Moral Hazard

by Kate Jennings

On Wall Street, reflects Cath, women are about as welcome as fleas in a sleeping bag. Funny, liberal and left-leaning, she is an unlikely candidate to be writing speeches on derivatives in a Manhattan tower, 'putting words in the mouths of plutocrats deeply suspicious of metaphors and words of more than two syllables'. She finds herself on Wall Street because she needs serious money. After ten good years, her beloved older husband Bailey is suffering from Alzheimer's.

So begins Cath's journey into two nightmare worlds. By day she deals with the topsy-turvy logic and ingrown personalities at work in high finance; by night she has to watch the slow disintegration of the man she loves. In between, she must stop herself from falling apart. As the money markets hurtle towards financial meltdown, Cath faces personal disaster and a moral hazard that she cannot ignore.Kate Jennings' prose is lean yet rich in unexpected, telling detail. Tense, taut and compulsively readable, Moral Hazard is peopled by extraordinary characters and informed by a mordant, witty intelligence.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Literary Fiction, Business, Novels, Adult

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Kate Jennings was a poet, essayist, short-story writer and novelist. Both her novels, Snake and Moral Hazard, were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She has won the ALS Gold Medal, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Adelaide Festival fiction prize. Born in rural New South Wales, she has lived in New York since 1979.

Her most recent books are Stanley and Sophie, Quarterly Essay 32: American Revolution and Trouble: Evolution of a Radical.

Reviews

[Flickalooya · Rating 2 out of 5]

A strange book in some ways. I have found that protagonists that are touted as having a notably dry or irreverent wit that they employ to negotiate life's difficulties,often come across on page as being closed off, flat and two dimensional. It's like the author has accepted the characters need to protect themselves with humour and the author hasn't got the heart or fortitude to unlock the the character fully to reveal what is really going on underneath.

I chose the book because I was looking forward to seeing Cath - the 'wisecracking Australian 'bedrock feminist, unreconstructed left winger' as she launched herself into enemy territory - Wall Street to become a speech writer for a bunch of soulless financial mercenary pigs. I thought this would be exciting and a good contrast to the difficulties of managing her personal tragedy of caring for an older husband who was rapidly succumbing to Alzheimers.

Unfortunately there was zero development of the feminist left wing elements of this character as played out in the workplace. The work scenes tended to centre on the opaque asshats she had to work with, rather than revealing her depths as a character and the financial concepts and jargon were laid on so thick I felt like I needed to go away and study the finance market for six months so I could understand what fuck she was talking about. The general theme that emerged revealed Derivatives are the financial equivalent of the Rubik's cube combined Devil's spawn and the whole financial world was heading to hell in a handbasket because of them.

Jarringly contrasted were the chapters that covered the pityingly inexorable demise of her elderly husband Bailey. We barely got to know Bailey before he started to slip away from us. It was hard to feel the depth of Cath's, s grief and loss because her relationship with Bailey wasn't brought fully to life before he started to vanish. While the paragraphs detailing Bailey's protracted degeneration were captured tellingly and her writing often quite beautiful with rich, authentic metaphor, Cath often came across as a mechanical narrator.

If you have a head for world finance and investment then you might really enjoy this insight into the years leading up to GFC. The writing is clearly on the wall.

For me though it felt like there were two unrelated novels thrown together. I just couldn't feel the connection between Cath the speech writer and Cath the wife. Who the fuck was Cath? Who were her friends? Family, when did she ever level once with anyone about the troubles in her life. What was she thinking during all the hell she was going through? Where was the conflicted agony?.

I'll leave it there.

Whilst not for me, again if you understand the finance world, I'd recommend giving it a go. For you it might be a 4 star. For me only 2.

[Kay Rollison · Rating 5 out of 5]

The amazing thing to me is that this book was written in 2002. I hadn’t heard of the concept of moral hazard until the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, but had I read this book before that time, I would have been much better prepared to understand what was happening in 2008, and to grasp the implications of propping up dodgy financial institutions deemed too big to fail. It is almost as if Jennings predicted what actually happened. ‘It’s a time bomb’, as one character notes.

