Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer

By Brooke A. Masters

Book Overview

The rise to power of Eliot Spitzer, the scourge of Wall Street and one of America's most controversial politicians, by the reporter who knows his crusade best Few politicians have burst onto the American scene with as much impact as Eliot Spitzer. He has exposed wrongdoing by stock analysts, mutual fund managers, and insurance brokers, and he has investigated corporations that have misled or defrauded investors and consumers. When federal regulators have fallen down on their responsibilities, Spitzer has stepped in to protect ordinary, middle-class Americans. His actions as the New York State attorney general have made companies change the way they do business, which in turn affects every American with a retirement plan, an insurance policy, or a prescription to fill. No reporter has had better or more complete behind-the-scenes access to Spitzer's operation--and to the strategies that have underpinned his crusade against these powerful forces in the American economy--than Brooke A. Masters of The Washington Post . In Spoiling for a Fight , she presents a portrait that is at once dramatic and revealing, raising the question of whether Spitzer's way of conducting government business is good or bad for America. Combining passion and zeal with a savvy understanding of the press, Spitzer has brought down some of the biggest names in American finance and now has his sights set on higher office. This revelatory book shows Americans how Spitzer has transformed their lives and what his crusade could mean for the future.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805079610
• ISBN13: 9780805079616
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: Times Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.4" x 1.3" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Good stuff

This is a rip roaring account of Elliot Spitzer and his big cases. A very important work and one that sheds light on corporate skullduggery such as Merril's Henry Blodget and others. Spitzer was a hero of the stock market bubble and a household name in New York, sort of the Guliani of the first five years of the Millenium. Seth J. Frantzman

A balanced look at Spitzermania

This book will intrigue anyone interested in the political process and law. Masters offers a balanced view of Spitzer's war against wall street. The gist of the book is Spitzer's background and education (rich, ivy league, privilleged) and his ambitious rise to NY Attorney General where he has whipped into shape Wall Street. In doing so, Spitzer has caught the ire of many people who beleive that he is trespassing on sacred SEC and federal government grounds. Others feel Spitzer is doing the job the SEC SHOULD have been doing. Whether you like him or not, the book offers an interesting perspective into a rising politician and the reaons why he will probably never have a legitimate shot at the White House (hint, its for the same reasons he's been thus far succesful).

WORTHY OF A PULITZER

So well known are Eliot Spitzer and the corporate visionaries he brought to boot, so widely praised has he been, so robust the expectancy of his gubernatorial future, that any writer about him risks becoming another entrant in a great sack race of redundancy. Brooke Masters's Pulitzer worthy "Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer", however, is both a journalistic triumph and, socially measured, a public service. Her close description of the facts and settings, rendered in a highly readable style, reflect her Harvard and London School of Economics degrees burnished by sixteen years with the Washington Post. When in 1999, thirty-nine year old Eliot Spitzer was sworn as New York's 63rd Attorney General, few took into account that he was a True Believer in the progressive tradition of Brandeis and FDR. No one, including himself, foresaw that in an epiphanic moment he would link federalism with the Martin Act's empowerment of him to obtain ex parte injunctive relief upon a complaint that had not yet been answered. So it was that every razzledazzle analyst and fleetfooted broker trudging into 120 Broadway would soon find Spitzer sitting in a prosecutor's heaven, playing for keeps. Here was a steel-willed, politically ambitious warrior who had the street smarts to sense that his own nature and the workings of a random chance might position him to ascend. Spitzer, transforming what attorney generals do, attacked midwestern power plants for polluting New York, ripped into the Food Emporium and A & P, Gristedes and other major supermarkets and drugstore chains, for mindboggling working conditions of immigrant deliverymen, and convicted the first felonious sweatshop operator in a decade. His unsuccessful attempt to bring gun manufacturers under control proved him a man of initiative, practical, yet moral, quick to learn early the golden lesson of watching one's back even when dealing with one's apparent ally, a lesson he may have occasion to recall when governor. As for righteous anger, when the Red Cross attempted to divert 9/11 funds to its other causes, Spitzer seized it, as it were, by the neck, compelling it to use every cent for 9/11 victims. Turning towards Wall Street, Spitzer saw hanging fruit ripe for the taking. When Merrill Lynch was taken by Spitzer in the direction of the gallows for bid rigging, its attorney, Robert Morvillo, warned Spitzer that "Merrill Lynch has a lot of powerful friends". In what must have been a surge of concealed, evangelical joy, Spitzer, without warning, thereupon seated Merrill in a kamikaze plane and waved it off the flight deck at 120 Broadway. Merrill was served with a detailed, horrific complaint, while Spitzer, surrounded by a mass of reporters, instantly becoming famous in London, Nairobi, Sydney, and Tel Aviv, rose as Merrill's stock plummeted. Analysts and bankers renewed their Ativan prescriptions as Spitzer sent out subpoenas to Wall Street firms. In media interviews, he tho