When genius failed The rise and fall of LongTerm Capital Management

1、risk awareness books of interest (march, 2006)this is a list of books that provide interesting insights about the banking industry and risk assessment. the comments are from published reviews or publisher notes.when genius failed : the rise and fall of long-term capital managementby roger lowenstein

2、roger lowenstein, the bestselling author of buffett, captures long-terms roller-coaster ride in gripping detail. drawing on confidential internal memos and interviews with dozens of key players, lowenstein crafts a story that reads like a first-rate thriller from beginning to end. he explains not ju

3、st how the fund made and lost its money, but what it was about the personalities of long-terms partners, the arrogance of their mathematical certainties, and the late-nineties culture of wall street that made it all possible.when genius failed is the cautionary financial tale of our time, the grippi

4、ng saga of what happened when an elite group of investors believed they could actually deconstruct risk and use virtually limitless leverage to create limitless wealth. in roger lowensteins hands, it is a brilliant tale peppered with fast money, vivid characters, and high drama. smartest guys in the

5、 room: the amazing rise and scandalous fall of enron (a commercial documentary film of the same name was released in 2005 with excellent reviews - the dvd was released in jan 06)by bethany mclean, peter elkind 2004until the spring of 2001, the houston energy giant enron epitomized the triumph of the

6、 new economy. feared by rivals, worshiped by investors, enron seemingly could do no wrong. its profits rose every quarter; its stock price surged ever upward; its leaders were hailed as visionaries.then a young fortune writer named bethany mclean wrote an article posing a simple question - how, exac

7、tly, does enron make its money? - and the companys house of cards began to collapse. though other business scandals would follow, none has had the shattering effect of enrons bankruptcy, which caused americans to lose faith in a system that rewarded top insiders with millions of dollars while small

8、investors, including many enron employees, lost everything.despite enormous media coverage of enron, the definitive story of its astonishing rise and fall comes alive for the first time in this gripping narrative, by mclean and her fortune colleague peter elkind. drawing on a wide range of private d

9、ocuments and well-placed sources, many of them exclusive, mclean and elkind lead you behind closed doors and deep into enrons past, to pierce the veil of secrecy that has surrounded the companys inner workings and corrupt culture.the smartest guys in the room is fundamentally a human drama - of peop

10、le drunk on their own success, people so ambitious, so certain of their own brilliance, so fueled by greed and hubris that they believed they could fool the world. the book explores the motives, thoughts, and secret fears of a fascinating array of characters.conspiracy of fools: a true story - by ku

11、rt eichenwald not as good as the smartest guys, but an interesting book about the personalities at enron (az)this enormous, intimate blow-by-blow of enrons implosion gets as close to what actually happened, in terms of people making (bad) decisions in real time, as anyone who wasnt there with a conc

12、ealed video-phone possibly could. having combed endless documents and interviewed countless principals and peripherals, eichenwald (the informant) presents short declarative sentences (and lots of sentence fragments) that may have run through the heads of men like top executives skilling, lay and fa

13、stow as they managed to cook a very large set of books, as well as men like stuart zisman, a lawyer in the firms wholesale division who wrote an early memo titled overall book manipulation that stated the majority of investments being introduced to raptor are bad ones. infectious greed: how deceit a

14、nd risk corrupted the financial markets (henry holt) 2003by frank partnoypartnoys previous book, f.i.a.s.c.o., was an inside story of a wall street derivatives trader. it argued that recklessness and lack of regulation made derivatives trading (trading financial instruments that have no intrinsic va

15、lue) a threat to the financial system. turning from autobiography to history, this new work makes the same points by examining financial disasters caused by derivatives of the last 15 years. patient zero is andy krieger, whose $80 million mismarking of currency options embarrassed bankers trust in 1

16、988. partnoy profiles other derivatives abusers, too, including nick leeson, who bankrupted barings bank;robert citron, who did the same for orange county; and joseph jett, whose forward recon trades helped end the independent existence of kidder peabody and long term capital management. these accou

17、nts of 20th-century disasters are neither original nor deep, but readers interested in the subject will be pleased to see the links among them.taken together, common features emerge that are hard to see in detailed accounts of individual collapses. for example, partnoy makes a revisionist case that

18、credit rating agencies and federal regulators, including alan greenspan and arthur levitt, bear most of the blame. the author carries his story into mid-2002, evaluating enron, worldcom and global crossing. his analysis here is more original, reversing the popular perception by claiming enron was a

19、profitable company that should have survived, while worldcom and global crossing had no economic substance.f.i.a.s.c.o.: blood in the water on wall street (w.w. norton) - 1999by frank partnoyfiasco is an insiders diary, a shocking education in the jungle of high finance in the 1990s from new york to

