No comments about Stabilizing an Unstable Economy.

5 comments about Damn, it Feels Good to Be a Banker: And Other Baller Things You Only Get to Say If You Work On Wall Street.

1. If this isn't funny then I don't know what is.
   [...]
   
   "Thankfully, there was a group of cute girls at a nearby booth, and I had finished off 5 surprisingly strong $[...] drinks. Feeling indestructible, I got up and walked over to the girls' table and tapped my glass on their table gavel-style a couple times. They stared at me blankly. They were indeed kinda cute. But, sometimes it's more about the entertainment.
   
   "I'll tell you what I'm gonna do," I began the proposal. "I'll buy you girls your next three rounds of drinks if you can guess what my friend over there does for a living" I offered grandiosely, pointing at my friend who, on cue, raised his glass high in acknowledgement. The reflection off his Harvard ring was majestic.
   
   The girls all looked at each other awkwardly, as if hoping some sort of greater group intelligence would instruct them on how to proceed. I stood slightly bent over, supporting myself with my palms on the table, and watched them. The DUFF was apparently also the most outgoing.
   
   "Uhm. Let me take a wild guess. He is an investment banker?!" she responded in a fantastically sardonic tone.
   
   Learned sarcasm from all those clever little [...] t-shirts, eh? I pushed myself back with my hands, leaned back, and let out a grand guffaw.
   
   "WRONG!" I exclaimed. "He works in Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities which actually falls outside of the Investment Banking Division!!""



2. Probably the funniest book I've ever read, even better than the blog. I read it cover-to-cover in one sitting. Twice as funny if you work in finance and know a lot about the industry, but nonetheless hilarious for anyone who isn't easily offended or can take a joke.



3. Having been a massive fan of the website the book was always going to be great fun! The guy who wrote it clearly got bullied at school..



4. I pity poor old "Leveraged Sellout", which would be the most wounding thing one could do to him ("one" being a person not blessed enough to work in front office advisory M&A at a bulge bracket investment bank), but only for his timing. After the events of September 2008 it's going to be a while before anyone preens about working in a Bulge Bracket investment bank on Wall Street. At this point (still in September 2008) there are only two left, one (Morgan Stanley) looking likely to go the way of all flesh in coming days (horror of all horrors courtesy of *Wachovia*!), and the last man standing, Messrs. Goldman, Sachs & Co, facing a very uncertain road ahead as an independent investment bank no matter how excellent its risk management, deal execution and intellectual capital may be.
   
   So I pity the anonymous "Leveraged Sellout" simply because, as a result of his timing, this excellent and brutally funny little book will either disappear into the same gaping void that claimed Bear Stears, Merrill Lynch, AIG and Lehman Brothers or, worse, be held up by moronic lefties as a poster child for everything that was wrong with Wall Street.
   
   It is no such thing. It's actually a riot - imagine a young Hunter Thompson or Tom Wolfe writing with verve about modern day Wall Street but not as an outsider or an ingenue, but fully steeped in the technical and cultural world of a 24 year-old master of the universe.
   
   I have no doubt that whoever wrote this was a genuine insider - the observations and devastatingly funny sending up of the minutiae (such as the distinction between IBD and FICC and importance of never using your mouse when manipulating a spreadsheet) would never be apparent to an outsider who hadn't done a significant stretch. I spent 7 years at a bulge bracket bank myself (as a lowly inhouse lawyer, resolutely in unglamorous back office), and but for the inevitable comic hyperbole, Damn It Feels Good To Be A Banker rings very true. I loved every moment.
   
   So it's kind of a historical document, even though it is pure satire. It captures the zeitgeist, circa August 2008, and if you've had any interaction with the IB fraternity in their prime - that is, before the Sub-Prime got them, you'll find this hysterically funny.
   
   Olly Buxton



5. The US economy is in disarray. The dollar is depreciating. The Europeans are laughing at us. Wall Street's elitists are taking government handouts. Investment banking is dead. Capitalism is dead. Private equity IRRs are down owing to defunct credit markets. Lehman and Bear bankers are all jobless. Merrill evaporated to pixie dust. No longer is there any appeal to banking or private equity. How can one tout a profession that is all out of a job where bonuses are cut to zero? We are in a very sad state. It used to feel good to be a banker. Now being a banker means being on welfare. Government cheese. What a bunch of losers.

