Frank Partnoy has an exceptionally well-timed book on Ivar Kreuger coming out

I'm just back from a stroll over to the HarperCollins building, where I handed over almost 400 pages of marked-up Myth of the Rational Market manuscript (we've reached the stage in the process where I'm no longer allowed to alter anything electronically). This is all happening about four years after it was originally supposed to, but the upside is that a lot more people are probably going to be interested in a book called The Myth of the Rational Market now than would have been the case four years ago. Fewer of them may be able to afford it, but that's a mere technicality—as these things go, my book has turned out to be pretty danged well timed.

When I got back to the office, though, I encountered evidence of what you'd have to call truly spectacular book timing. Just a week ago, I was reporting historian Chris McKenna's contention that, while Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme was pretty big, it still pales in comparison with the scam that Ivar "the Swedish Match King" Kreuger pulled off in the late 1920s and early 1930s. So what arrives in the mail today? A galley of The Match King: The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals, by derivatives salesman turned corporate lawyer turned law professor turned author (I think I've got the progression right there, but don't bank on it) Frank Partnoy. It's coming out in May. Way to go, Frank!