Kate Jennings is an Australian author who lived for many years in New York. This novel is heavily autobiographical; it is based on her time there working for the communications unit of a Wall Street merchant bank in order to make enough money to care for her husband who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. The actions of Cath, the protagonist in the story, are not those of Kate Jennings, but her experience informs nearly every page. ‘How would you have me write about it? Bloody awful, all of it.’

Read more of this review here: http://whatbooktoread.com/2011/09/13/...

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This clearly and directly written novella is about living with dementia and working for a Wall Street investment firm, spanning over six years. Cath, an Australian feminist freelance writer becomes a speechwriter for a Wall Street investment firm. Her husband, Bailey, is many years older than her, and is diagnosed with dementia. Cath grapples with the twisted reasoning and egos of the financial world, and is witness to the mental and physical decline of the man she loves.

An interesting, engaging novella about the moral dilemmas Cath makes in work and in life.

This book was shortlisted for the 2003 Miles Franklin award.

[Melinda Kallasmae · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wall Street and Alzheimer's juxtaposed and explored in poetic prose. Moving, humane, genius. Beautiful conclusion.

[Francene Carroll · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very prescient considering it was published several years before the GFC. Despite the greed and stupidity she witnessed on Wall St I think even Kate Jennings must be shocked by just how far things have deteriorated since then. The extent of the government bailout, combined with the naked greed of the financial elite who continue to get richer while the rest of society suffer the consequences of their actions is just staggering.

As I was reading this I kept flicking back to the front to make sure if actually said "novel" because it has such an air of authenticity about it that I couldn't believe it was fictional. Turns out it is heavily autobiographical and Kate Jennings not only worked on Wall St as speech writer but took the job to pay the medical bills of her husband with Alzheimer's.

I really liked the way the two strands of the story unfurl side by side, as the main character, Cath, negotiates two very different worlds. Both parts of the story are told with great honesty and insight, and although the writing is spare and unsentimental it really packs an emotional punch. It's a short novel with more to say about American society and global capitalism than any other work of fiction I've read in a very long time. Highly recommended.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to come potentially?

[Chris Waterford · Rating 4 out of 5]

A somewhat confused financial strand but the relationship story was very good and the writing was great.
7/10

[Text Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was commuting between two forms of dementia, two circles of hell. Neither point nor meaning to Alzheimer’s, nor to corporate life, unless you counted the creation of shareholder value.

Such is the predicament of Cath in Kate Jennings’ much-acclaimed 2002 novel of Wall Street recklessness and the torments of Alzheimers.

Concise, uncompromising and eerily prophetic, this is the latest addition to the Text Classics.

Read Gideon Haigh’s excellent introduction, ‘The Devil Whooping it Up’, on the Text Number 3 chiller blog.

‘This is a unique book by an extraordinary writer, the great city illuminated from within. Kate Jennings brings all her powers of pace and tone to bear in a novel that is humane and unsparing; witty, unsettling, and wildly intelligent. I know of no other voice that so conveys the contemporary workplace in its vulnerability and its denaturing, and its difficult morality.’
Shirley Hazzard, author of The Transit of Venus

‘An engrossing, cautionary tale for the twenty-first century…with unsparing rapier wit.’
Philadelphia Enquirer

‘A work of considerable formal beauty.’
Age

‘The finest novel I’ve read this year…Don’t let its brevity fool you. Moral Hazard is a big book in the truest sense of the word.’
Salon.com

‘Written in spare and starkly honest prose, this novel foreshadows the recent accounting scandals at Enron, World-Com and other companies, and shows that even in the midst of corruption and tragedy, individuals can stick to their beliefs.’
Wall Street Journal

‘Jennings is a writer of substance—and Moral Hazard is substantial writing.’
Australian

‘Compelling reading; Cath’s thorny humour adapts well to both terminal illness and terminal greed.’
New York Observer

‘An insider’s view of the city without the spin; a steely, unsentimental vision delivered with a poet’s sure touch.’
Bulletin

‘An extraordinary novel: pleasurable and powerful, mordant and harrowing.’
New Statesman

‘A piercing novel, gleaming with facets of hard-won knowledge, polished by experience and a keen intelligence.’
Publisher's Weekly

‘Moral Hazard is a rare book in the way it looks not just at our contemporary globalised financial world, but more widely at work, our relationship to it, and the moral choices we make in work and in life.’
Whispering Gums

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘He had forgotten to remember.’