20、 tokyo. it tracks the progress of a young morgan stanley salesman as he learns the ropes of this sophisticated and ruthless web, where billions of dollars are lost in the creation and trading of securities so unlikely and so complicated that almost nobody understands them. frank partnoy presents a w

21、orld filled with feral rocket scientists - the clever masterminds who persuade unsuspecting victims to buy derivatives (whose value is linked to or derived from some other security). these salesman often joke about their creations as weapons of mass destruction; and, in fact, the clients are often b

22、lown up or have their faces ripped off. against such well-trained salesmen, buyers often dont stand a chance, and the actual fiascos involve well-publicized losses at orange county, barings, procter & gamble and many others. frank partnoys book is partly comical and brims with incredible characters,

23、 but his revelations should stir fear in anyone who owns mutual funds, stocks, or even insurance.in an uncertain world: tough choices from wall street to washingtonby robert e. rubin, jacob weisbergrubins fundamental philosophy is that nothing is provably certain. probabilistic thinking has guided h

24、is career in both business and government. we see that discipline at work in meetings with president clinton and hillary clinton, chinese premier zhu rongji, alan greenspan, lawrence summers, newt gingrich, sanford weill, and the late daniel patrick moynihan. we see rubin apply it time and again whi

25、le facing financial crises in asia, russia, and brazil; the federal government shutdown; the rise and fall of the stock market; the challenges of the post-september 11 world; the ongoing struggle over fiscal policy; and many other momentous economic and political events.the house of morgan: an ameri

26、can banking dynasty and the rise of modern financeby ron chernow 1991the winner of the national book award and now considered a classic, the house of morgan is the most ambitious history ever written about an american banking dynasty. acclaimed by the wall street journal as brilliantly researched an

27、d written, the book tells the rich, panoramic story of four generations of morgans and the powerful, secretive firms they spawned. it is the definitive account of the rise of the modern financial world. a gripping history of banking and the booms and busts that shaped the world on both sides of the

28、atlantic, the house of morgan traces the trajectory of the j. p. morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in victorian london to the crash of 1987. ron chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the private saga of the morgans and the rarefied world of the american and british elite in which they mov

29、ed. based on extensive interviews and access to the family and business archives, the house of morgan is an investigative masterpiece, a compelling account of a remarkable institution and the men who ran it, and an essential book for understanding the money and power behind the major historical even

30、ts of the last 150 years.the volatility machine emerging economics and the threat of financial collapse (recommended by andy roy)michael pettis osford university press may 2001this book presents a radically different argument for what has caused, and likely will continue to cause, the collapse of em

31、erging market economies. pettis combines the insights of economic history, economic theory, and finance theory into a comprehensive model for understanding sovereign liability management and the causes of financial crises. he examines recent financial crises in emerging market countries along with t

32、he history of international lending since the 1820s to argue that the process of international lending is driven primarily by external events and not by local politics and/or economic policies. he draws out the corporate finance implications of this approach to argue that most of the current analyse

33、s of the recent financial crises suffered by latin america, asia, and russia have largely missed the point. he then develops a sovereign finance model, analogous to corporate finance, to understand the capital structure needs of emerging market countries. using this model, he finally puts into persp

34、ective the recent crises, a new sovereign liability management theory, the implications of the model for sovereign debt restructurings, and the new financial architecture.tearing down the walls: how sandy weill fought his way to the top of the financial world. . .and then nearly lost it allby monica

35、 langley march 2003tearing down the walls reveals: the behind-the-scenes workings in the executive suites of wall street companies that have suffered a drastic decline in investor/consumer confidence the real story behind weill and star analyst jack grubmans effort to get his toddlers into the posh

36、92nd street y pre-school why citigroup received the stiffest fines for biased research (they just settled for $320 million on 12/20) but weill did not (as was originally speculated) face personal charges how future control of citigroup was determined by a ballroom brawl how sandy weill almost lost t

37、he top spot of the merged travelers/citibank to citis ceo john reed. and how former secretary of the treasury,robert rubin played a deciding role how sandy weills management style is supremely effective and rivals that of jack welch competitive strategy: techniques for analyzing industries and compe

38、titors (hardcover)by michael e. porter the free press 1998 (revised from 1979)now nearing its 60th printing in english and translated into nineteen languages, michael e. porters competitive strategy has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world. electri

39、fying in its simplicity - like all great breakthroughs - porters analysis of industries captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. porter introduces one of the most powerful competitive tools yet developed: his three generic strategies - lowest cost, differentiation,

40、and focus - which bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. he shows how competitive advantage can be defined in terms of relative cost and relative prices, thus linking it directly to profitability, and presents a whole new perspective on how profit is created and divided. in the almost two decades since publication, porters framework for pre