Belly Up: The Collapse of the Penn Square Bank

No economist could have predicted that the Penn Square Bank, a small, obscure lender in an Oklahoma shopping mall, would become the instigator of a financial charade that would see billions of dollars in loans made on the basis of imaginary oil and natural gas reserves—just as a worldwide oil glut and the repeal of regulatory gas laws were about to pull the rug from under the Oklahoma energy boom. Belly Up tells this amazing true story with brilliant reporting, delicious detail, and an unbelievable yet all-too-real cast of characters, from the young geologist who convinced banks to invest lots of money in a huge new source of natural gas to the banker who became notorious for lending money to every con artist and wildcatter with a lease, a rig, and a dream. Praise for Belly Up “Belly Up merits a slot on any investor’s literary shelf as surely as it does a Pulitzer Prize!”—Financial World “Investigative reporting at its best.”—The Baltimore Sun