Cath takes a job as a speechwriter on Wall Street. She’s not there by choice: she’s there because she needs to earn money to try to look after her husband, Bailey, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. So, Cath’s world now encompasses two nightmares. She is working in the bizarre world of high finance where reality is a foreign country, and living in the sad world of reality where her husband Bailey becomes a foreigner. How can Cath survive? Both nightmares contain moral hazards for Cath: how can she be true to herself, and take the best care of Bailey? How can she negotiate the outcomes she can live with?

In fewer than two hundred pages, Ms Jennings covers the slippery moral ground of high finance, where the expected ends always justify the means, and the heartbreaking reality of living with a loved one with Alzheimer’s. What is right, and what is moral? What choices does Cath have? How can she survive?

I found this novel intensely thought provoking, and well worth reading. Not so much the high finance side: I have low expectations of morality there, and am highly cynical. But as I grow older, and more aware of the impact of Alzheimer’s I think more about the options available. If I was Cath, what would I do?

I understand that this novel is in part autobiographical: Ms Jennings did spend some time working as a speech writer on Wall Street, and her husband died as a consequence of complications of Alzheimer’s in 1999.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Cat Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deserved classic.
Kate Jennings is articulate, sincere, flawed and deeply moving in her recounting her relationships, the mundanity and also the minor moments of revelation that make up a life.
For anyone who has loved someone in a totally flawed but horribly devoted way. For anyone who has tried to fit in and been reminded hour upon hour they are an outsider. For anyone who has been through that and will most likely go through it again and knows it's ok.
There are others as wild and silly and full of love and contradictions and fear and awe as us. Read it.

[Louise Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wikipedia is a great reference source for understanding the title of this prescient book, published well before the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and beyond:

"In economics, a moral hazard is a situation where an economic actor has an incentive to increase its exposure to risk because it does not bear the full costs of that risk. For example, when a corporation is insured, it may take on higher risk knowing that its insurance will pay the associated costs. A moral hazard may occur where the actions of the risk-taking party change to the detriment of the cost-bearing party after a financial transaction has taken place. Moral hazard can occur under a type of information asymmetry where the risk-taking party to a transaction knows more about its intentions than the party paying the consequences of the risk and has a tendency or incentive to take on too much risk from the perspective of the party with less information."

In Australia right now this feature is on full display with the environmental impacts of global warming - those who live in high-risk bushfire and flood zones have traditionally expected their insurance companies to pay for their losses- but increasingly the insurance companies have better information and are refusing to insure. Individuals are needing to take personal responsibility for where they choose to live. Meanwhile, the concept of accepting personal responsibility continues to elude large sections of the finance world, because central banks don't like to see influential financial institutions fail.

Although my own professional experience was in the world Kate Jennings describes, I found her heavy emphasis on the terminology of the finance world rather relentless. But the truth-telling about the people and culture she describes was stunningly accurate, with an endless parade of insightful metaphors, demonstrating her obvious skills as a poet. American financial markets are a world unto themselves and out of control, by Australian standards, but their influence is everywhere. Just look at what happened to the world economy after 2008 - and consider the current impact on world economies from the financial forces being applied to Russia in 2022.

In this largely autobiographical work, the author also spared none of the gory details of the decline and death of her husband from Alzheimer's disease. It dramatically contrasts the horrifying pretend world of the finance sector with the emotionally and physically stressful real world the author inhabits away from work - but the amount of 'prior' love needed to sustain her caring role within the timeline of this book is never demonstrated.

