Photo credit: Fred R. Conrad
Tuesday, February 13, 2018 | 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM
For decades on Wall Street, “Black Monday” has meant October 19, 1987. Despite the many difficult days since then — the 1998 currency panic, the 2001 terrorist attacks, the 2008 crisis — Black Monday still stands as the worst day in American stock market history. No other crash, not even the historic plunge of 1929, comes close. Black Monday was evidence that a new and frightening era had arrived on Wall Street – one in which computer power, human ingenuity and herd instincts all combined to form a juggernaut that is rumbling unpredictably through the markets to this day.
But Wall Street itself has been far too quick to forget the urgent lessons revealed by the road to Black Monday — lessons even more relevant in the global computerized markets of today. In A First-Class Catastrophe, author and journalist Diana Henriques brings those harrowing days to life and excavates their overlooked but still relevant warnings for future generations.
About the Speaker
Diana B. Henriques, an award-winning financial journalist, is the author of A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History. She is also the author of The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust, a New York Times bestseller, and three other books on business history. As a staff writer for The New York Times from 1989 to 2012 and as a contributing writer since then, she has largely specialized in investigative reporting on white-collar crime, market regulation and corporate governance.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.