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Oct 17, 2011

Kemper rated it:

After I read Too Big to Fail, I just hadn’t gotten enough stories about greedy assholes so I figured I‘d read this to angry up my blood some more.

Actually, Too Big to Fail began after the Bear Stearns meltdown so even though there was some background there, I felt like I hadn’t gotten the whole story so I picked this up to try and complete the picture. The two books dovetail nicely with this one concentrating on the history of Bear Stearns and how it became the warning alarm that More...

5 comments like (15 people liked it)

Dec 25, 2011

Abhishek rated it:

While the Wall Street stories emerging post the subprime crisis are plentiful, reading about them at length may not always be captivating for the common man. And that is why each book is required to do something different, tell something that the previous book did not, fill in the gaps left in other stories. House of Cards tries to tell the complete tale of the rise and fall of Bear Sterns. And William Cohan does a pretty good job of it! The best part that I liked about the style of narration is More...

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Aug 11, 2011

lindsay rated it:

Interesting behind the scenes look at the collapse of Bear Stearns. But the thing that bothered me most about this book is the sensationalist subtitle about "hubris and wretched excess" on Wall Street. Because ultimately my takeaway from this book is that Wall Street was simply playing within the rules set up by the political and regulatory regimes that created a push towards homeownership and lessening credit standards to promote some sort of ideal world where everyone owns a home ( More...

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Jul 20, 2011

Frank rated it:

OK, I've definitely reached burnout on books about the financial crisis. I swear this is the last one.

This book recounts the rise and fall of Bear Stearns, once the fifth largest investment bank in America and now a mere rounding error on JP Morgan's balance sheet. It centers around Jimmy Cayne, the aggresive CEO of Bear Stearns for the 15 years preceding its collapse, and, importantly, a renowned international bridge champion who spent much of the firm's crucial days perfecting his More...

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Jan 16, 2011

Jim rated it:

This is the story of the great collapse on Wall Street of Bear Stearn, Lehman Bros., etc. It is about how they got into toxic subprime mortgages and then tried to repackage them for unsuspecting investors. While the big wigs made money and got rich, the investors often lost their money.
Additionally, there is a twist. Under the Clinton administration, there was a push to get mortgages for more people. The middle low and low income people. The administration lowered the standards for mo More...

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Jan 02, 2011

James rated it:

I've read at least 6 other books about the financial crisis of the last 3 years,
This is by far the worst of all.

The story starts on May 1st 1923,
and the author retells everything others have written and added a story of just about every cough, sneeze, and fart that occurred on Wall st since then.

This book clearly wasn't edited.
At 430 painfully long pages it just covers too much unimportant drivel.

About the only interesting thing he brought to at More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 30, 2010

Nathan rated it:

An interesting look at the rise and fall of bear stearns and its crazy management team. Hardly essential reading, as it doesn't really get into much of the broader implications of the fall, except as it predicted the lehman collapse and reaction. But Bear was such a seriously messed-up company that it was sort of fun to read (well, listen to. I had the book on tape for our move down to North Carolina). It is indeed a tale of hubris and wretched excess, and I found myself wanting to get a copy of More...

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Jun 08, 2010

Diane rated it:

I really loved this book. William Cohan does an excellent job of explaining the blow by blow, day by final day, dynamics that brought Bear Stearns to its knees. The reader learns through this story in wonderful clarity not only what too big to fail means but also what aspects of the financial system reach a point of no good options. The story as revealed is the best argument I've seen for regulating hedge funds, investment banks, and limiting the leverage which can accrue in whatever financia More...

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May 21, 2010

Laura rated it:

Still reading this, so here's my take so far. It literally took until about page 200 of the 450 page book to get into it. The beginning was so incredibly depressing, as it goes into extreme detail about the last two weeks of the life of the firm, particularly the painful last weekend of negotiating its sale to JPMorgan. Just about every page includes the sentence: "We're f--ked," or the equivalent. It's really hard to take -- maybe because a close family member lived through it and I c More...

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Oct 23, 2009

Cramer rated it:

Wow, what a book! Cohan takes you through the last 10 days of the investment banking giant Bear Stearns. Just before its collapse Bear was the fifth largest IB in the world but excessive greed, risky and arrogant CEOs and rumor brought this 85 year old institution down to its knees. This is a very gripping story, one that even if you are not familiar with many things financial, has been written such that all readers will comprehend what many opine as the starting of the world recession. Cohan h More...

