Mary Childs: The Bond King

Darien Library welcomes Mary Childs, to discuss her new book, The Bond King.  Mary will be in conversation with Bryant Urstadt.

The host of NPR’s Planet Money, Childs will discuss her deeply-investigated story of how one visionary, dogged investor changed American finance forever.

From the publisher:  before Bill Gross was known among investors as the Bond King, he was a gambler. In 1966, a fresh college grad, he went to Vegas armed with his net worth of $200 and a knack for counting cards. $10,000 and countless casino bans later, he was hooked--so he enrolled in business school.

The Bond King is the story of how that whiz kid made American finance his casino. Over the course of decades, Bill Gross turned the sleepy bond market into a destabilized game of high risk, high reward; founded Pimco, one of today’s most powerful, secretive, and cutthroat investment firms; helped to reshape our financial system in the aftermath of the Great Recession—to his own advantage; and gained legions of admirers, and enemies, along the way. Like every American antihero, his ambition would also be his undoing.

To understand the winners and losers of today’s money game, journalist Mary Childs argues, is to understand the bond market—and to understand the bond market is to understand the Bond King.

About Mary Childs

Mary Childs is a co-host and correspondent for NPR’s Planet Money podcast. Previously she was a reporter at Barron’s magazine, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg News. She graduated from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, with a degree in business journalism.

About Bryant Urstadt

Bryant Urstadt has been an editor at Bloomberg's Businessweek magazine and NPR's Planet Money podcast. He is currently working on a podcast with Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, courtesy of Barrett Bookstore.