The ‘Sheriff of Wall Street’ who exposed bankers’ lies

华尔街“执法者”——揭露银行家谎言的人

Behind the Money

2026-08-26

46 分钟
PDF

单集简介 ...

He was the bruiser of Wall Street. In the early noughties, New York attorney-general Eliot Spitzer took it upon himself to expose the lies of stock analysts during the dotcom bubble. His crusade blindsided the bankers and made him one of America's most popular politicians. People even spoke of him as a possible US president before a scandal ended his political career almost overnight. In this episode of The Story of Money, host Gillian Tett speaks to Brooke Masters, FT US managing editor and author of Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer, to explore how Spitzer reshaped financial regulation during the dotcom era, why his aggressive tactics won both admirers and enemies and why his legacy still matters today. Further reading: Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer, (2006), Brooke Masters Credits: Getty Images Love listening to The Story of Money? Join Robin and Gillian on Saturday September 5 at Kenwood House Gardens in London, or online as the FT Weekend paper comes to life. Register now at ft.com/festival and enjoy 10% off with code FTPODCAST. To enjoy future episodes, be sure to subscribe to The Story of Money wherever you get your podcasts, also on the show's dedicated YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@FTTheStoryOfMoney  Hosts: Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth Producers: Laurence Knight and Lulu Smyth Executive producer: Manuela Saragosa Original music and sound design: Breen Turner Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Gioumpasis Podcast development: Laura Clarke FT global head of audio: Flo Phillips  Video editor: Richard Topping Learn more at www.ft.com/tsom or get in touch at thestoryofmoney@ft.com. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
更多

单集文稿 ...

  • He's done something unbelievably stupid.

  • He starts taking out big bundles of cash from his bank account.

  • This gets reported to the FBI, who then promptly set up a sting.

  • They actually initially think, oh, maybe he's taking bribes.

  • And so they set up a sting to figure out what's going on, and they discover he's going to the Emperor's Club.

  • The Emperor's Club, what's that?

  • Is that like all these New York clubs they have, like the Metropolitan Club or the Century Club?

  • No, sadly for him, it was a high-class escort service.

  • Oh, dear.

  • Today, on the story of money, the rise and fall of a man who made his name taking

  • on America's biggest banks in the early 2000s and who transformed the way that Wall Street was policed.

  • He was a politician hailed as a future presidential contender,

  • a moral crusader who promised to clean up investment banking's cultural greed,

  • but also a man who, in a spectacular twist, was brought down by his own secret and somewhat sordid double life.

  • I'm talking about Eliot Spitzer.

  • As New York's Attorney General in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he transformed financial regulation, exposed conflicts

  • of interest and forced some of the most powerful financial institutions in the world to change their ways.

  • In fact, his nickname was the Sheriff of Wall Street.

  • And for a while, few people were more feared in American finance.

  • Until it all came crashing down with a sex scandal.