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Sep 22, 2009

Mazola1 rated it:

George W. Bush reportedly said of a proposed fix for the financial meltdown of 20008, "Why am I supporting a program I don't understand?" Whatever you may think of Bush's intellect and leadership, his remark is right on target in what it reveals about the complexity of the problem and the difficulty of arriving at solutions. Along with most of his fellow Americans, including many of those working on Wall Street and those supposedly regulating Wall Street, Bush found himself bewil More...

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Apr 12, 2009

Kathleen rated it:

I have read a few books about the financial crisis and this may be the best so far. William Cohan details the downfall of Bear Stearns. The books is elegantly structured: he begins with the days just prior to the sale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan for dollars a share (this one year after it had traded as high as $175 per share). Cohan clearly had detailed inside information and his recounting of the meetings and conversations and opinions of the key players is fascinating to follow. This sec More...

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Apr 05, 2009

Evo rated it:

The first part of the book is a wonderful play by play of the final days of Bear Stearns in March 2008. The story of how a firm can go from solvent to out of business in 24 hours and the people who brought it down is both fascinating and frightening. The second part, which relates the rise of the firm over the last 80 years, is also interesting and juxtaposes nicely with the frenetic first part (the second part covers 80 years in the same number of pages that the first part covers a week). Th More...

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Jun 08, 2011

Owen rated it:

This book will shock and anger you, as it demonstrates that Wall Street is a shell game of people borrowing money from each other to buy things from each other. Having had some education in the subject, with folks from my grad program scheming to be quants on the Street during the heyday of the real estate boom, I was always leery of money for nothing. Seemed liked smoke and mirrors destined to fail. Of course I had no idea it would fall apart like it did (almost ruining the world economy, ea More...

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May 11, 2009

Daniel rated it:

A very inside view of the collapse of Bear Stearns told in a way that even a layman can understand. I really liked this book even if it felt at times that Cohan had gotten a little too close to his subjects. There is an awful lot of empathy for all the characters involved which may have been the sentiment at the time, but certainly isn't any longer. There is a very palpable sense of hopelessness that Cohan is able to capture. He is able to portray the main figures at Bear Stearns very much like More...

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Jan 08, 2011

Ben rated it:

If I say that the spread on a CDS is widening, do you know what that means? Do you know what a tranche is? How about mark-to-market? If you don’t, there will be some parts of this book that you don’t understand. Otherwise, this is an excellent book covering Bear Stearns, both their failure and complete history. Having previously read Bear-Trap: The Fall of Bear Stearns and the Panic of 2008 I couldn’t help but to compare the two. While this lacks the drama and emotionality of being an insi More...

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May 20, 2009

Gail rated it:

I thought this was an interesting, readable book about the culture at Bear Stearns. It gives a history of the company, as well as a description of the collapse. I never realized BS was on the verge of a crisis so many times in its past.

Ace Greenberg and Jimmy Cayne are described in detail. Sometimes they are good businessmen, often obnoxious (especially Cayne), and always bigger than life characters with some hugh egos.

The CEO's were often off playing competitive bridge More...

1 comment like

Mar 24, 2009

Katy rated it:

This book chronicles the fall of Bear Stearns. I read it because I thought it would be interesting to be behind the scenes in the Wall Street melt-down, and perhaps help me understand a little better just what happened to the economy. I have no business bckground, though, and was a little leary that it might be way over my head.

The author did a great job, in the first section, of giving a development-by-development accounting of the last ten days of Bear Stearns. Some of the informat More...

1 comment like

Apr 09, 2009

Neal rated it:

The collapse of one of the largest financial firms on Wall Street, Bear Stearns, precipitated the tumultuous economic downturn that has shaken up the world economy. William Cohan, a former investment banker, reconstructs the last week of Bear Stearns in thrilling detail through interviews with Bear Stearns bankers, Federal Reserve officers and other financial players.

Cohan devotes a considerable portion of the book to a 75-year history of Bear Stearns through profiles of three larger More...

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Apr 29, 2009

Elizabeth rated it:

Fascinating, horrifying, disgusting...an amazing glimpse inside the workings of Bear Stearns, its founders, its management, and the culture of the company that made it vulnerable to the series of things that ultimately caused its demise.

If this culture is typical, we have a lot of changing we must do on Wall Street. If, as I hope, these dysfunctional characters and their dysfunctional companies are not typical, then there is hope for a return to operating from a more solid foundatio More...

