Few people's reputations have been improved by the credit crisis. One is the BBC's Robert Peston; another is Vince Cable. A third is Gillian Tett, capital markets editor of the Financial Times. Prior to the crisis, she and her team were the only mainstream journalists who covered in any detail the arcane world of 'credit derivatives'. Tett saw - however imperfectly - the huge risks that were accumulating unnoticed within that world, and spoke out about them.

LRB 25 June 2009 | PDF Download