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May 01, 2010

Eric_W rated it:

Lawrence MacDonald, a former VP at Lehman Brothers, recounts his rise within the broker profession and the precipitous fall of Lehman brothers which he blames almost entirely on just eight people, including Richard Fuld. They were the ones promoting over-leverage and investment in risky investments such as CDOs and CDS's

It's interesting, because intentionally or not, we are given insight into MacDonald's mind and watch the erosion of ethics of his own behavior and that of those arou More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 07, 2011

Dave rated it:

This book was riveting all the way through. I randomly started reading this book and couldn't put it down. I'm a pastor, and in general read mostly pastoral and ministry related books, but I do enjoy reading outside the field too. I'm not really a financial guy and yet this book brought me right in to the story of Wall Street. I think that's where it shines. Colossal Failure tells a story. A story about a driven man (McDonald) and his passion for the world of Wall Street. Along the way he chroni More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 03, 2011

Brian rated it:

A fascinating book when understood from the perspective of the author, an upper-level manager at Lehman Brothers. McDonald opens the book by blaming HUD under Clinton for forcing banks to lend to middle- and lower-income families to increase home ownership. His tirades wrap up the book by blaming the Fed and Treasury under Bush for not taking additional actions to save Lehman Brothers. However, the other 80% of the book sings the praises of investment bankers, the brilliance endowed within, t More...

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Mar 20, 2011

Robert J. rated it:

Part autobiography, part analysis of the collapse of the Lehman Brothers that led to the collapse of the US economy, this book might serve better as an examination of one person, Lawrence G. McDonald, and his pathologies. McDonald was a broker for Lehman and might be a poster child for cleaning out the whole lot of Wall Street brokers. He's sexist ("The last good decision your wife made was to marry you"), racist (when people find out how bad adjustable rate mortgages are, he suggest More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 30, 2010

James rated it:

Too much of the book is spent puffing up the author,
yet one more wall street hooligan who thinks he's worth $1,000,000 plus a year just because he's so...
nothing really.

He claims to be an insider because he worked a couple of years as a trader, but he had no access to upper management either while working for the firm or when writing the book.

BUT, the book does have several fine points.

1. Yet one more example of how an incompetent corporate le More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 24, 2011

John rated it:

I really enjoyed reading this, certainly not because Mr. McDonald was a great writer, but it *is* a great story.

The negatives first.
• The author uses more cheesy metaphors than a southern used car salesman (see what i did there?). Sometimes they work, sometimes not, but it doesn't matter because he'll try again in 2 pages.
• The book starts a bit slow, but I think the author wanted to establish his credibility, which is fine, but it didn't flow as well as the late More...

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Jul 31, 2011

Vandita rated it:

A disappointing read especially given that it claims to give the 'the inside story' of Lehman's failure. I am not sure if what irritated me most about the book - it's style where the author tells us everything about himself, where he grew up, which college he went to , what he did before he ended up in Lehman's trading desk (I didn't buy an autobiography of a trader, did I?), or the fact that he writes on the main cast of characters and events/ quotes when he was not even present or in fact, did More...

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Dec 06, 2010

Mark rated it:

1. If you are a member of a group, that group counts as one and only one adviser. If you want many advisers, they can't be members of the same team. It doesn't work. You get groupthink and exile of naysayers.

2. "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" is the eternal financial fallacy. X has never happened so we don't need to worry about it happening. In this case, real estate has never fallen more than a small percentage so it never will. Regarding the status quo as self-explanatory is More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 05, 2011

Victor rated it:

Fascinating book. If I have one complaint, it is McDonald's ideological axe with (to paraphrase) $400,000/year Kmart cashiers, i.e., lower-middle and working-class mortgage borrowers. Statistics show that many of these people made payments faithfully as long as they could, only faltering when mortgage resets forced their backs to the wall. Those of us who are more reasonable and less elitist place blame on people who were flipping houses, or buying strings of properties as 'investments'. And let More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Apr 15, 2010

Sheppard rated it:

Nice easy business reading, if there is such an activity. This is a repeat of the never ending human "sheep" story. One particularly dominant sheep, Richard Fuld of Lehman Bros., leads all of the other banker sheep to the edge of the cliff while happily bleating until the very moment it's too late to turn back. It happened with Hitler and probably Atilla the Hunn. Should it be any less surprising with the banking industry? Glass Steagall should never have been repealed. My hero, More...