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Mar 11, 2010

Pat rated it:

The story of the rise and fall of Bear Stearns both during the final wretched weeks, which is where the book begins, and in macro, as the last 2/3 of the book recites the history of the institution from it's founding. You see detailed events unfold. You see how the personalities and the egos of the major players lead to catastrophic mistakes,clashes and outright neglect. What people like me, with very limited knowledge of the financial sector and how it operates,do not learn is much about how th More...

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Mar 29, 2010

Corinne rated it:

I knew nothing about how the financial collapse happened--at least not in detail of how the subprime mortgage securities were structured, and ultimately, how Bear Stearns and Lehman failed. I figured it had to be more than people taking out mortgages on houses they couldn't afford since the losses were so much greater than the value of the loans.

So I picked this up. The first 150 pages on the fall of Bear I found really interesting, if for no other reason than the author clearly ha More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 03, 2011

Brian rated it:

An excellent first book to read on the financial crisis, Cohan works through the major issues that led to the events of 2008-2009. Because he began writing it before the most significant events took place, there is an almost innocent quality to the writing, as if the federally-engineered rescue was the most important event. From today’s perspective it was merely a prologue.
The greatest benefit of this book is to explore in-depth a single event of the financial crisis. Most other More...

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Apr 27, 2009

Jim rated it:

In spite of having a business degree, I found the discussions of the liquidity crisis heavy going. The summary comments in which Alan Schwartz blames much of his firm's trouble on the cycle rise of commodity prices and the boom in debt instrument pricing in the face of a rise in infrastructure investment left me fairly mystified.

The redeeming featuring was that inside taste of life in investment banking, alternating from crass vulgarity to high flown financial statesmanship.
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Aug 14, 2010

S rated it:

This book was riveting, despite the fact that much of the lingo went right over my head. Written like a novel and crammed full of interesting real-life characters, I found this book utterly fascinating. Cohan has a knack for bringing what could've easily been a very dry subject to life.

When the American housing boom ended abruptly, the good times enjoyed by many of the Wall Street giants ended. One of these giants was Bear Stearns, a smallish investment bank (among other things) t More...

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Aug 18, 2009

getAbstract rated it:

Inside saga of Bear Stearns’s dazzling rise and dramatic, abrupt decline

The 2008 collapse of leading Wall Street investment house Bear Stearns showed the world just how rickety the global financial system had become. William D. Cohan tracks the firm’s dizzying rise and rapid collapse. His access to Bear Stearns insiders is the book’s strongest point. He offers a trenchant analysis of its decades-long rise and a definitive account of its final days. Cohan paints textured portraits of More...

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Aug 06, 2009

Michael rated it:

I didn't expect much from this book, and was pleasantly surprised. Well written and surprisingly compelling, Cohan focuses us on personality and people, but manages to sneak in lots of technical discussions of trades and banking relationships that are critical to the story. I'd actually recommend this book to most people in finance or banking, and anyone who wants to know more even after watching, say, Frontline's specials on the credit crisis (see "Inside the Meltdown, 10 trillion and co More...

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May 31, 2009

Jeffrey rated it:

Interesting and well researched book but a bit of a challenge due to how it's structured. The best and most riveting part is presented at the first 1/3rd of the book - the astonishingly rapid downfall of Bear Stearns. Then it flashes back to tell the story of the firm's rise and the history of the executives who led the company to its demise. During this part, it often seems slow and anticlimactic ... then about 2/3 of the way through the book comes back to the event leading up to Bear Stearns' More...

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Feb 11, 2012

Sabrine rated it:

Yet another sensational "Banker's Gone Wild" book. This book so chock full of unbelievable quotes from the Bear gang that the 99%-ers could quote this like the Bible for their cause.

It's a bit too long (my version was 579 pages) and I'm already immune to the big egos...all the same rhetoric to me.

We are the point when risk taking isn't viewed as bad behavior until you decide to sack the company beyond the point of the organization continuing as a going concern More...

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May 13, 2009

Dan rated it:

I found this to be a very frustrating and disappointing book. What I hoped for was a clear and cogent account of Bear Stearns’ history and role in the markets and what its rise and fall means in the context of the global economic collapse. Instead, Cohan’s book provides a painfully close up look at the inner workings of Bear’s upper management – sometimes in an hour-by-hour (if not minute-by-minute) account of key incidents, sometimes in more jerky/episodic rambles through the firm’s history.
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