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Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: Norton
Category: EBooks
List Price: $10.95
Buy New: $8.76
You Save: $2.19 (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  220 reviews
Sales Rank: 256
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 249
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.620973
ASIN: B000RO9VGS
Publication Date: April 10, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
It was wonderful to be young and working on Wall Street in the 1980s: never before had so many twenty-four-year-olds made so much money in so little time. After you learned the trick of it, all you had to do was pick up the phone and the money poured into your lap. In this shrewd and wickedly funny book, Michael Lewis describes an astonishing era and his own rake's progess through a powerful investment bank. From an unlikely beginning (art history at Princeton) he rose in two short years from Salomon Brothers trainee to Geek (the lowest form of life on the trading floor) to Big Swinging Dick, the most dangerous beast in the jungle, a bond salesman who could turn over millions of dollars worth of doubtful bonds with just one call.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 215 more reviews...
 Unbelievably Superb!!! A Masterpiece!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! October 4, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was so inspirational and superb it may have changed my life. It changed my perspective on things and it was so funny and enlightening it in a way contributed to helping me go from a Junior Manager in a Fortune 500 company to Head of Division with responsibility over 15 countries in an International Fortune 500 Company...a must read for any MBA or graduate diving into the corporate rat race and wanting to know - is anything possible? the answer is yes. Depends how you do it...A great read. Thanks!
it is enough September 23, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Michael Lewis describes his corner of wall street pretty well. The 1980s bond market. He continually contrasts the practice and culture of trading bonds with the dogma of Economics.
Over the course of the book it becomes easy to draw parallels between Wall Street and Feudal Europe. The Economists are like the Catholic Church in Feudal Europe. The Traders are like the Nobles and Royalty in Medieval Europe. The Job of the Nobles is to fight other Nobles over the right to control land, rent, and protection fees. The Job of the Church is to teach people who aren't Nobles that they should do what the Nobles tell them to. In exchange, the Church will occasionally ask the Nobles to behave a little better.
A warning for the uninitiated September 7, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book should be required reading for all wanna be I-bankers. The author very convincingly describes the inner workings of a major financial institution. From the outside, the public only sees the expensive suits and tall glass buildings and are suitably impressed by the knowledge and skills of those who works inside. But the author takes us behind the doors to show frighteningly how the lifeblood of the world is controlled by a bunch of 25 year olds who have little idea of the magnitude of their actions.
Liar's Mortgage July 17, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker is a must read for anyone trying to understand the 2008 crisis in mortgage lending and home ownership. In fact, a new edition of the book should be published with a forward by Ben Bernake or Hank Paulson. The autobiography describes a mid-1980's newbie to Wall Street and his induction into the fraternity of mortgage traders at Salomon Brothers and junk bond traders at Drexel. This book rises above a rite of passage story because of the financial chaos which happened during the next three decades.
The 41st trading floor of Salomon Brothers is where millions of dollars exchange hands in minutes. There is a blue collar culture of practical jokes, profanity, Mexican food and pizza. The characters might have come right out of Damon Runyon or Animal House. The main difference between the interns, the traders and the clerks is neither their demeanor nor education but their wealth. In contrast to other books which tell us about the best and the brightest, this book describes ordinary people with excess body fat, perspiration, greed and wealth.
As more homeowners face foreclosure and the US dollar loses value, it is not clear what message to derive from this book. Were it not for these failures of economic policy the book would join other interesting stories about the rich and privileged of Wall Street. But because of this failure of oversight, the book takes us from humor to cynicism and from a sense of national pride to a feeling of national shame.
Is there a ratio of capitalistic reward to risk which is unconscionable in a democratic society? Can this behavior be limited or controlled by financial transparency, tax code, money supply and credit leverage? How do we avoid these consequences of the creation and destruction of capital without moving down the path of socialism? Can we ever put to rest the saying that behind every great fortune is a great crime?
Eccentricities of Wall Street... June 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
An entertaining look into the life of a Salomon Brothers bond trader in the 1980s. The book offers a cursive overview of the financial innovations during that period, but the real contribution is in examination of the culture and the personalities of the Wall Street traders. Not without some embellishment, Michael Lewis does a great job of communicating the eccentricities and absurdities of the traders - 'the big swinging dicks'. At the very least, 'Liar's Poker' is an entertaining read, at best, an insightful look at what (and who) turns the wheels of our financial institutions.
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