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Nov 06, 2011

Tara rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

2 comments like

Oct 06, 2011

Katherine rated it:

I read this right after reading "The Big Short." The Big Short does a much better job of explaining how the financial crisis happened and is better written; however, I found myself thoroughly engaged in this story. It's written by an insider, a VP at Lehman Brothers during the time the mortgage crisis and when Lehman Brothers went under. His story I thought was fascinating as well as his well documented story of how Lehman Brothers collapsed. Particularly compelling for me was that More...

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Sep 18, 2009

Darren rated it:

McDonald tells the story of his fight to achieve his goal of becoming a Wall Street Trader and describes the industry trends and legislative changes that would set the stage for the largest ever bankruptcy in the U.S. A self-described vulture, McDonald and his coworkers made billions of dollars (for Lehman, millions for themselves) by predicting when companies would fail (or at least tank). From this viewpoint, they could see the huge problems with issuing/trading subprime mortgages earlier than More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Oct 27, 2009

Preetee rated it:

I found this book an honest recount of events leading up to the demise of Lehman from an insider who was living the decisions taken at the top. It highlights the pitfalls for any organisation to be wary of especially at the height of a bubble. Corporate governance, risk management, oversight roles all were crucially missing and led to the unmistakable failure. What it also highlights is the different treatment given to the various actors of this crisis - what are the steps taken to ensure tha More...

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Nov 24, 2011

Erika rated it:

I enjoyed it. I particularly liked reading about the efforts the author went through to get to wall street. It gives some great perspective as to what was going on behind the scenes leading up to lehman's failure.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 21, 2009

Shaun rated it:

This was a good read and described how Lehman Brothers, an investment bank that has been around for over 150 years, collapsed and declared bankruptcy. It was mostly due to the two men at the top who stopped leading and did what they wanted to do, disregarding good lending practices and earning easy money. They took these bad practices to the extreme. It was quite similar to what happened at Enron and was totally avoidable, but due to the pride of the leader at the top, the company collapsed and More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Apr 05, 2011

Chelsi rated it:

I was so hooked. I learned more about financial crisis from reading this book than a whole semester in my College Now business class. Larry laid out the issues really well and it was not difficult to comprehend at all. This book helped me out BIG TIME on my final project. I finally understood what had brought down the giant investment bank that I once longed to work for after college. There is so much disturbing yet interesting insider information than cannot be found on Google.
This book d More...

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Aug 03, 2011

J. Joan added it

An interesting read coming from the perspective of one fixed income trader. It really helped to put into perspective Lehman's role in the world economy, and introduce some complex financial concepts in its simplest terms. By the end of the book, I really began to rethink the entire financial crisis of late 2008, wondering had Paulson acted differently, where might we all be now. I also did feel quite emotionally attached to the staff of Lehman, oddly, by the end of the book.

Overall a quick an More...

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May 03, 2011

Michael rated it:

The book gives a quite thorough account on the circumstances leading to the 2007 Wall Street crisis. It should have been a quarter of its length though. It becomes quite evident that the author and former pork chop salesman Lawrence G. McDonald was only a second rate trader and analyst and this book lives almost entirely from his recollection of the doings of his colleges and other Wall Street big shots. He never misses a chance to praise and to elaborate on their countless heroic feats. You nee More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 18, 2011

Robert rated it:

This book is interesting, but the author is a complete idiot. Not only does he fail to see that he and his brain-dead friends are a big part of the problem, but he has no comprehension of probabilities, a point made very obvious by the praise he heaps on his boss for falling for the gambler's fallacy---that a string of losses must be followed by a string of wins. No wonder our economy ended up in the toilet with idiots like this sucking all the money out of it. Dude, you hero was a moron who kno More...

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Mar 09, 2010

Amanda rated it:

If you're interested in trying to understand the collapse of Lehman Brothers and subprimes in general, this book gives a pretty interesting background without being too finance-heavy. Two things to know about the book-- the first half is focused on the author's life prior to Lehman, so it's more of a biography than a strict chronicle of events. Also, the story is very much told in the first person by an insider, so you get the distinct feeling that there are some built-in biases-- this is not a More...

