Financial Sense Newshour's Ask The Expert: Professor Frank Partnoy

In 1984, Andy Krieger, a young Wharton grad and former Sanskrit scholar, began his career at Salomon Brothers trading currency options. It was an obscure and complicated new business, yet in a firm that included such legends as John Meriwether and Paul Mozer, Krieger invented a new way to make money. Hedging risky bets on the movement of currencies, he made $30 million in his first year, and ten times that a few years later. But as his trades became frighteningly large and complex, Krieger unwittingly became patient zero in the plague of corruption that now threatens American business to its very foundations.

In a compelling and disturbing narrative, Frank Partnoy brings to bear all of his skills and experience as a criminal defense attorney, financial analyst, law professor, and best-selling author to tell the story of the rise of the trading instruments and corporate financial structures that now imperil the economic health of the country. Starting in the mid-1980s with the introduction of the first currency options and proto-derivatives, and taking us through such high-profile disasters as Barings Bank and Long-Term Capital Management, Partnoy traces a seamless progression to the dangerous manipulations that are coming to light today. He documents how each new level of financial risk, loss of control, and complexity obscured the sickness of the companies in question and pushed individuals to ever more ingenious deceptions.

Frank Partnoy is currently a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. He has worked as an investment banker, derivatives broker, and criminal defense and securities attorney. He also consults on regulation of the markets and white-collar crime, and has provided expert testimony before the Senate committee investigating the Enron collapse. Partnoy is the author of F.I.A.S.C.O.: Blood in the Water on Wall Street. He lives in San Diego, California.

Testimony of Frank Partnoy
Editorial on Financial Sense
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law
Hearings before the United States Senate
Committee on Governmental Affairs, January 24, 2002

FSO's Top 10 Ask The Expert Interviews for 2002

Derivatives and Enron
Real Audio Mp3

Expert Contact Information

Professor Frank Partnoy
University of San Diego

School of Law

5998 Alcalá Park

San Diego, CA 92110-2492