A Colossal Failure of Common Sense
The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers
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Narrated by:
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Erik Davies
About this listen
One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been answered until now: What happened at Lehman Brothers and why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Lehman Brothers Vice President gives us the straight answers - right from the belly of the beast. In A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, Larry McDonald, a Wall Street insider, reveals, the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has ever done. The book is couched in the very human story of Larry McDonald’s Horatio Alger-like rise from a Massachusetts “gateway to nowhere” housing project to the New York headquarters of Lehman Brothers, home of one of the world’s toughest trading floors.
We get a close-up view of the participants in the Lehman collapse, especially those who saw it coming with a helpless, angry certainty. We meet the Brahmins at the top, whose reckless, pedal-to-the-floor addiction to growth finally demolished the nation’ s oldest investment bank. The Wall Street we encounter here is a ruthless place, where brilliance, arrogance, ambition, greed, capacity for relentless toil, and other human traits combine in a potent mix that sometimes fuels prosperity but occasionally destroys it.
The full significance of the dissolution of Lehman Brothers remains to be measured. But this much is certain: It was a devastating blow to America’s - and the world’s - financial system. And it need not have happened. This is the story of why it did.
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Valiant effort but lacking analytic horsepower...
- By ND on 01-10-11
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A First-Class Catastrophe
- The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History
- By: Diana B. Henriques
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Monday, October 19, 1987, was by far the worst day in Wall Street history. The market fell 22.6% - almost twice as bad as the worst day of 1929 - equal to a one-day loss of nearly 5,000 points today. Black Monday was more than seven years in the making and threatened nearly every US financial institution. Drawing on superlative archival research and dozens of original interviews, Diana B. Henriques weaves a tale of missed opportunities, market delusions, and destructive actions.
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Financial History Rhymes
- By David Larson on 10-07-17
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Conspiracy of Fools
- A True Story
- By: Kurt Eichenwald
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 30 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Say the name 'Enron' and most people believe they've heard all about the story that imperiled a presidency, destroyed a marketplace, and changed Washington and Wall Street forever. But in the hands of Kurt Eichenwald, the players we think we know and the business practices we think have been exposed are transformed into entirely new, and entirely gripping, material.
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Great Story
- By Adam M Pokorski on 06-06-06
By: Kurt Eichenwald
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Tap Dancing to Work
- Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966–2012: A Fortune Magazine Book
- By: Carol J. Loomis
- Narrated by: Susan Boyce, Barry Press
- Length: 17 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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When Carol Loomis first mentioned a little-known Omaha hedge-fund manager in a 1966 Fortune article, she didn’t dream that Warren Buffett would one day be considered the world’s greatest investor - nor that she and Buffett would become close personal friends. Now Loomis has collected and updated the best Buffett articles Fortune published between 1966 and 2012, including thirteen cover stories and a dozen pieces authored by Buffett himself. Loomis has provided commentary about each major article that supplies context and her own informed point of view.
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A collection of finance articles - not a biography
- By Gerardo A Dada on 08-23-13
By: Carol J. Loomis
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Good for the Money
- My Fight to Pay Back America
- By: Bob Benmosche
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2009, at the peak of the financial crisis, AIG - the American insurance behemoth - was sinking fast. It was the peg upon which the nation hung its ire and resentment during the financial crisis: the pinnacle of Wall Street arrogance and greed. When Bob Benmosche climbed aboard as CEO, it was widely assumed that he would go down with his ship. In mere months, he turned things around, pulling AIG from the brink of financial collapse and restoring its profitability.
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Worthwhile, informative, and just short of inspiring
- By Preston on 11-17-21
By: Bob Benmosche
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The Zeroes
- My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane
- By: Randall Lane
- Narrated by: Randall Lane
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Magazine entrepreneur Randall Lane had a prime seat at Wall Street's biggest greed fest. The Zeroes is a memoir about the excesses and bad behavior of an outsider who got pulled into a crazy, self-contained world.
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A very entertaining tale
- By andy on 11-03-13
By: Randall Lane
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King of Capital
- The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone
- By: John E. Morris, David Carey
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The financial establishment---banks and investment bankers, such as Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Lehman, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley---were the cowboys, recklessly assuming risks, leveraging up to astronomical levels, and driving the economy to the brink of disaster.
