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A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers (CD)

By: Lawrence G. Mcdonald (Author) and Patrick Robinson (Author)

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Review

"Reading...A COLOSSAL FAILURE OF COMMON SENSE, one might be tempted to think that Lehman's bankruptcy, whatever its supposed effects on the wider world, was too mild a punishment for the firm's management. The book is, in part, a brief against Lehman's former chief executive, Richard Fuld, who appears by turns ­arrogant, stupid, greedy, reckless and clueless.

Publisher's note

They're the trillion-dollar questions of the financial crisis: What the hell 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 Lehman former vice president gives us the straight answers-right from the belly of the beast.
Larry McDonald, a Wall Street insider, reveals, at last, the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has ever done. "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense" 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.
McDonald's gripping story of Lehman's death spiral is a modern-day thriller, studded with remarkable revelations:
- The collapse of Lehman Brothers was no surprise and didn't have to happen. In fact, CEO Richard Fuld and President Joe Gregory were confronted with warnings on three occasions-starting as far back as 2005-that the real estate market, on which they were betting the ranch, was teetering toward collapse.
- The secret dinner that plotted a coup against Lehman's top executives.
- The Paulson-Fuld blowup that left the treasury secretary furious that his office had been disrespected.
- The final call to President George W. Bush made by his own cousin, Lehman partner George Walker IV, that was not accepted by the president.
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.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Annotation

Of all the astonishing and unfathomable collapses which have wracked the economic landscape in the first decade of the 21st century, perhaps none has been so baffling as that of Lehman Brothers, a 150-year-old financial institution which seemingly evaporated overnight and left an expanding circle of devastation in its wake. Lawrence G. McDonald, a former vice president of the company, attempts to explain the logistics of the disintegration, eventually tracing the trail of mistakes to a single ill-conceived home loan near San Francisco. McDonald is scathing in his criticism of the former leaders of the firm, whom he claims could have applied a tourniquet to the damage at any time, but instead chose to continue recklessly pursuing their flawed strategies of endless expansion at all costs. With an assist from Patrick Robinson, co-author of the riveting LONE SURVIVOR, McDonald crafts a terrifying portrait of how the greed and arrogant ambition of a privileged few has permanently damaged the chances of prosperity for millions of people around the world.

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