5 comments about Wall and Piece.

1. If you haven't read or seen much from BANKSY - trust me, just buy the sweet book. Otherwise... make a quick stop at your favorite video search engine, type BANKSY and watch a documentary about the man...
   
   This is one of my favorite art books. Without a doubt.



2. Banksy is a great artist. This book is 240 pages of both his graffiti and his "gallery" or more "Piece" art. I think he is an innovator and inspiration to all artists. We could all learn something from Banksy. If you like this book you might also like some Shepard Fairey work. Also check out Banksy's website at http://www.Banksy.co.uk its really great.



3. Couldn't put it down. Images are mezmerizing. Everyone I show it to wants to buy it to. No profanity or sexually oriented photos make it a hip gift choice for young people.



4. there isn't much to read. the art speaks for itself.
   6 sections to this book:
   monkeys, cops, rats, cows, art, and street furniture.
   there are a few pages that contain several paragraphs of writing. banksy provides captions for maybe.. approximately half or less than half of his art. towards the back there's one page with "advice on painting with stencils". if you were looking for graffiti instruction, look elsewhere... unless you really want to look at that one page haha. some of his famous quotes are in there.
   what a funny guy. funny book. it was worth the money :)



5. You have to check out this book if you can appreciate the art that is graffiti. Banksy also inspires you with his political satire.

5 comments about One Up On Wall Street : How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market.

1. Very nice book for everyone who is interested in the financial markets. Highly recommended. Rich and detailed content.



2. It's a small book with no depth. Might be relevant for people who are clueless about stocks but definitely not for people with general idea about stocks.



3. I thought this book was an abreviated version of the full book, however this book is actually a miniture ~2inch micro-pocket version of the full book. Text is full size, thus it only contains a very few high-level comments. I was hoping for a boiled-down version, but got mini-me.



4. I was going to do some online trading and bought this book too learn more about selecting stocks. Mr. Lynchs' statement that he considered himself successful if 6 out 10 stocks he selected increased in value changed my mind. I want to thank him for waking me up. I will stick to index funds and wish all the online traders the best of luck.



5. I struggled with the 1st 74 pages or so, but after that this book is excellent. There is a section he titles Kicking the Tires, in short he goes over how to evaluate a company and to stay away from the 1-2 year fly away companies. I remember when everyone was selling Apple back in the day, Peter did the opposite and started gobbling up shares. As he somewhat states, the wheels on Apple were still good.

3 comments about Wall Street: America's Dream Palace (Icons of America).

1. Wonderful, thorough history of the banking industry and Wall Street since the inception of this country. A must read!
   Debb



2. Steve Fraser has a wonderful, crisp style that moves your eye
   along the page and onto the next. This is one of those rare
   non-fiction books you wish were longer.



3. There are few institutions in America that evoke such strong emotions among the general public. For over two centuries most Americans have viewed the goings on on Wall Street with a very jaundiced eye....and with very good reason. From the Gilded Age to the dot.com boom of the 1990's the way business was conducted on Wall Street would have an enormous impact of the lives of farmers, factory workers and shopkeepers across this nation. Author Steve Fraser has managed to capture the essence of this love-hate relationship with the Street in his marvelous new book "Wall Street: America's Dream Palace".
   For those who know little about the origins of Wall Street Steve Fraser presents a brief history in his Introduction to get us all up to speed.
   Interestingly enough, this book has only four chapters, each scrutinizing the roles of what Fraser considers to be four iconic Wall Street types including the aristocrat, the confidence man, the hero and the immoralist. In each chapter, Fraser presents vivid portraits of those legendary individuals who for better or for worse have made their mark in the world of high finance. Fraser spotlights such diverse charactors as J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Charles Ponzi and Michael Milken to name but a few. Fraser also discusses at some length how the dot.com boom lured many Americans into the stock market for the very first time and how so many of us were burned by the unscrupulous actions of con men like Michael Milken, corporations like Enron and WorldCom, as well as by a variety of unsavory speculators and day traders.
   Overall I found "Wall Street: America's Dream Palace" to be an extremely informative and highly enjoyable read. I enjoy writers with outstanding vocabularies and Steve Fraser can turn a phrase with the best of them.
   Lots of great information packed into this terrific little book. Highly recommended!

