A Colossal Failure of Common Sense by Lawrence G Mcdonald

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense by Lawrence G Mcdonald

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.

G. LAWRENCE Pangea Capital Management LP's managing director is McDONALD. Until 2008, he worked at Lehman Brothers as vice president of distressed debt and convertible securities trading. He was one of Lehman's most consistently profitable traders and oversaw a highly successful joint venture between the firm's fixed income and equity departments. McDonald is also the cofounder of Convertbond.com, which was selected Best of the Web by Forbes magazine from 2000 to 2003, noting it as the Web's top source for convertible securities information, valuation, and news.

With the help of the United States, PATRICK ROBINSON wrote Lone Survivor. Marcus Luttrell, a Navy SEAL.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307588333
ISBN 10	0307588335
Title	A Colossal Failure of Common Sense
Author	Lawrence G Mcdonald
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Crown Business
Year published	2009-08-11
Number of pages	351
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.