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Feb 20, 2011

Jared rated it:

The author of this book is so irritatingly arrogant and self-aggrandizing that he loses all credibility. His ferocious attempts to constantly include himself so as to appear important and relevant to the story are distracting and unnecessary. I am embarrassed for him. It felt like one of the valets at the White House claiming to be an "insider" during the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Rather than let the incredible events during this period speak for themselves he inevitably tr More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 11, 2010

Michael rated it:

McDonald desperately wants this book to be an updated version of Michael Lewis' "Liar's Poker", but even with help from a ghost writer, he's not even in the same league. Unfortunately, McDonald feels compelled to include all sorts of biographical details that will bore almost everyone who doesn't work on Wall Street.

It doesn't mean the book isn't worth reading. If you are really interested in an insider's view of the events leading up to the economic meltdown, this is a dece More...

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Nov 24, 2010

Brian rated it:

An interesting book that explains the 2008 financial collapse quite well, but from perhaps too limited a perspective. McDonald's viewpoint is as a Lehman insider, and he sees the collapse through a somewhat narrow window. While the failure of Lehman Brother's rests squarely on the shoulders of its management, we should not forget that the beliefs that Lehman management held was not very unlike the beliefs held by most of the other investment banks on Wall Street.

The book begs the ques More...

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Aug 03, 2010

Leigh rated it:

An excellent audiobook which can be quite suspenseful even tho you know the ending in advance.
I liked this best of the 3 I've read so far about the Financial Crisis that came to a head in 2008. Others are House of Cards and Too Big to Fail. I may have liked this best due to its being written by someone who is neither super high up in the company, nor a professional writer. Rather Lawrence G. McDonald was a trader and thus a true insider at Lehman. Has some wonderful human interest stori More...

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Feb 28, 2010

Savinipop added it

I just read the prologue of this book, and I'm sick of it already. In the first three pages he actually posses the idea that the feds decision to let Lehman Brothers fail may have been because of a personal beef between Lehman’s CEO and Paulson early that year. Then he says it might have been Bushes fault for not allowing Lehman to file chapter 11. Then he spends the next few pages blaming Bill Clinton for repealing Glass-Steagall(Which is partially true) Funny how he hasn’t pointed the finger More...

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Aug 28, 2009

Michele rated it:

I thought this would be a scholarly book, but it was the personal story of a Lehman trader in the distressed properties section. The author's personal history of striving to make it in NYC on Wall Street was kind of pathetic, but the inside stuff regarding the amazing conversion of Lehman Brothers from a successful and respected business to a criminal enterprise was fascinating, as was the story behind the bankruptcy, which apparently had as much to do with the relationship between Richard Fuld More...

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Aug 31, 2009

Jay rated it:

"A Colossal Failure of Common Sense," though seen thru the lens of Lehman Bros. excesses, a great read for those who believe Capitalism need not = greed. Getting beyond the narrator's narcissism and only adequate writing, is well worth the effort. Makes an upside down value system of celebrity models and multi-million athletes seem quaint. Making $ billions off of puffed up securities based on mortgages sold to railroaded poor, and then when the house of cards falls, blaming the po More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 03, 2011

Randy rated it:

I loved the way the author, Mr. McDonald, weaved together the story of his life - he didn't follow the traditional path to Wall Street - and the story of the fall of Lehman Brothers and the making of the financial crisis that, I think, changed the course of history.

Mr. McDonald's view is not one-dimensional, in that he sees there were many causes for Lehaman's collapse. (Though I wonder is his dislike of Lehman's chairman is a bit over the top.)

Also, though sometimes I ha More...

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Aug 18, 2009

Joe rated it:

A good read, well written, it tells Mr. Mcdonald's personal story inside the Lehman Brothers story, inside the financial collapse story.
How we got into the mess and how a few selfish morons at the top of Lehman's destroyed a great financial institution and contributed mightily to the meltdown of the world financial system is explained in a very enthralling tale. It shows how ineptitude at the top can sabotage genius and hard work below.

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