Suzy Welch on How to Make a Sound Decision

Illustration Terry Allen for TIME

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Four years ago, Gillian Tett made the curious choice of moving to the capital-markets desk at the Financial Times--bonds, mortgage securities, derivatives. Arcane stuff, numbing stuff. Did she sense something? Tett eventually found herself covering the biggest financial story in a generation. Fool's Gold tells how a team at J.P. Morgan popularized credit derivatives, then pulled back worriedly just before the rest of the banking world was nearly destroyed by them. The physics of finance is complex, but Tett explains the world of derivatives as well as any book for lay readers ever has.