At the height of the roaring 20s Swedish migr Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression. Yet after Kreuger s suicide in 1932 the true nature of his empire emerged. Driven by success to adopt ever-more perilous practices Kreuger had turned to shell companies in tax havens fudged accounting figures off-balance-sheet accounting even forgery. He created a raft of innovative financial products -- many of them precursors to instruments wreaking havoc in today s markets. When his Wall Street empire collapsed millions went bankrupt. Frank Partnoy a frequent commentator on financial disaster for the Financial Times New York Times NPR and CBS s 60 Minutes recasts the life story of a remarkable yet forgotten genius in ways that force us to re-think our ideas about the wisdom of crowds the invisible hand and the free and unfettered market.