Tectonic Shifts in Financial Markets: People, Policies, and Institutions

by Henry Kaufman

In this wide-ranging book, Wall Street legend Henry Kaufman recounts the events surrounding the catastrophic collapse of Lehman Brothers from his then vantage point on the board.  He explains how, ironically, the Federal Reserve’s shortcomings contributed to its growing power. And he argues that Dodd-Frank – by sanctioning rather than truly addressing the too‐big‐to‐fail dilemma – squandered a rare opportunity for essential reform.

Whether sparring in print with Citicorp’s mercurial Walter Wriston, consulting with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, spurning a deal with junk bond king Michael Milken, or reflecting on his long-time friend Paul Volcker, Kaufman brings readers inside post-war Wall Street. Looking ahead, he dissects major national and global trends and the likely future of credit markets, financial institutions, and leading economies.



As we search for bearings in the wake of the 2008 financial debacle, Henry Kaufman offers sage andpenetrating analysis of today’s superheated and – he argues – still‐fragile financial world.

Genres: Economics, Finance

180 pages, Hardcover

Published February 27, 2017

Reviews

[Romanas Wolfsborg]

One of the Wall Street legends, Henry Kaufman, also known by the nickname ”Dr. Doom”, which is a bit odd, since it was not that he predicted a major financial crash, but the opposite – he accurately predicted the beginning of one of the longest bull markets in the 80s. (In regards to predictions, a single accurate prediction says nothing. Actually, nobody can predict those things. Good risk management is a time much better spent than playing the predictions game.)

In 1960, the US non-financial debt totaled $1.1 trillion. It is now around $6 trillion. You don’t have to be titled as Dr. Doom to be able to imagine what kind of the next tectonic shift in financial markets is about to happen. It might come the next year or it might take another ten years until the bear would decide to leave the den. The thrill is that nobody knows. So how to adress the problem? As Kaufman points out, we have history, however, our ignorance prevents us from using it right. My favorite chapter in this book is about the present value of financial history and the author's reasoning on how to approach the two main and important dimensions of history.

The book is a short history book of the financial crises of the last century and the latest crisis of the 2008, the operations of the Federal Reserve system, the prominent people Kaufman met, including Margaret Thatcher, presidents, mixed with the autobiographical details. The author has some very good points about how to approach financial history, reliance on the quantitative techniques and data which per se can steer us to unimaginable quagmire.

[Luc]

Henry Kaufman, former chief economist at Salomon Brothers in the 1970s and 1980s wrote a very good account about the evolution of the financial industry from the end of the Bretton Woods era up to present days. Kaufman make a good case about the risks that the financial industry in the industrialized countries took with deregulation and extreme financial concentration since the end of the 1970s. For the author, the international financial system will never be the same after the world financial crisis of 2007-2009. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in October 2008 marked the end of an era.

[Chaitanya Yaramada]

Informative but a very dry read!

[Abhishek Mandal]

Just ignore this book.
It's informative, but it's not something that would be useful to you.
Totally unnecessary.

[Mills College Library]

332 K213 2016