Portfolio author Randall Lane was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today to discuss his book THE ZEROES: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane. Here’s that great clip:
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Inside the Wall Street Insanity
MarketWatch has a review up for The Zeroes by Randall Lane. According to MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman:
Anybody who wants to understand Wall Street’s insanity should read this book.
Friedman also makes things easy for the casting director, should The Zeroes ever make it to Hollywood:
If Hollywood makes a movie out of “The Zeroes,” I could definitely see Nicolas Cage playing Lane. Sean Penn, resurrecting the character from “U-Turn” (which itself resembled a grown-up version of Jeff Spicoli from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”), could perfectly capture Dykstra.
Check out Friedman’s video interview with the author on what went wrong on Wall Street in the last decade:
[from online.wsj.com]
Explaining Bonuses on the Back of a Napkin
In the tradition of his excellent health care napkins, Unfolding the Napkin and The Back of the Napkin author Dan Roam explains yet another complicated topic with simple pictures. Check out his take on the Wall Street bonus system. I think I finally get it now…
[Original post from bnet]
Lehman Brothers–a Retrospective
In honor of the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the former vice chairman of the firm, Barbara Byrne, recounted the experience of living through the final days of the 164-year-old firm in a recent interview with Fortune. Commenting on the consequences of the Lehman bankruptcy, Byrne said:
I think that allowing the failure of a major systemic and important institution actually created massive systemic risk. Many people would argue there was a lot of risk in the system, which there was already, but do you pop a balloon or do you let air out of a balloon?
Some may disagree with Byrne and think the government did the right thing by allowing the firm to fail, but regardless, it’s apparent that Lehman’s collapse caused a major panic through the market that shook investor confidence and exacerbated the pain of the recession. Several articles and a few books have been published since the event in an attempt to examine what went wrong (Portfolio will publish a book on the history of Lehman next year), but it may be years before we fully understand the why and how of Lehman’s failure, not to mention the impact it had on the economy at large.
We do know that Lehman’s bankruptcy was not only stunning in the way it was carried out but also in the fact that Lehman Brothers was one of the oldest and most respected firms on Wall Street. Founded in 1844 by Henry Lehman, a Jewish immigrant from Bavaria, Lehman Brothers would go on to finance some of the most important endeavors in American history–from radio to retail, automobiles to airplanes–thus distinguishing itself as a smart, innovative investment firm. This storied history may have gotten a little lost, however, in the milieu of bad investments and shaky business practices of the last couple of decades during which Lehman got caught up in the make-a-dollar-now-worry-about-it-later mentality. In hindsight, it’s easy to point fingers (at CEO Dick Fuld, capitalism, Wall Street, greedy bankers, government regulation), but, as we’ve learned, the blame game only gets you so far after the fact.
A New Book from Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis is perhaps best known for writing Liar’s Poker, which is based on his experience working on Wall Street in the 1980′s. He’s since wrote other successful books, including Moneyball and The Blind Side.
Lewis was on The Daily Show last week to discuss his latest book, Home Game – in which he tackles fatherhood. Here’s that very funny clip:
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