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Great Story Ruined by Monotone Reading
- By Marc on 04-23-13
By: John E. Morris, and others
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Barbarians at the Gate
- The Fall of RJR Nabisco
- By: Bryan Burrough, John Helyar
- Narrated by: Bryan Burrough, John Helyar
- Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins
- Abridged
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Barbarians at the Gate has been called one of the most influential business books of all time, the definitive account of the largest takeover in Wall Street history. Bryan Burrough's and John Helyer's account of the frenzy that overtook Wall Street in October and November of 1988 gives us not only a detailed look at financial operations at the highest levels but a richly textured social history of wealth in the twilight of the Reagan era.
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Abridged and Poorly Read
- By Jake on 01-24-13
By: Bryan Burrough, and others
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How Money Became Dangerous
- The Inside Story of Our Turbulent Relationship with Modern Finance
- By: Christopher Varelas, Dan Stone
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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From a veteran of the trade, a provocative and entertaining voyage into the turbulent heart of modern money that sheds new light on the rise of our threatening and complicated financial system, how money became our adversary, and why finding a new course is crucial to a healthy society.
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Must read
- By Craig M. Stratton on 02-08-20
By: Christopher Varelas, and others
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The Bank That Lived a Little
- Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market
- By: Philip Augar
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on unparalleled access to those involved, and told with compelling pace and drama, The Bank That Lived a Little is the story of one of the most familiar names on the British high street since Big Bang in 1986. Philip Augar describes in detail three decades of boardroom intrigue driven by ruthless ambition, grandiose dreams and a desire for wealth. It is a tale of a struggle for long-term supremacy between rival strategies and their adherents.
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Global superstar bankers under light-touch gov
- By Philo on 12-21-18
By: Philip Augar
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Street Freak
- Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers
- By: Jared Dillian
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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When Jared Dillian joined Lehman Brothers in 2001, he fulfilled a life-long dream to make it on Wall Street - but he had no idea how close to the edge the job would take him. Like Michael Lewis' classic Liar's Poker, Jared Dillian's Street Freak takes listeners behind the scenes of the legendary Lehman Brothers, exposing its outrageous and often hilarious corporate culture.
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Performance overwrought, drama swamps meaning
- By Philo on 02-10-17
By: Jared Dillian
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A History of the United States in Five Crashes
- Stock Market Meltdowns That Defined a Nation
- By: Scott Nations
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this absorbing, smart, and accessible blend of economic and cultural history in the vein of the works of Michael Lewis and Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial executive and CNBC contributor examines the five most significant stock market crashes in the United States over the past century, revealing how they have defined the nation today.
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A solid telling of crucial history
- By Philo on 06-17-17
By: Scott Nations
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The author needs an outline or timeline
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Money Men
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When investigative journalist Dan McCrum first came across Wirecard, the hot new tech company that looked poised to challenge Silicon Valley, it all looked a little too good to be true: offices were sprouting up all over the world, and they were reporting runaway growth. In the space of a few short years, the company had come from nowhere to overtake industry giants like Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank on the stock market. As McCrum began to dig deeper, he encountered a story stranger and more compelling than he could have imagined.
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Interesting book but…
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The Informant
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From an award-winning New York Times investigative reporter comes an outrageous story of greed, corruption, and conspiracy, which left the FBI and Justice Department counting on the cooperation of one man.
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Excellent!
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By: Bethany McLean, and others
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The author needs an outline or timeline
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When investigative journalist Dan McCrum first came across Wirecard, the hot new tech company that looked poised to challenge Silicon Valley, it all looked a little too good to be true: offices were sprouting up all over the world, and they were reporting runaway growth. In the space of a few short years, the company had come from nowhere to overtake industry giants like Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank on the stock market. As McCrum began to dig deeper, he encountered a story stranger and more compelling than he could have imagined.
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Interesting book but…
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The Smartest Guys in the Room
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The definitive volume on Enron's amazing rise and scandalous fall, from an award-winning team of Fortune investigative reporters.
