This week my colleague Jesse Eisinger and I won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for our series on Wall Street misdeeds leading up to the financial crisis. The stories showed how some on Wall Street knew years before the rest of us that there were problems in their business but rather than cut it off, they ramped it up. The result was a financial crisis that was bigger and more damaging than it otherwise have been.

I’ll have more soon but right now I just want to thank everyone at ProPublica who did such a tremendous job on this story – that include Eric Umansky our editor, Stephen Engelberg our managing editor, Krista Kjellman-Schmidt who did amazing work on the graphics, and Lisa Schwartz who helped with the research. And of course, Paul Steiger, our editor-in-chief.

Thanks also to everyone who has emailed, tweeted, and facebooked your congratulations. Every one of them is deeply appreciated.

Jake
Follow on Twitter: @Jake_Bernstein

From Paul Steiger see also:
A Note on ProPublica’s Second Pulitzer Prize

The dynamic duo of ProPublica and Planet Money has unleashed another story that details the Wall Street shenanigans that exacerbated the financial collapse.

The story, “Banks’ Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis,” chronicles how over the last two years of the housing bubble, Wall Street banks perpetrated one of the greatest episodes of self-dealing in financial history.

Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses:

They created fake demand.

Read the story and learn how they did it.

There is also an entertaining version that aired on NPR’s Morning Edition.

But wait, there’s more… The multimedia extravaganza continues with a podcast we did with Planet Money that goes into a lot more detail.

And with all this high-brow financial stuff, we felt this story might need some leavening. So we brought in the Gregory Brothers of Auto-Tune the News for their take. They did a video called, “We Didn’t See It Comin’,” which is guaranteed to bring a smile.

There is also a comic that lays it out for folks who like their news in pictures.

Enjoy!

Well, my colleague Jesse Eisinger and I finished part one of a series about the epicenter of the financial crisis — collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs.

Our story on the hedge fund, Magnetar Capital, called the “Magnetar Trade,” can be found at ProPublica.

We also collaborated on an episode of This American Life that will air this weekend on public radio stations across the nation. The fine folks at This American Life did their usual amazing job of storytelling. Alex Blumberg took an incredibly complex topic and turned it into a seamless narrative. It’s very good radio.

They also commissioned a song. Yes, a song about a hedge fund that helps to create CDOs. And of course, there is a video to accompany the song. All can be found on the TAL website or on Planet Money.

Listen to “Inside Job” a radio episode Pro Publica co-produced with This American Life that aired on the award winning program on April 9, 2010.

Bet Against the American Dream from Alexander Hotz on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

Jake Bernstein is an investigative reporter for Pro Publica based in New York City. Prior to his move to NYC, he was executive editor of The Texas Observer an investigative biweekly in Austin, Texas. Earlier in his career, he was a staff writer for the Pasadena [Texas] Citizen and then for the Miami New Times. During the 1990’s, Bernstein was based in Guatemala reporting for theSan Francisco Examiner, the Dallas Morning News, and the Houston Chronicle. A native New Yorker, his work has won numerous national and state-level journalism awards including the Green Eyeshade Excellence in Journalism Award and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice. Bernstein is co-author of Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency (2006).

Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

Dick Cheney is the most powerful yet most unpopular vice president in U.S. history. He has thrived alongside a president who from day one had little interest in policy and limited experience in the ways of Washington. Yet Cheney’s quiet, steady rise to prominence over a span of three decades occurred largely behind the scenes. Now veteran reporters Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein reveal the disturbing truth about the man who has successfully co-opted executive control over the U.S. government, serving as the de facto “shadow president” of the most dominant White House in a generation. Cheney has always been an astute politician. He survived the collapse of the Nixon presidency, finding a position of power in the administration of Gerald Ford. He was then elected to the House of Representatives, and later he earned a spot in the cabinet of the first Bush presidency. But when he became George W. Bush’s running mate, Cheney reached a new level of influence. From the engineering of his own selection as vice president to his support of policies allowing torture as a permissible weapon in the “war on terror,” Cheney has steered America consistently rightward. In Vice, Dubose and Bernstein uncover startling revelations, including:

• the extraordinary intimidation of CIA officials by a vice president bent on obtaining intelligence to support a foregone conclusion: the invasion of Iraq
• details on Cheney’s secret energy task force, including his meeting with Enron chief Ken Lay months before Lay was indicted–and how Cheney went to court to erode the powers of Congress
• how Cheney helped to kill 2003 diplomatic overtures from Iran to discuss concessions on its nuclear program and policy toward Israel
• Cheney’s role in engineering multibillion-dollar military contracts in Iraq to benefit Halliburton, the company he once ran
• eyewitness reports from prominent Republican and conservative sources who go on record for the first time to tell the truth about how Dick Cheney has hijacked the American presidency

In the words of one of Cheney’s colleagues from the House: “Dick keeps his own counsel. He’s completely in control. He’s completely sure of himself in everything he does. It’s what got him to where he is today: the most powerful vice president to ever hold office. It’s also what’s bringing about his downfall.”

In Vice, we get an unprecedented exposé of how Cheney operates and what his vice presidency will mean to America–now and in the future. (Buy now from Amazon.com)