Wall Street's Patient Zero

Conde Nast Portfolio's Jesse Eisinger, who predicted investment banking's requiem nearly a year ago, offers an inside account of how a small team at J.P. Morgan created a financial instrument that was supposed to reduce risk but wound up spreading panic. Widely regarded as escaping the carnage, J.P. Morgan recently swallowed up Bear Stearns and WaMu. But Eisinger shows how a decade ago it pioneered and institutionalized the credit derivatives that ultimately exposed firms across the globe to potential default. "In many ways," says one risk consultant, "J.P. Morgan created Frankenstein's monster."