On March 5, 2008, at 10:15 A.M., a hedge fund manager in Florida
wrote a post on his investing advice Web site that included a
startling statement about Bear Stearns & Co., the nation's
fifth-largest investment bank: "In my book, they are insolvent."
This seemed a bold and risky statement. Bear Stearns was about to
announce profits of $115 million for the first quarter of 2008, had
$17.3 billion in cash on hand, and, as the company incessantly
boasted, had been a colossally profitable enterprise in the
eighty-five years since its founding.
Ten days later, Bear Stearns no longer existed, and the calamitous
financial meltdown of 2008 had begun.
How this happened - and why - is the subject of William D. Cohan's
superb and shocking narrative that chronicles the fall of Bear
Stearns and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street. Bear
Stearns serves as the Rosetta Stone to explain how a combination of
risky bets, corporate political infighting, lax government
regulations and truly bad decision-making wrought havoc on the
world financial system.
Cohan's minute-by-minute account of those ten days in March makes
for breathless reading, as the bankers at Bear Stearns struggled to
contain the cascading series of events that would doom the firm,
and as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, New York Federal Reserve
Bank President Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke began to
realize the dire consequences for the world economy should the
company go bankrupt.
But HOUSE OF CARDS does more than recount the incredible panic of
the first stages of the financial meltdown. William D. Cohan
beautifully demonstrates" why" the seemingly invincible Wall Street
money machine came crashing down. He chronicles the swashbuckling
corporate culture of Bear Stearns, the strangely crucial role
competitive bridge played in the company's fortunes, the brutal
internecine battles for power, and the deadly combination of greed
and inattention that helps to explain why the company's leaders
ignored the danger lurking in Bear's huge positions in
mortgage-backed securities.
The author deftly portrays larger-than-life personalities like Ace
Greenberg, Bear Stearns' miserly, take-no-prisoners chairman whose
memos about re-using paper clips were legendary throughout Wall
Street; his profane, colorful rival and eventual heir Jimmy Cayne,
whose world-champion-level bridge skills were a lever in his
corporate rise and became a symbol of the reasons for the firm's
demise; and Jamie Dimon, the blunt-talking CEO of JPMorgan Chase,
who won the astonishing endgame of the saga (the Bear Stearns
headquarters alone were worth more than JP Morgan paid for the
whole company).
Cohan's explanation of seemingly arcane subjects like credit
default swaps and fixed- income securities is masterful and crystal
clear, but it is the high-end dish and powerful narrative drive
that makes HOUSE OF CARDS an irresistible read on a par with
classics such as LIAR'S POKER and BARBARIANS AT THE GATE.
Written with the novelistic verve and insider knowledge that made
THE LAST TYCOONS a bestseller and a prize-winner, HOUSE OF CARDS is
a chilling cautionary tale about greed, arrogance, and stupidity in
the financial world, and the consequences for all of us.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
