The Zeroes

my misadventures in the decade Wall Street went insane

Randall Lane

'A cast of manic characters, money flowing through golden taps, $175 hamburgers with foie grass and black truffles, lines of private jets, a magazine for private jet owners, wild deals and crazy valuations .. it reads like a riveting piece of boom-to-bust fiction, except it's all true.'

Eric Beecher, CEO of Crikey

'If a hustling Candide had told the story of the Great Wall Street Meltdown, it might read something like this book-a not-so-innocent's chronicle of crafty charlatans and vulpine finaglers who left the hero dazed and diminished in the bankruptcy of his dreams.'

(The Wall Street Journal)

'A delicious, salacious recounting of Wall Street’s bloated decade …marvelously readable.'

(Business Week Review)

An insider’s memoir of how Wall Street went insane with greed — and took the rest of us down with it

Randall Lane never set out to become a Wall Street power broker. But during the decade he calls the Zeroes, he founded a series of magazines for business high-flyers, exalting their lifestyle and enticing them to splurge on luxury brands from Maybach to Bulgari. When the crash of 2008 destroyed Lane’s company, The Wall Street Journal called his magazines’ demise ‘one of those moments when a chance arrow of history scores a perfect bull’s-eye on a deserving target’.

Although he lost his life savings, Lane walked away with something more lasting: an incredible true story. In this memoir, he provides eye-popping accounts of how fortunes were made and spent. Traders who turned 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina into multi-million-dollar windfalls. Celebrities who tried to cash in on the feeding frenzy. Bidding wars for Gulfstream jets. Boxing matches where traders from Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns pounded each other in front of tuxedoed throngs.

As Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker was to the 1980s, The Zeroes will serve as a timeless reference on what the first decade of the new century was really like.

'There's no escaping the repugnant behavior of many of the Wall Street players. Yet, you want to have a look under the hood to see what was going on. Lane is in a position to record it and is a colorful writer with an eye for detail.'

Kerry Hannon (USA Today)

'The Zeroes is a fun ride, told with an honesty that was missing in the decade it describes.'

Derek Parker (In The Black)

Randall Lane

Randall Lane is a journalist and entrepreneur. As CEO and editor-in-chief of Doubledown Media, he founded or relaunched six magazines, including Trader Monthly, Dealmaker, and Private Air. Before that, he co-founded P.O.V. magazine, which was Adweek’s ‘Startup of the Year’. A National Magazine Award finalist, he has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate and is a former Washington bureau chief for Forbes. He is currently editor-at-large at The Daily Beast and lives in New York City with his wife and daughters.

Website: http://randalllane.com/