Last night a crowd of Wall Street types mingled comfortably with publishing types at the classy Yale Club in midtown Manhattan, celebrating the release of Ian Bremmer and Preston Keat’s new book, The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing.
The party, like the book, balanced between finance glitter and academic rigor–the cover jacket is blurbed by a NYU economics professor, an UN ambassador, and the CEO of Coca-Cola. The hosts provided appetizers, loaded cheese spreads, crusty breads, fancy crackers, beer, wine, and liquor. “This is in the top three of the best book parties I’ve seen in my 17-year career,” remarked one of the organizers.
“New York is no longer the center of [U.S.] finance,” said Bremmer (president of the political risk consultancy, Eurasia Group) in his gripping speech about the book he co-wrote. “Washington is.” The point resonated with both finance workers and finance publishers in the audience–as our financial leadership dramatically shifts this year, so must the books predicting our financial future.