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House of Cards
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In March 2008, Bear Stearns, a swashbuckling 84-year-old financial institution, was forced to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase for an outrageously low price in a deal brokered by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who was desperately trying to prevent the impending catastrophic market crash. But mere months before, an industry-wide boom had "the Bear" clocking a record high stock price. How did a giant investment bank with $18 billion in cash on hand disappear in a mere 10 days?
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Riveting "Read" About Credit Crisis
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Dark Towers
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In Dark Towers, award-winning journalist David Enrich reveals the truth about Deutsche Bank and its epic path of devastation. Tracing the bank's history back to its propping up of a default-prone American developer in the 1880s, helping the Nazis build Auschwitz, and wooing Eastern Bloc authoritarians, he shows how in the 1990s, via a succession of hard-charging executives, Deutsche made a fateful decision to pursue Wall Street riches, often at the expense of ethics and the law.
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Trying really hard to pay attention
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Too Big to Fail
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A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true, behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami.
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Best Book About Meltdown
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Money and Power
- How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World
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From the best-selling, prize-winning author of The Last Tycoons and House of Cards, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world. William D. Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable - and so powerful.
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Much better than expected
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The Fund
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Story
Ray Dalio does not want you to listen to this audiobook. Late last year, when the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund on the planet, announced that he was stepping down from the company he started out of his apartment nearly 50 years ago, the news made headlines around the world. Dalio cultivated an aura of international admiration and fame thanks to his company’s eye-popping success, coupled with a mystique he encouraged with frequent media appearances, celebrity hobnobbing, and his bestselling book, Principles.
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Best finance book I've read in years
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The Greatest Trade Ever
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In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized something few others suspected - that the housing market and the value of subprime mortgages were grossly inflated and headed for a major fall. Paulson's background was in mergers and acquisitions, however, and he knew little about real estate or how to wager against housing. He had spent a career as an also-ran on Wall Street. But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark. He just wasn't sure how to do it. Colleagues at investment banks scoffed at him and investors dismissed him.
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Better Books Now Available
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The Bond King
- How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All
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- Unabridged
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Before Bill Gross was known among investors as the Bond King, he was a gambler. In 1966, a fresh college grad, he went to Vegas armed with his net worth ($200) and a knack for counting cards. Ten thousand dollars and countless casino bans later, he was hooked, so he enrolled in business school. The Bond King is the story of how that whiz kid made American finance his casino.
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Being a good writer does not make you a good narrator
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The Taking of Getty Oil
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A true story of family, ambition, and greed in the most bitter and controversial takeover struggle in business history. The high-stakes fight between Texaco and Pennzoil to take over Getty Oil is a startling and intriguing case involving family infighting, courtroom drama, and corporate intrigue that ends in bankruptcy and the largest damages award in American history.
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Sibling contention, intrique, courtroom drama
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The Lost Bank
- The Story of Washington Mutual - The Biggest Bank Failure in American History
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- Unabridged
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Story
During the most dizzying days of the financial crisis, Washington Mutual, a bank with hundreds of billions of dollars in its coffers, suffered a crippling bank run. The story of its final, brutal collapse in the autumn of 2008, and its controversial sale to JPMorgan Chase, is an astonishing account of how one bank lost itself to greed and mismanagement, and how the entire financial industry - and even the entire country - lost its way as well. Kirsten Grind’s The Lost Bank is a magisterial and gripping account of these events.
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Sad and Angry by Turn
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The Spider Network
- The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History
- By: David Enrich
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In 2006, an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the world's largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor - the London interbank offered rate, which determines the interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide - was set daily by a small group of easily manipulated functionaries, and that they could reap huge profits by nudging it to suit their trading portfolios.
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Does anyone "proofread" the audio book?
- By Gracie on 07-04-18
By: David Enrich
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The Trading Game
- A Confession
- By: Gary Stevenson
- Narrated by: Gary Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken soccer balls on the run-down streets of East London, Gary Stevenson dreamed of something bigger. As luck would have it, he was good at numbers. At the London School of Economics, wearing tracksuits and sneakers, Stevenson shocked his posh classmates by winning a competition called “The Trading Game.” The prize? A golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader at Citibank.
