Asylum, The: Inside the Rise and Ruin of the Global Oil Market - Softcover

"A riveting tale of greed gone mad. Goodman nails the culture... A great ride for market fans..." -- BusinessWeek "Finance journalist Goodman traces Nymex's transformation into a colossus with a stranglehold on the sale of the world's energy. Goodman explores the lurid culture of Nymex traders, scruffy hustlers who shriek, swear and bring guns, drugs, and hookers right into the trading pit...One of the year's most colorful business histories." -- Publishers Weekly "A seriously informative and amusing look into the oil trading pits." -- Huffington Post "Goodman wrote about Nymex for the Wall Street Journal before expanding her knowledge into a book...The inside look at a mostly closed institution is enlightening. Goodman's details about the infighting within Nymex membership are astounding, mainly because the members don't seem to realize they are destroying their path to wealth." -- Kirkus "Goodman reveals a rough-and-tumble group with little formal education, who dress down, answer to no one, and are tougher than marines. Activities at the exchange are rife with cheating and overindulgence in drugs, prostitutes, and illegal gambling...Biting and infuriating, with even a 'Deep Throat' in the scoop." -- Booklist "In the complex world of the energy markets where pit trading is a blue-collar profession, Goodman captures the grit and spirit of the floor and the personalities in the board room... Her depiction of the players and the place to ring true." -- Reuters "Goodman's book ultimately concludes that the price of oil is determined less by OPEC, and more by a few hundred speculators in Manhattan who are exempted from regulation by means of several loopholes." -- Tom Kloza, OPIS "A rollicking, fast-paced, decades-long tale of a marketplace that sprang out of a potato futures market...When the instability of supply and relentless demand drives up price levels and volatility, these traders do very well indeed. And when that happens, the partying really kicks into high gear." -- National Resources Defense Council "Welcome to a bet-on-anything, testosterone-drenched world...written with tremendous verve and insight." -- AR (Absolute Return + Alpha)

They were a band of outsiders unable to get jobs with New York's gilded financial establishment. They would go on to build the world's multitrillion-dollar oil market, reaping unimaginable riches while bringing the economy to its knees. Meet the self-anointed kings of the New York Mercantile Exchange, the place where global oil prices are set to this day. In some ways, they are everything you would expect them to be: a secretive, members-only club of men and women who live lavish lifestyles; cavort with politicians, strippers, and celebrities; and blissfully jack up oil prices while profiting off the misery of the working class. In other ways, they are nothing you can imagine: many come from working-class families themselves. The progeny of Jewish, Irish, and Italian immigrants who escaped war-torn Europe, they take pride in flagrantly spurning Wall Street. Under the thumb of an all-powerful international oil cartel, the energy market had long eluded the grasp of America's hungry capitalists. Neither the oil royalty of Houston nor the titans of Wall Street had ever succeeded in fully wresting away control. But facing extinction, the rough-and - tumble traders of this tribe-led by the reluctant son of a produce merchant - went after Big Oil and won, creating the world's first free oil market and minting billions across decades of treachery and glory. Their stunning journey from poverty to prosperity belies the brutal and violent history that is their legacy. This is the real-life story both Washington and Wall Street don't want you to read.