This book is a great example of 'the emperor has no clothes'. Everyone working in the finance sector should read this classic - even to see how it fizzles out at the end and people 'move on'. It might be too depressing for those caring for Alzheimer patients.

[Manny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This ferociously intelligent and compulsively readable novel, written by a disaffected insider who had had ample time to look at the inner workings of the financial services industry, was published in 2002. Anyone who read it would have been able to see, not just that a major financial crash was likely, but exactly why it was likely and what could be done to stop it. In a couple of sentences, the problem was that the people in charge of the big banks were completely irresponsible, because they had been incentivised to prefer risky short-term gains to prudent long-term planning. If they made risky short-term decisions, they were likely to receive huge amounts of money which would set them up for the rest of their lives. If things went sour after that, there would be no consequences for them. And indeed, as the whole world knows, there was a major crash, and none of the people responsible suffered. You get what you incentivise.

The next obvious crisis, already almost upon us, is climate change. Once again, the incentivisation structure is the problem. For example, Rishi Sunak, the near-billionaire Prime Minister of Great Britain, has just decided to backtrack on all his promises about responsible environmental policies because his team's modelling suggests that doing so may give the Conservative Party a better outcome at the next election. If he could miraculously turn things round for them, he knows there will be large, tangible short-term rewards. Humanity as a whole will suffer, but he, personally, risks very little.

The book contains several wistful passages about the 60s far-left terrorist groups: Rote Armee Fraktion, Brigate Rosse. The author distances herself from them, or at least she says she does. But she mentions them all the same. And applying the same cold logic that the fossil fuel industry does, a resurgence of such groups would indeed change the incentivisation structure. If Prime Minister Sunak were obliged to consider the nontrivial probability that a car bomb planted by environmental activists could blow up him and his family, that would alter the payoff matrix. Doing the math, he might find a different solution was optimal.

Just a thought-experiment, of course. My real point: as the book says, you have to study these people and learn to think like they do.

[Rod · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jennings fits more into a brief 150 pages than might be thought possible.

The novella unfolds along two interconnected lines; Wall Street financing and early onset Alzheimer’s disease. The connection is Cath (possibly the author herself, since she has shared the two streams) who takes a job as a speech-writer in a mid-level investment bank on Wall Street so she can afford the help needed by her husband as he is whittled away by the afflictions of Alzheimer's. The moral hazard of the title (which occurs when a person or organisation takes more risks because someone else bears the cost of those risks) is reflected in both streams; in the financial world it seems part of the DNA of investment banking, but in Cath's personal life it weighs far more heavily on the soul.

I won't pretend to know much (anything, really) about investment banking or Wall Street, but the greed represented here is reminiscent of other works (such as American Psycho or Wolf of Wall Street) and rather frightening in its potential for harm. What grabbed me though, was the emotional, mental and physical grief of the Alzheimer's on both the husband, whose decline is sparingly but vividly portrayed, and Cath. I have seen this insidious condition take hold of loved ones, and Jennings' portrayal is far too real.

Jennings writes in a clear and direct manner, not quiet as poetically as in her previous novel 'Snake', but beautifully and economically. It is deeply emotional but not cloying or melodramatically overdone.

Jennings won the Christina Stead Award for Fiction in 2003 with this book. That's no surprise.

Four and a half stars.

[Anne Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm re-posting a review left by Francene Carroll (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6...) as I think it's spot on:

This book is very prescient considering it was published several years before the GFC. Despite the greed and stupidity she witnessed on Wall St I think even Kate Jennings must be shocked by just how far things have deteriorated since then. The extent of the government bailout, combined with the naked greed of the financial elite who continue to get richer while the rest of society suffer the consequences of their actions is just staggering.

As I was reading this I kept flicking back to the front to make sure if actually said "novel" because it has such an air of authenticity about it that I couldn't believe it was fictional. Turns out it is heavily autobiographical and Kate Jennings not only worked on Wall St as speech writer but took the job to pay the medical bills of her husband with Alzheimer's.

