Jesse Eisinger

Senior Editor and Reporter

Photo of Jesse Eisinger

Jesse Eisinger is a senior editor and reporter at ProPublica. He is the author of the “The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives.”

In April 2011, he and a colleague won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for a series of stories on questionable Wall Street practices that helped make the financial crisis the worst since the Great Depression. He was the lead reporter on the “Secret IRS Files” series that exposed the tax avoidance strategies of the ultrawealthy. The series won several prizes, including the Selden Ring in 2022. He also won the 2015 Gerald Loeb Award for commentary.

He was the editor on the “Friends of the Court” series, which revealed how a small group of politically influential billionaires wooed justices with lavish gifts and travel; it won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2024.

He serves on the advisory board of the University of California, Berkeley’s Financial Fraud Institute. And he was a consultant on season 3 of the HBO series “Succession.”

His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, NewYorker.com, The Washington Post, The Baffler and The American Prospect and on NPR and “This American Life.” Before joining ProPublica, he was the Wall Street editor of Conde Nast Portfolio and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, covering markets and finance.

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the journalist Sarah Ellison, and their daughters.

Tackling Reams of Bank Data Can Take Diligence, and Trust

Since emerging as one of the country’s largest banks, Wells Fargo has continued to let its numbers speak for themselves. That may not be such a good thing.

Bank of America Gets Buffetted

Warren Buffett’s $5 billion investment in B of A is hardly a confidence booster.

Once Unthinkable, Breakup of Big Banks Now Seems Feasible

What was made can be unmade.

In U.S. Monetary Policy, a Boon to Banks

The federal government, in ways explicit and implicit, profoundly subsidizes and shelters the banking industry, and the protection is so well established that we barely notice it anymore.

After SEC Settlement With JPMorgan, Will Other Banks Pay Too?

Many other banks created deals with similar characteristics to the transaction that resulted in JPMorgan's $154 million settlement with the government. But the SEC still faces big challenges in wresting more settlements from banks.

From Dodd-Frank to Dud: How Financial Reform May Be Going Wrong

Some fear the grandest ambitions of the law passed last year to reform the nation's financial system are being undermined in the rule-making process.

For One Whistle-Blower, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

It has been noted repeatedly that almost no top bankers have faced serious consequences for their actions in the financial crisis. But there is a Wall Street corollary that might be even more pernicious: good guys are punished.

For One Whistle-Blower, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

It has been noted repeatedly that almost no top bankers have faced serious consequences for their actions in the financial crisis. But there is a Wall Street corollary that might be even more pernicious: good guys are punished.

In HBO’s 'Too Big to Fail,' the Heroes Are Really Zeroes

Watch carefully, and you'll see how the three men who saved the world—Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, NY Fed's Timothy Geithner, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson—get it wrong again and again and again.

U.S. Senate Investigation Gives New Details on Magnetar

Citing reports by ProPublica, lawmakers describe the hedge fund's role in the collateralized debt obligations business.

In Proposed Mortgage Fraud Settlement, a Gift to Big Banks

Under terms being negotiated with state attorneys general, banks would be allowed to treat second liens like first mortgages — and to avoid coming clean on the true extent of their losses.

A Test Where the Banks Had the Questions and the Answers

Later this month, the Federal Reserve is going to let banks know how they did on its most <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/business/18bank.html?_r=2">recent round</a> of “stress tests.”

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