TIME CHANGE Insight with Gillian Tett: Scaremongerer no more

When she picked up her prize for journalist of the year at the British Press Awards recently, the Financial Times’ Gillian Tett claimed the accolade was a vindication for “the geeks” and “anoraks”.

The assistant editor of the Financial Times has been documenting the rise of credit derivatives banking since she was appointed in 2005 to cover the the rather unglamorous capital markets patch. But it was only after the full consequences of the risks bankers had been taking became so catastrophically apparent that Gillian Tett was promoted from “geek” to luminary, regularly making appearances on TV and radio.

In conversation with BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders, Gillian Tett will be discussing the roots of the catastrophe, based on her painstaking analysis of the financial markets that earned her the title of "anorak" and even saw her denounced as a scaremongerer at the economic forum Davos in 2007.

Gillian Tett joined the FT in 1993 and worked in the former Soviet Union and Europe, and in the economics team. In 1997 she was posted to Tokyo where she became the bureau chief, before returning in 2003 to become deputy head of the Lex column.

Stephanie Flanders is the BBC’s Economic Editor.  She has also worked as a reporter for the New York Times and was a leader writer and economics columnist with the FT in London