I really liked the way the two strands of the story unfurl side by side, as the main character, Cath, negotiates two very different worlds. Both parts of the story are told with great honesty and insight, and although the writing is spare and unsentimental it really packs an emotional punch. It's a short novel with more to say about American society and global capitalism than any other work of fiction I've read in a very long time. Highly recommended.

[RobotAlice · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an IRL book group book and I would never have picked it up otherwise. I also would not have persisted but it's a short book and was quite a quick read.

The story is centered around Cath who has had to return to work in her 40s. She's got a journalist background and has now found a job writing speeches for the top dogs in a firm on Wall Street. This is not her first choice of job, in fact she would rather not have a job at all (relatable). However, her husband is significantly older than her and has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Her job is a necessity; she needs to pay for his end stage care.

This novel switches between Cath's day job and her interactions with her husband as he succumbs to Alzheimer's. These were the sections that kept me most engaged in the story and play a big part in me just not giving up.

The parts where Cath is at work interacting with her colleagues did not interest me at all and most of the time I completely forgot about which Stale Pale Male she was referring too. There was a lot of banking jargon which completely baffled me. Not because I am dumb but because I don't care. Having said that, it was very weird to read a book written in 2000 (?) that described the GFC which obviously had not happened yet. One of Jennings characters ruminates on how American Democracy is really only a couple of steps away from Fascism. That's going to make for an interesting discussion point at the book group meeting!

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deeply sad, engrossing story combining a journey down a dual devastating path of both having a beloved husband diagnosed with Alzheimers and a piercing inside look at the world of high finance where she has taken on a job writing speeches and researching to pay rent and for the nursing home she is ultimately forced to commit her beloved husband. At the time, painfully aware of his express wishes that that never happen and afterwards still suffering anguish at the fact she was unable to do what he wanted, or care for him herself. It was an odd combination, seeing her deal with the fine detail of everyday life living with someone slowly losing their mind, and knowing they know it is happening to them, to the inner workings of a world in which numbers, politics and economic theory ruled. There are connections - one side is deeply humane and private, the other is public and the antithesis of love and giving, but it works. At one stage she compares the huge financial entity fuelled by an inner madness, of financial freewheeling dependant on being prepared to put everything on the line, and then do it again the next day - these were the days preceding the hedge fund collapses - with what she saw happening to her husband as his mind fragmented, reducing his days to confusion and anger and fear. Both were about loss of control, and about disintegration.

[notgettingenough · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I finished this, couldn't put it down, read it greedily, trying not to be, I thought my review would be one word.

Perfect.

But then I looked around and saw somewhat disparaging reviews on GR - not a lot of them, but enough - and it made me want to add a few more words.

Dudes. What the fuck is wrong with youse.

As the Australian vernacular has it.

I tried to have the two lives Kate Jennings has in this 'novel' memoir. The one where you are totally dedicated to person who has the all-encompassing vulnerability of dementia, while doing the dedicated job too and hats off to her for making that work. She writes about it in the spare, beautiful way of the poet. She makes two really shitty things utterly engaging in their repulsiveness, the day-to-day breaking down of her husband, and the gross world of Wall St. I know a lot of people who work on a Wall St - whether it's in NY, or London, or Sydney, doesn't really matter, the people are the same, the sociopathic immorality, their capacity to do such wrong, whilst pretending it's the best for us. And she nails that. There isn't a word in her descriptions of either of her worlds which is out of place.

Seriously, hats fucking right off dudes. Standing ovation while you are about it.

[Jmsness]

Much like Minor Detail, another tiny book unwound me. I read it in one day. While I understood about 10% of the financial discussion, I’m used to it as an avid fan of the TV show, Industry, coincidentally rolling out its third season as I read and write this. In neither do you have to understand what’s literally happening; you only have to understand people’s reactions to it.