5 comments about Wall Street Versus America: A Muckraking Look at the Thieves, Fakers, and Charlatans Who Are Ripping You Off.

1. One of the most controversial aspects of "Wall Street Versus America" by Gary Weiss is the author's assessment that SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt was not the champion of the small investor as the press made him out to be; that, in fact, he aided and abetted the abuses against the small investor by refusing to curtail the corrupt practices on Wall Street. Weiss' assessment of Levitt is tersely summed up in the opening pages: "Levitt presided over the worst abuses to descend upon Wall Street since the 1920s. He failed miserably at dealing with the problems that he did not ignore entirely, but he did a couple of things better than just about any recent SEC chairman in history - give speeches, and court the press."
   
   And this is the crux of what makes "Wall Street Versus America" a work of historical dimension. Each of the Wall Street abuses detailed in the book, most of which continue to this day, were by themselves a fraud on the public investor. But together, they rendered Wall Street not a fair and efficient capital allocation system but an institutionalized wealth transfer system. No book has, heretofore, shown this so clearly. Wealth was sucked from the masses of little investors and transferred to the corporate and Wall Street insiders while the cop on the beat, the SEC, looked the other way.
   
   I recently retired after 21 years on Wall Street, during which time I made numerous written appeals to the SEC, the Fed, and in GAO testimony to halt the same areas of corruption covered in "Wall Street Versus America:" the rigged arbitration system; the 1920s style creation of conflict-riddled mega banks/brokerages; the rampant kickback schemes with lofty sounding names. One word aptly describes the outcome of each of my appeals: coverup. Thus, I am not surprised that Weiss has borne the brunt of threats and backlash for this comprehensive and courageous work.
   
   For those skeptics who can't believe that "Wall Street Versus America" is a keenly insightful and accurate portrayal of the corruption-riddled practices of the largest and most lauded financial system in the world, here's background to digest before you move on to the main feature: "Wall Street Versus America."
   
   In a 1994 article by Business Week (4/4/1994: Beware the IPO Market) regulators had
   the goods to clean up the systemic looting of American investors by bulge bracket Wall Street firms and their cronies. The article quotes Lynn A. Stout, professor of securities regulation at Georgetown University Law Center: "The IPO [Initial Public Offering] market is rigged. It's rigged against the average investor." The article goes on to define exactly how a "penalty bid" works. "This is a penalty imposed on brokers who flip or sell their customers IPO shares right after the offering. The practice, devised by a group of top Wall Street firms during Securities Industry Association meetings in the 1980s, is used by underwriters to help prop up the stock price of an IPO in the sensitive weeks following its issue. Brokers whose customers flip, risk having their commissions taken away, giving them an incentive to discourage customers from selling out." The article points out, however, that the Wall Street firm's institutional clients were allowed to cash out while the individual investors are left "holding the bag" and serving as a prop under the price of the shares.
   
   Two and a half years later, the Wall Street Journal took up the issue of the penalty bid. (12/2/1996: Tough IPO Market Triggers Penalty Bids Against Brokers by Deborah Lohse) "Even though penalty bids are taken out of brokers' commission, many investors gripe that they are the ones being penalized, since their brokers exert subtle, or not so subtle, pressure on them not to sell their IPO shares while the penalty bid is in place."
   
   One and half years later comes Michael Siconolfi and Patrick McGeehan in the Wall Street Journal, who decide to take the gloves off on this penalty bid issue. (6/26/1998: Big Institutions Can Cash Out Quickly; the Little Guy Can't Without Penalties) "It's one of Wall Street's best kept secrets: While securities firms allow big institutional investors to dump hot new stocks at their whim, often within hours or minutes of the stock's first trade, they try to persuade investors to hold on to IPOs, for better or worse." This article clearly points out that while the little investor continues to be fleeced, the SEC has its lens fogged.
   
