The Nobel Winners Who Almost Crashed the Economy

John Meriwether assembled the smartest team on Wall Street. In the 1980s, he combed Harvard and MIT for geniuses to join him at Salomon Brothers and make the investment bank a fortune with arbitrage - the trick of buying an asset cheap in one place and quickly selling it for a profit in another.

When he parted ways with Salomon Brothers, Meriwether took his "nerds" to set up a hedge fund. They prospered - making themselves and their clients rich. Two employees even picked up a Nobel Prize. But Long Term Capital Management operated in the real world - where projections and charts and formulas can't protect you from political chaos and economic turmoil.

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