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Great substance and storytelling
- By Daniel Tunkelang on 03-07-24
By: Gary Stevenson
What listeners say about A Colossal Failure of Common Sense
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- robert
- 09-22-09
Entertaining, but not factual
Author is self-absored and was clearly a low-level trader at Lehman, so a lot of what is proffered is hearsay. Also, I really didn't care to know about his life story in the first 3 chapters - irrelevant and self-serving, not to mention poorly written. If you like hearing lots of dirt, regardless of source or validity, this might work for you. Forthcoming books and audio on Lehman's collapse will have far more credibility - I hope.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Rahul Goswami
- 01-10-17
Great understanding of Wall Street
The way stories should be narrated. Really good book. Hope the author writes more books
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Great book. Well read.
Listened to it many times. Well worth it. I will buy this book in print also.
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- John M. Fitzgerald
- 06-09-22
What History tells Us!
Our evolution continues, but just as in sports that this author loves, or the comfort of our society for the well to do, the idea if free capitalism is an illusion. Rules, laws, verification that those rules are beneficial is critical. The referees are what make the game work. These pure capitalism guys, libertarian thinkers such as Paulson are the problem. Dinosaurs whose age is passed.
The test will be how Covid rescue will compare to Wall Street rescue, money to the people versus to Wall Street, I am optimistic this rescue will fair better!!!
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Overall
- Wade
- 08-09-09
Good read but lacking in philosophical learning
This book was a personal and impassioned account of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
After a short explanation of how the author began his career at the firm he spins a fascinating yarn of brilliant and powerful people who saw the iceberg coming, but are unable to take the controls in time to save the ship.
The author on the one hand celebrates what great minds can accomplish in an unregulated 'free market' system while at the same time being shocked at the destruction such power can have when inevitable human flaws take their toll. It is the author's bafflement with the two sides of the same coin that the reader is left with.
While this book will not be the definitive history on the collapse on Lehman Brothers, it was a fascinating insiders look to the world of high finance. I was riveted until the end and would recommend it.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Peanut
- 05-07-24
Great story with enjoyable background
This story is required listening to understand the hubris of 2008 financial crisis and the people behind it.
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- Aubrey
- 08-21-24
A Supplement to Lewis's "The Big Short"
I don't usually write reviews but as book that is neither particularly good or bad, I thought I had to write something. At first was turned off by the tone of the author who does not hide his "Wall Street Apologist" stance but if you're a politically neutral enough person, as I like to think I am, you can appreciate the wisdom of this first hand account of the crisis from someone who was there. When historians compile the authoritative record of "what happened" in the years leading to 2008, this book will have a place in that narrative. Despite it covering the same topics and not being as well written as "The Big Short," it has a lot of personality and is rather entertaining.
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- Kenneth
- 05-21-13
Excellent book with some tips on how to hustle!
Would you listen to A Colossal Failure of Common Sense again? Why?
I am writing this review after my second time listening to the audio book. My first listen was about 6 months ago. I consider this book an entertaining and educational experience.
What did you like best about this story?
The detail about some of the big trades that Larry and his group undertook while at Lehman. Larry's experiences trying to get into Wall Street were well worth the listen on those merits alone.
What does Erik Davies bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The attitude of the author comes through clearly. It was easy to follow along and the actor's voice was easy on the ears.
Any additional comments?
This book is more about the author's experiences. Lehman serves as a back drop until the final chapters of the book. This book gives you the downfall of Lehman but Larry's biography would do well in motivational seminars. This book is great for investing nuts and financial history buffs.
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- Roger
- 07-24-10
Two Books in One
This book is pretty book. It comes in 2 audio files. The 2nd is the story of the Lehman collapse. The first is the author's life story. If you just care about Lehman, then skip to the second file. You will miss the connection to a couple of the author's friends, but the rest of the story is complete.
The first audio file is not too bad either. But it is an entirely different story.
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- Arun Aggarwal
- 08-31-23
leverage works both ways . be flexible is the lesson . great and risk story.
Greatest story about greed and risk .
leverage works both ways .
one needs to be flexible.
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