Liar's Poker

TAG: Autobiography, Investment Banking
Rating: 3.5 / 5 worms
Curtesy: My BF

This a semi-autobiographical book written by former Salomon brothers’ gives an excellent insight into Investment banking.
The book attempts a post-mortem of Salomon Brothers’ disastrous fall in 1980’s through a keen eye of Michael Lewis, then LSE pass out. The name suggests the powerful game of bluffing, where fear and greed are the main, and I think, only drivers of the game, yet interestingly, the expertise of these two is the pre-requisitive for Trading. The book describes how in early 80’s, US Legislative barons took steps to change the basis of interest rates from fixed to floating, opening a completely new era of Bonds trading. The book details on how n whys of Salomon brothers lead the game initially, following which, dollar eyed Wall Street bankers realised the loop holes in the ordinance and tried to outweigh each other. It describes the bank from the Sales perspective, where these are the main people facing and handling the client’s needs and expletives.
In the book much stress has been on the built up part rather than the crash, which is just confined to 11 pages. This may be partly because author left Salomon seven months before the crash and partly due to the fact that he was present in the upside, both mentally and physically. All in all, I enjoyed reading this book with comic element in it because it explained how banks make money out of Bond Trading, although margins have thinned on these now. Having read his columns on WSJ and Wilmott, the book familiarized with Mike’s novel skills and confirmed his opinion that the source of the falls and/or rises remain US Fed - be it Salomon, LTCM or Lehman.