Times bestselling financial journalist Gretchen Morgenson and financial policy analyst Joshua Rosner investigate the insidious world of private equity in this “masterpiece of investigative journalism” (Christopher Leonard, bestselling author of Kochland)—revealing how it puts our entire economy and us at risk. Much has been written about the widening gulf between rich and poor and how our style of capitalism has failed to provide a living wage for so many Americans. But nothing has fully detailed the outsized role a small cohort of elite financiers has played in this inequality. Pulitzer Prizeu00ad–winning journalist and bestselling author Gretchen Morgenson, with coauthor Joshua Rosner, unmask the small group of celebrated Wall Street financiers, and their government enablers, who use excessive debt and dubious practices to undermine our nation’s economy for their own enrichment: private equity. These Are the Plunderers traces the thirty-year history of corporate takeovers in America and private equity’s increasing dominance. Morgenson and Rosner investigate some of the biggest names in private equity, exposing how they buy companies, load them with debt, and then bleed them of assets and profits. All while prosecutors and regulators stand idly by. The authors show how companies absorbed by private equity have worse outcomes for everyone but the financiers: employees are more likely to lose their jobs or their benefits; companies are more likely to go bankrupt; patients are more likely to have higher healthcare costs; residents of nursing homes are more likely to die faster; towns struggle when private equity buys their main businesses, crippling the local economy; and school teachers, firefighters, medical technicians, and other public workers are more likely to have lower returns on their pensions because of the fees private equity extracts from their investments. In other words: we are all worse off because of private equity. These Are the Plunderers is a “meticulous and devastating takedown of a powerful force in Western capitalism” (Brad Stone, bestselling author of Amazon Unbound) that exposes the greed and pillaging in private equity, revealing the many ways these billionaires have bled the economy, and, in turn, us.

This report assesses the ...

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011 One of The Economist''s 2011 Books of the Year TheNew York Times''s Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist reveals how the financial meltdown emerged from the toxic interplay of Washington, Wall Street, and corrupt mortgage lenders In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson, the star business columnist of The New York Times, exposes how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy. Drawing on previously untapped sources and building on original research from coauthor Joshua Rosner—who himself raised early warnings with the public and investors, and kept detailed records—Morgenson connects the dots that led to this fiasco. Morgenson and Rosner draw back the curtain on Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance giant that grew, with the support of the Clinton administration, through the 1990s, becoming a major opponent of government oversight even as it was benefiting from public subsidies. They expose the role played not only by Fannie Mae executives but also by enablers at Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, the FDIC, and the biggest players on Wall Street, to show how greed, aggression, and fear led countless officials to ignore warning signs of an imminent disaster. Character-rich and definitive in its analysis, this is the one account of the financial crisis you must read.

This article explains the key differences in the roles of rating agencies with regard to structured finance compared to single-issuer debt, highlights weaknesses in the current recommendations and oversight of the agencies, and concludes with recommendation of a series of discreet changes that would effectively address the most significant weaknesses within the current oversight regime of rating agencies in structured finance, including: recommending that charter-constrained investors own only exchange-traded structured securities, requiring agencies to apply updated models in a timely manner, requiring frequent re-rating of securities relative to original deal assumptions at issuance, reducing liability exemptions for certain structured finance rating practices, creating minimum industry standards for analysts'' professional training in structured finance, prohibiting revolving-door practices for rating agency analysts, and requiring agencies to form independent statistical staffs to develop, test, implement, and review models. Over time, these changes most likely would significantly diminish market need for and reliance on official ratings.