The Collapse of Bear Stearns: Interview with Doug Brunt
“[Ghosts of Manhattan] is a fictional story, but it is set within a historically accurate context in 2005, 2006, so, the years leading up to the mortgage-related financial crisis. And it follows the life of a fixed income salesman for Bear Stearns. And, so you really get a look at Wall Street from the inside out. It has that sort of insider baseball feel of what is life like day to day on the trading floor. As well as away from the office, which is, for folks who are on fixed income sales and trading, still part of the job.
There’s a lot of nightlife and entertainment that goes with that job. Because they are essentially trading commodities. It’s mortgage-related bonds in the secondary market, so it’s all the same bonds; you can get the same quote from any bank or any broker, and so, people do business with the folks that they’ve been out to the dinners with, and the strip clubs with, and things like that. So, it follows this bond salesman, and his personal life. There’s a lot of the Wall Street backdrop that comes into play there, so what’s going on with the positions the banks are taking, what’s going on with the mortgage crisis. But also, all of his relationships, and what these people are really like more in a day to day, it gets into the human side of it. What’s going on with his marriage, and his relationships with siblings and friends and parents.”
