291 of 350 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The quintessential barbell trade, August 14, 2009
Two kinds of people are likely to be attracted to this book: the common man in the street who wants to know how a company like Lehman blew up so spectacularly and the financial markets insider who wants to know the inside scoop.
If you are the former, this book is likely to please. It has all the elements of a pot boiler - the breathless accounts of secret meetings, mutiny in the boardroom and the heroic efforts of a few key guys trying valiantly to save the sinking ship. It has the relentless enemy and the arch villain. The only thing missing is the scantily clad woman draped over the hero's arm.
The other side of the barbell is the financial services insider who knows all the acronyms inside and out - CDO, CLO, RMBS, CMBS, SIV who is nevertheless looking for a straight account of what went wrong - like the classic 'smartest guys in the room' on the Enron disaster.
If you are on that side of the barbell, steer clear of this book. It offers no insight into anything, except perhaps the massive ego of a low level trader. By all accounts, Larry McDonald should never have been allowed to place the kind of bets he claims to have made. He was obviously a junior trader on a bond desk that used shareholder money to short everything in sight taking massive short CDS positions on all sorts of names, good and bad. The irony seems entirely lost to him, but his desk was part of the CDS problem - buying protection with no underlying holdings.
Like any gambler, he worships the analyst (Jane Castle) who gave him the hot tip - (Buy Delta, young man!) but is too dumb to acknowledge that Delta could easily have woundup another Eastern, or more to the point, another TWA. The 'hostile' bid from US Airways that made his profit, nearly killed US Airways... but I digress.
Larry does let his political persuasions come through. Clinton is an arch villain for letting Roberta Achtenberg loose on banks 'forcing' them to lend to the huddled masses. 'Easy mortgages were the invention of Bill Clinton's Democrats' he proclaims. Never mind that the CRA ran for over 12 years with nary a problem until the boneheads on Wall Street decided to get in on the action by securitizing it.
Perhaps the most telling passage comes in the tail end of the book and summarizes it quite well:
"All my life, I've been a laissez-faire Ronald Reagan / Margaret Thatcher capitalist, swearing by the market, taking the risks and the devil take the hindmost. But this one time, I was looking for a Givernment rescue and I wasn't going to get it"
This one time. When my stock value is at stake, the principles I held all my life just vaporized. Hank Paulson should have cared more about my stock options in Lehman. That son-of-a-bitch was making an example out of Lehman with *MY* money.
This book is a lousy excuse for a tell-all or even a straight accounting of the events leading up to Lehman;s demise. 'When Genius Failed' this ain't.
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109 of 141 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How corporate ethics can fail and a cautionary tale!, July 21, 2009
The collapse of Lehman Brothers is seen as the pivotal event that led to the economic collapse of 2008 and much press has been devoted to the exact chronology of how Lehman came to fail. But it takes inside knowledge to really get into the corporate psychology, culture and the psyche of the employees and Larry McDonald is that person. A farmer Vice President at Lehman, McDonald has the knowledge and insight to know what led Lehman to take the actions that ultimately led to its demise and McDonald repeats quite convincingly here his central premise as to what led to the collapse; that it wasn't a large number employees, but only eight, including CEO Richard Fuld. It was the investment strategy of this small coterie of employees that overextended Lehman's holdings of credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations and derivatives that ultimately led to Lehman's desperate need to de-leverage and quickly seek an infusion of capital. McDonald paints a portrait of detached and distant senior executives who created an almost separate lair at Lehman's headquarters that only served to increase their detachment. In turn these leaders inculcated a culture of relentless demand for results led employees to take greater risks and in turn fostered a culture of greed.
McDonald's tale of `mission creep' when it comes to declining ethics is a familiar tale whether it is WorldCom, Enron or Lehman. But at times his premise seems a bit conflicted: if the truly destructive forces at Lehman were limited to these eight employees alone then why focus on the broader culture of declining ethics? Weren't those declining ethics equally responsible for Lehman's collapse? Can someone so close to the situation really be objective in analysis and conclusions? McDonald certainly does seem to have done his homework on the research and there are some genuine bombshells in here, especially the meeting between then CEO Richard Fuld and then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson regarding Lehman's de-leveraging. The upshot of the meeting was Fuld sharply criticized Paulson both personally and professionally, and McDonald posits that it was this interchange that likely led to Paulson's decision not to intervene to save Lehman Brothers. Given recent developments with Paulson regarding Merrill Lynch's shotgun marriage with Bank of America the veracity of McDonald's story seems to be increasingly true.
While there is a flood of books on the economic collapse, the best ones more narrowly focus on specific players as it's easier to follow microeconomic stories than macroeconomic ones. "A Colossal Failure..." follows in the tradition of great books such as "Barbarians at the Gate" about the takeover of RJR Nabisco or "The Smartest Guys in the Room" about the Enron fiasco. "A Colossal Failure..." is very well written and well researched, but it is also a chilling look into not only McDonalds psyche, but those of his compatriots on Wall Street. No one wakes up in the morning plotting how to destroy their company that day, but the erosion of ethics is so gradual that many wind up doing things they ultimately come to regret dearly. The damage to their resumes, to their credibility, and their ability to find a new job is often irreversible. To varying degrees McDonald partially succeeds in his argument that it was the gang of eight, who he names in the book, which ultimately brought Lehman Brothers down. But to a larger degree it was many of the employees, himself included, who were the willing participants that changed to corporate culture to one of unbridled greed that ultimately led to the fall. "A Colossal Failure..." is at once a roman a clef and a cautionary tale to all of corporate America; this too could be you if you're not careful!
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