Greed and scandal almost ruined Wall Street in the eighties. Technology and the lightning-fast movement of money around the globe are combining to complete the job in the nineties. Wall Street is dying. The world's financial capital, grossly mismanaged, over-weight, and sclerotic, is caught in a bear trap from which it cannot escape. Paul Gibson, a long-time financial journalist, goes behind the daily headlines and explains, in a lively and provocative manner, why Wall Street won't work anymore. The financial community is undergoing its greatest changes in recent memory and is learning a bitter truth. Computers and competition make it impossible to earn profits the old-fashioned way, in underwriting or by selling stocks. And the new ethic sweeping the land will not tolerate self-dealing and fraud.

Chronicling three decades of regulatory and technological changes, Bear Trap examines the gradual decentralization of the financial markets and the shifts in power that eventually let London and Tokyo challenge New York's supremacy. It is a tale of the evolution of global money, where vast pools of capital - in pension and mutual funds - are bypassing Wall Street. Armed with their own computers and advisers, these institutions trade among themselves. Battered by market crashes, individual investors, too, are turning their backs on Wall Street and the stock exchanges.

Bear Trap follows Wall Street's bankers as they adopt the high-risk strategies that produced the financial follies of the 1980s. Turning increasingly from agent to principal, they suppress traditional services in favor of bridge loans, junk bonds, the aiding of raiders, and the rigging of markets, all in a desperate attempt to compensate for lost business. Step by step, the narrative shows a cottage industry leveraging itself into a risky global business, with billions of dollars in debts. The successes or failures on Wall Street and in the financial community affect everyone's lives and fortunes. Already the once bustling financial district known as Wall Street is becoming a litter-strewn ghost canyon. Bear Trap offers the first comprehensive account of the fundamental changes in financial markets that will have a lasting impact on Wall Street and the global economic community.