   It's now March of 2001. It's seven years since Business Week first tipped off the regulators and the Wall Street Journal reporters did everything short of filing the brief and buying the handcuffs. And there are no more hot IPOs. There are only drowning IPOs. Ron Chernow in the New York Times summed it up: "Let us be clear about the magnitude of the Nasdaq collapse. The tumble has been so steep and so bloody - close to $4 trillion in market value erased in one year - that it amounts to nearly four times the carnage recorded in the October 1987 crash." Chernow likens the NASDAQ to a "lunatic control tower that directed most incoming planes to a bustling, congested airport known as the New Economy while another, depressed airport, the Old Economy, stagnated with empty runways. The market functioned as a vast, erratic mechanism for misallocating capital across America."
   
   This misallocation of capital, capital that should have been feeding American innovation to secure our economic future but went instead to build millions of miles of unneeded fibre optic cables or now bankrupt dot.coms while shifting wealth to such unprecedented levels of concentration in America as to threaten our democracy, can be placed squarely at the feet of Arthur Levitt's SEC.
   
   That most of these practices continue unabated today means Gary Weiss needs to start work on a sequel immediately and that regardless of who is sitting in the oval office, there's likely to be a Wall Street crony at the helm of the SEC.
   
   Pam Martens



2. Gary Weiss is a fervent believer in the efficient capital markets hypothesis (which I'll call ECMH hereafter, because I'm a lazy typist.)
   
   ECMH, a theory developed by Eugene Fama in the mid 1960s, on first principles derived from the great Austrian economists, has been the object of proselytizing by Burton Malkiel starting in the 1970s and continuing to the present. The idea is that given a competently-managed capital market (i.e. a stock exchange), and given a certain respectable level of liquidity (e.g. above a minimum volume of sales), all significant information will be reflected in stock prices very quickly.
   
   To get an idea of what this means, suppose you've made a careful study of the beer market. You've been a saint of erudition. You know every available fact about, say, Anheuser Busch's production methods, Miller's labor troubles, the rise of microbreweries, the marketing plans of Grupo Modelo (the nice folks who bring us Corona) and so forth. On the basis of your erudition, you've formed the firm opinion that SAB Miller is going to have a couple of very profitable years. So you buy their stock, right?
   
   Don't bother. According to the ECMH, everything you know is already 'known' to the inorganic entity known as the market, and has already been factored into the price. Good news for Miller has already pushed the price up, before you have a chance to buy it, so you'd be buying on already-discounted information.
   
   Another way to look at this is to say that stock prices are a 'random walk.' All your efforts at predicting and acting on a pattern will be outsmarted by the market itself, so the actual moves will appear, from any of our own limited points of view, random. We'd do as well throwing darts at a stock chart while wearing a blindfold as we would picking stocks through the kind of study of corporate fundamentals instanced above.
   
   Still another, more poetic, way of looking at this is to say that any given buyer or seller is but a neuron. The market itself is the brain of which they are each parts. A belief in one's ability to outsmart the market is equivalent to the belief of a neuron that it can outthink the brain.
   
   So: what is to be done? Invest passively. That is the advice that Malkiel and others give. Invest in funds that are tied to broad indices, so that you are in effect investing in the market itself, in the whole brain, rather than trying to outthink it.
   
   Various theorists give various exceptions to this general rule. but the ECMH by definition means at least that most would-be buyers and sellers are better off in index-based or passive funds than they would be trying to pick stocks themselves, and/or paying someone else (an active manager) to do the picking for them. Active managers charge higher fees than passive managers. In the view of ECMH advocates, they are almost always charging you those fees for the purpose of losing you money. Even if they break even, by comparison with their passive counterparts, you lose the fees differential itself. If you were sucker enough to pay it.
   
   That's the theory. Weiss, as I've said, is a passionate believer in it. That is the implication of the provocative title of his book. It might more accurately, but more pedantically, be titled, "Active Fund Managers Against Ordinary-Folk Investors."
   
   Let me just say now that I found it well written, and I think there's a lot of truth in Weiss' viewpoint. He applies ECMH rather too mechanically for my taste, but that's an issue for another day.



