A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers

McDonald, Lawrence G. & Patrick Robinson

ISBN 10: 0307588335 / ISBN 13: 9780307588333

Published by Crown Business, 2009

About this Item

Book with a lean, NO notes, name or ANY markings. DJ with repaired 2" tear at front spine base, else OK. Not clipped ($27) ; 351 pages.

Seller Inventory # 68637

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers
• Publisher: Crown Business
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0307588335
• ISBN 13: 9780307588333
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition; First Printing.
• Condition: Very Good-
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good-

About this title

Synopsis

One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been answered until now. What happened at Lehman Brothers and why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Lehman Brothers Vice President gives us the straight answers—right from the belly of the beast.

In A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, Larry McDonald, a Wall Street insider, reveals the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has ever done. The book is couched in the very human story of Larry McDonald’s Horatio Alger-like rise from a Massachusetts “gateway to nowhere” housing project to the New York headquarters of Lehman Brothers, home of one of the world’s toughest trading floors.

We get a close-up view of the participants in the Lehman collapse, especially those who saw it coming with a helpless, angry certainty. We meet the Brahmins at the top, whose reckless, pedal-to-the-floor addiction to growth finally demolished the nation’s oldest investment bank. The Wall Street we encounter here is a ruthless place, where brilliance, arrogance, ambition, greed, capacity for relentless toil, and other human traits combine in a potent mix that sometimes fuels prosperity but occasionally destroys it.

The full significance of the dissolution of Lehman Brothers remains to be measured. But this much is certain: it was a devastating blow to America’s—and the world’s—financial system. And it need not have happened. This is the story of why it did.

About the Author

Lawrence G. McDonald was, until 2008, Vice President of convertible securities and distressed debt trading at Lehman Brothers; his prior career included convertible securities research and sales at Morgan Stanley and the co-founding of Convertbond.com, named by Forbes Magazine as "Best of the Web." Patrick Robinson is the co-author of LONE SURVIVOR and author of many tech-thrillers.