street. is anybody watching? does anybody care about this? the epic story of the globl financial crisis spreads. tonight frontline. frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major funding is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. and by reva and david logan, committed to investigative journalism as the guardian of the public interest. additional funding is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critil issues. and by tfrontline journalism fund, supporting investigative reporting and enterprise journalism. (sleigh bells ringing) narrator: every year in december, bankers find out if the bets they ve made that year have paid off. it s christmastime on wall street. ( jingle bells playing) by some measures, 2011 was a dismal year to be a banker.
street. is anybody watching? does anybody care about this? the epic story of the globl financial crisis spreads. tonight frontline. frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major funding is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. and by reva and david logan, committed to investigative journalism as the guardian of the public interest. additional funding is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critil issues. and by tfrontline journalism fund, supporting investigative reporting and enterprise journalism. (sleigh bells ringing) narrator: every year in december, bankers find out if the bets they ve made that year have paid off. it s christmastime on wall street. ( jingle bells playing) by some measures, 2011 was a dismal year to be a banker.
frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major funding is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. and by reva and david logan, committed to investigative journalism as the guardian of the public interest. additional funding is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critil issues. and by tfrontline journalism fund, supporting investigative reporting and enterprise journalism. (sleigh bells ringing) narrator: every year in december, bankers find out if the bets they ve made that year have paid off. it s christmastime on wall street. ( jingle bells playing) by some measures, 2011 was a dismal year to be a banker. their stocks took a nosedive. but this season, new york banks set aside $20 billion in bonuses. since the crash of 08, banks have paid
is anybody watching? does anybody care about this? the epic story of the globl financial crisis spreads. tonight frontline. frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major funding is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. and by reva and david logan, committed to investigative journalism as the guardian of the public interest. additional funding is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critil issues. and by tfrontline journalism fund, supporting investigative reporting and enterprise journalism. (sleigh bells ringing) narrator: every year in december, bankers find out if the bets they ve made that year have paid off. it s christmastime on wall street. ( jingle bells playing) by some measures, 2011 was a dismal year to be a banker. their st
so i wasn t offended by that idea. it seemed like a pretty typical american goal, in fact. narrator: cathy o neil, a mathematician, came to wall street in 2007 after beginning her career in academia. i went to u.c. berkeley as an undergrad. i went to harvard for grad school. and then i was a postdoc for five years at mit. and i applied to work at a hedge fund, d.e. shaw, and i got the job. and i thought, this was great. i was a quant. a quant uses statistical methods to try to predict patterns in the market. arrator: h worwas used to predict when big pension funds would buy or sell so the firm could jump in ahead of their trades. i just felt like i was doing something immoral. i was taking advantage of people i don t even know whose retirements were in these funds. we all put money into our 401(k)s. and wall street takes this money and just skims off, like, a certain percentage every quarter. at the very end of somebody s career, they retire and they get some of that