3. I'm just an ordinary investor who has been feeling like a piece of bait for the securities industry- until now.
   
   I applaud you for Wall Street Versus America. Reading it made me realize that my concerns and suspicions are valid and that I'm not alone. Not only that, it provided the beacon I need to have the confidence to be aggressive with my questions, bold with my actions and to never again blindly follow the "advice" of a broker and never again exist only to have my portfolio's mission priority be to fill a broker's pockets ahead of mine. I am lucky to have learned this before Wall Street had a chance to ruin me.
   
   I was fortunate to retire with a pension lump sum. When I started looking into how to invest it, I found the brokerage industry to be like the Big Bad Wolf licking its chops, just waiting to brainwash me and take my money. So, I left my broker and found another, then I left the new one too. After that, I sold everything and put my money safely into Treasuries and Money Market funds so I could take all the time I needed to get my act together. Then, I found your book, bought it and read it carefully. Life changed. Thank you.
   
   Oh yeah, I said your book enabled me to be "bold with my actions". By that, I mean that I have already written to my congressman and to the chairman of the SEC to demand that Arbitration be made optional. I'm expecting little in return, or maybe some polite "baloney" but I'm not backing off. This absolutely feels like swimming up a waterfall, but it's a start.
   
   Great book.



4. I was hired to co-author a book on the stock market, and initially was skeptical of the claims made by my client about Wall Street. However, when I began doing research, it was "Wall St. Versus America" that made me take notice and realize that we are being manipulated by a group of people who addicted to accumulating wealth without remorse.
   
   Weiss' makes a powerful and well-documented case that there is a powerful group of Wall St. execs, CEO's, government officials, Congress and the financial press that band together to protect their own investment. Weiss also points out that the regulatory commissions are toothless, and we are generally unaware of how this affects our daily lives.
   
   Hopefully, when my book, "Crazyman's Economics" comes out in early '08, it will be another in a series of warnings to 'fly-over country' that Wall St. is not after your best interests. (www.crazymanseconomics.blogspot.com)



5. I recently received a small inheritance, and bought this book for some suggestions on what to do with it. After reading this scathing account of how careless, and frequently criminal, Wall Street is with investors' money, I think the best thing to do with it is stuff it in a pillow case and throw it in the closet.
   I looked at other reviews here to see if anyone in the know disputed any of Gary Weiss' claims, and, alarmingly, no one did. A former Business Week columnist, Weiss definitely appears to know his subject, and, more importantly, he adopts a tone that makes the book readable for a complete layman like myself. Though his style may occasionally come off as glib as facetious, he presents a view of Wall Street you are not going to get anywhere else, packed with information that pesents the world of investment as nothing more than an Old Boy's Club that simply doesn't care at all about you.
   
   Brief list of things I learned from reading this book: The regulation and punishment of criminals on Wall Street is usually done by the very people committing the fraud, hedge funds don't behave any differently with your money than any other investors, boiler room scams are alive and well (not hounded out of existence by the SEC, as I believed) and "punishments" meted out for criminal behavior by the SEC usually consist of being asked nicely to stop it.
   I can't recommend this book enough to anyone considering investing. I'm very glad I got it when I did. A Must Read!

5 comments about A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition.

1. The book is otherwise fabulous, but you should steer clear of the Kindle version. The Kindle handles charts poorly, and this book has a lot of them. Some are manageable, but many others contain small text that is so blurry that it might as well be written in Arabic. Quite honestly, it is not entirely clear to me how Amazon gets away with selling this item. The Kindle is great, but Amazon absolutely should not sell books that cannot actually be read on it.



2. This book helps to understand how the shares market works and its history.
   
   I think it may interest all people who wants to improve his knowleadge in
   
   investing.



3. Would have give it 5 stars,except for the fact that they did not return my e-mail, when I had a question



4. As a novice to finance, I found this book both educational and entertaining. Highly recommended!



5. Very good book, the author takes you behind the scene of Wall Street and history of the market. He goes over the basics of our economy and the different avenues of investing. This is a must read for anyone who want to start investing but is confused on where to start. I would have given this book 5 stars if he had written down a step by step process to investing. I recommend this book 1st and then read Jim Cramer's Mad Money, he gives the step by step procedures I was looking for in his book.

