A Colossal Failure of Common Sense

Lawrence G. McDonald and Patrick Robinson

ISBN 10: 0307588335 / ISBN 13: 9780307588333

Published by Crown Business, New York, 2009

About this Item

First Edition, First Printing in Fine/Fine condition in a Brodart cover. Signed and Dated by authors. Dated "Aug '09". Inscribed by Lawrence McDonald and signed by Patrick Robinson. Scarce thus. Seller Inventory # 000069

Bibliographic Details

Title: A Colossal Failure of Common Sense

Publisher: Crown Business, New York

Publication Date: 2009

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

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.