And while it’s not even one of the main takeaways for me, this book couldn’t better encapsulate the corporate and political climate of today, which is incredible since it was written in 2002 about a period of time in the 1990s on Wall Street: “There’s a pretense at democracy. Blather about consensus and empowering employees with opinion surveys and minority networks. But it’s a sop. Bogus as costume jewellery. The decisions have already been made. Everything is hush-hush, on a need to know only basis. Compartmentalised. Paper shredders, email monitoring, taping phone conversations, dossiers. Misinformation, disinformation. Rewriting history. The apparatus of fascism. It’s the kind of environment that can only foster extreme caution. Only breed base behaviour. You know if I had one word to describe corporate life, it would be craven. Unhappy word.”

[Anne Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

In crisp, unsentimental but stylish prose, Jennings has in this book elegantly combined the personal and the political. I'm not sure how autobiographical the story is, although it broadly follows the pattern of Jennings's life to the extent that in order to finance care and medical aid for her husband who contracted Alzheimer's, she took up a job as a speechwriter in New York for several years in the corporate finance market.

Outwardly the narrative is a juxtaposition of two very different worlds - illness and the kind of global financial shenanigans that would culminate a few years later in the GFC. There are, however, subtle parallels that connect the two, in particular the apparent deficiency of regulation and moral standards that equally bedevil the so-called free market and the realms of so-called care for those afflicted by progressive and terminal mental and physical disabilities.

Even for one unfamiliar with many of the financial terms, trends and market developments referred to in the book, this is a compelling and engaging read.

[Pauline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first book I picked up after my beautiful, adored Golden Retriever Bailey had died - and one of the central characters is...Bailey. Perhaps that's why it resonated so much with me. It's beautiful.

'There was always something of the small boy about Bailey. Eager, transparent, unafraid. "Look Ma, the world."

'Actually, I did learn something. The dailiness of life - that's what gets you through hard times. Putting on your panty hose, eating breakfast, catching the subway. That's what stops your heart from breaking.'

[Gulcin Cribb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book immensely. It is largely autobiographical with delicate and sensitive observations and narration of the mind of a middle aged woman whose husband suffers from increasingly devastating Alzheimer’s disease.
The author narrates both her own emotions and pain and her experiences of working as a speech writer at a financial services firm on Wall Street. She is ascerbic, cynical and outspoken but learns a lot in a short time. Her comments on the various moral hazard states of the players are particularly witty and entertaining but also quite worrying.

[Thomas J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book. She alternates between her job writing speeches and press releases for the financial industry as the mortgage meltdown is occurring, and looking after her 25 yr older husband with dementia. It's presented as fiction but clearly autobiographical. The description of conditions in care facilities is pretty scary, especially - speaking for myself - for those of us who aren't too many years away from them. Quick read - large print, wide spacing (reminds me of papers I handed in in University lol) and interesting.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short, snappy read full of witty lines and poeticism. But I felt the plot was dealt with in a superficial manner. This was clearly a semi-autobiography where the author claimed to be an anthropologist of Wall Street, but I felt she had little understanding of how finance worked and couldn't comment much on that besides "capitalism bad" etc. She even states explicitly at the end that she learnt nothing from the experience. An ultimately non-consequential, unsatisfying conclusion.

[Lia Perkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

The blurb 'ex-sixties radical, takes a job as a corporate speech writer' caught my eye. The writing was simple, solemn and critical. It's a time capsuale of the mania of wall street immediately before the GFC. And the delusion that exists today. The economic analysis is basic, perhaps an accessible critique of free market economics?

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book - an insight into the world of Wall Street by a self confessed left winger. Wry and revealing. And combines with the heart rendering account of her husband slide into Alzheimers - hard to read sometimes.

A text classic alright.

[Hui Xiao · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling story full of thorny humour and starkly honesty.

[Amanda]

Reread for project.

[Mcmum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an interesting read, especially given the events that have taken place since it was written. I really enjoyed the intersecting story lines and Kate Jennings' writing.

[George Dimarelos · Rating 2 out of 5]

She lost me when she disparaged Elton John.

[Lisa of Hopewell]

I learned of this book via this review: https://746books.com/2021/11/02/moral...