5 comments about Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story.

1. This is an excellent read with great insight into the way true hedge funds try to add value and how publicly traded companies can make perception into reality.



2. Although some claims against Allied appear to be exaggerated, or at least are not fully substantiated within the covers of the book, this is an excellent look into the critical bird-dog role of financial analysts.
   
   Plenty of literary criticisms to be made, but it is a relatively easy, even enjoyable, read.
   
   It is also informative, albeit troubling, to read of the indifference and incompetence of many government officials in response to Greenlight's more damning findings of fraudulent and misleading activity. Although this is something we have come to expect over the course of the George "heckuva job" Bush administration, we need more voices in this fight.



3. I like reading books about corporate collapses (eg about Enron and Worldcom), and this book, whilst not about a corporate collapse, details the author's extensive investigation into the accounting and other practices of Allied Capital. Both as a story and technically, this is an exciting book.



4. Fooling Some of the People All of the Time catalogs the incredible events that followed the author's fast rising hedge fund and the investment community that attacked him after sticking his neck out in a speech. The investment community attached to protect its interests, which provides a good lesson in today's financial crisis. The book gives an informative look at the ins and outs of wall street, and the lengths people there will go to attack companies and individuals who attempt to uncover untoward behavior. It's a very interesting, if detailed, read and necessarily so.
   
   As an investor and fan of the financial markets, I don't typically read psychology books, but a colleague passed along The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book to me this week when we were discussing the chaos that has befallen the financial markets of late. I devoured that book! It's really great at revealing the role emotions play in ANY decision you make, and I'm a smarter investor for having read it.



5. Very boring to read. Explains at length reasoning that leads to short sales. Unless short-selling is of particular interest to you or, if you face an imminent encounter with SEC, this book is unlikely to be of any value to you.

5 comments about Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis.

1. Do your eyes glaze over when commentators try to describe the financial products that were at the heart of the recent real estate boom? The mortgage boom? This book described the instruments clearly--and gives the reader a great sense of what was fundamentally wrong with the whole process. The title is "Chain of Blame," but there is plenty of blame to go around.
   
   The book is well written and lucid. Nonspecialists can understand it well. I heard talking heads on TV and radio described tranches, REITs, "liar loans," "warehouse line of credit," and so on. The authors describe these terms--and others--clearly and in such a way that the reader can begin to see what had happened--and why the meltdown in the mortgage world should not be seen as so surprising.
   
   It is also the story of clever businessmen and women, who could develop new tools for investment from subprime loans. Subprime loans, simply, are (Page 325): "A loan originated by a lender that is A- to D in quality. Consumers with the best credit ratings. . .are considered 'A' credit quality." In short, loans are being made to purchasers who carry some to a lot of risk. If they can't keep paying their mortgages, the house of cards can fall down. And that is, in short, what happened (although the story is quite a bit more complex than that).
   
   Among the innovators were pioneers such as Roland Arnall (of Ameriquest and Argent) and Bill Dallas (of Ownit Mortgage Solutions). Then, those who adopted practices of the innovators, such as Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide.
   
   The book makes pretty clear that a number of factors contributed to the mortgage problem. Regulators didn't get involved; Wall Street firms ignored the volatile nature of subprime loans in a desire to realize enormous profits; banks bought into the profitable business.
   
   Anyway, if the reader wants a well written, if not overly deep, analysis of the mortgage crisis, this is not a bad place to start.



2. Excellent book and worth reading. Beware that it might make you angry just like the energy scandals did a few years ago. Offers considerable insight and information that would be very useful to business schools for their students. Recommended reading for professors to include in their markets and business ethics courses. Kudos to the authors for a well researched and written book.



3. Good book that reads quickly about a topic that can be very detailed and arcane. In this way, its very valuable because you can actually get through it, and understand historically how the crisis could have happened. I especially liked all the parts about the personalities, and how they were created and helped TO CREATE the mess. I think they may have let the ratings agencies and the regulators off a easy, but I agree with the central premise that the Wall Street folks had a major hand in the mess. And the amazing thing is that this was written BEFORE the Fannie / Freddie mess, or the impending implosion of Lehman. So, it was written early in the meltdown and was both historically accurate and prescient regarding what was coming. Maybe the next printing will take the agencies and the regulators more to task.



4. I hadn't followed the sub prime mortgage crisis as closely as I would have liked, until a close friend recommended this book. A truly fascinating read, and made all the more prevalent with the collapse of two more Wall St. giant banks and the bail-out of Freddie and Fanny. Extremely well-written, with detailed accounts, and easy to understand without being too didactic, this book came as close to a page turner as a non-fiction could be. Kudos to the authors!



5. This is a good book for an overview of the mortgage banking operation. However, any such book that fails to mention Rangel, Franks, or Dodd is lacking the substance required for full comprehension.

5 comments about Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street.

1. An entertaining look into the life of a Salomon Brothers bond trader in the 1980s. The book offers a cursive overview of the financial innovations during that period, but the real contribution is in examination of the culture and the personalities of the Wall Street traders. Not without some embellishment, Michael Lewis does a great job of communicating the eccentricities and absurdities of the traders - 'the big swinging dicks'. At the very least, 'Liar's Poker' is an entertaining read, at best, an insightful look at what (and who) turns the wheels of our financial institutions.



2. Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker is a must read for anyone trying to understand the 2008 crisis in mortgage lending and home ownership. In fact, a new edition of the book should be published with a forward by Ben Bernake or Hank Paulson. The autobiography describes a mid-1980's newbie to Wall Street and his induction into the fraternity of mortgage traders at Salomon Brothers and junk bond traders at Drexel. This book rises above a rite of passage story because of the financial chaos which happened during the next three decades.
   
   The 41st trading floor of Salomon Brothers is where millions of dollars exchange hands in minutes. There is a blue collar culture of practical jokes, profanity, Mexican food and pizza. The characters might have come right out of Damon Runyon or Animal House. The main difference between the interns, the traders and the clerks is neither their demeanor nor education but their wealth. In contrast to other books which tell us about the best and the brightest, this book describes ordinary people with excess body fat, perspiration, greed and wealth.
   
   As more homeowners face foreclosure and the US dollar loses value, it is not clear what message to derive from this book. Were it not for these failures of economic policy the book would join other interesting stories about the rich and privileged of Wall Street. But because of this failure of oversight, the book takes us from humor to cynicism and from a sense of national pride to a feeling of national shame.
   
   Is there a ratio of capitalistic reward to risk which is unconscionable in a democratic society? Can this behavior be limited or controlled by financial transparency, tax code, money supply and credit leverage? How do we avoid these consequences of the creation and destruction of capital without moving down the path of socialism? Can we ever put to rest the saying that behind every great fortune is a great crime?



3. This book should be required reading for all wanna be I-bankers. The author very convincingly describes the inner workings of a major financial institution. From the outside, the public only sees the expensive suits and tall glass buildings and are suitably impressed by the knowledge and skills of those who works inside. But the author takes us behind the doors to show frighteningly how the lifeblood of the world is controlled by a bunch of 25 year olds who have little idea of the magnitude of their actions.



4. Michael Lewis describes his corner of wall street pretty well. The 1980s bond market. He continually contrasts the practice and culture of trading bonds with the dogma of Economics.
   
   Over the course of the book it becomes easy to draw parallels between Wall Street and Feudal Europe. The Economists are like the Catholic Church in Feudal Europe. The Traders are like the Nobles and Royalty in Medieval Europe. The Job of the Nobles is to fight other Nobles over the right to control land, rent, and protection fees. The Job of the Church is to teach people who aren't Nobles that they should do what the Nobles tell them to. In exchange, the Church will occasionally ask the Nobles to behave a little better.



5. This book was so inspirational and superb it may have changed my life. It changed my perspective on things and it was so funny and enlightening it in a way contributed to helping me go from a Junior Manager in a Fortune 500 company to Head of Division with responsibility over 15 countries in an International Fortune 500 Company...a must read for any MBA or graduate diving into the corporate rat race and wanting to know - is anything possible? the answer is yes. Depends how you do it...A great read. Thanks!