Who needs fiction when real life is this fantastic?

Not impressed.

Way back in 2008 when Lehman Brothers had just folded and I was preparing for CAT exams, this book got added to my TBR as the book that will explain it all. Finally in 2022, I read the book. A lot had changed including my outlook on financial instruments (I don't understand), investment bankers (have money don't have a life) and even the concept of money (an illusion).

The book starts out as an earnest effort to explain the disillusionment of investment banking, expose corporate greed and then the inevitable politics when it comes to power. The complexity of the instruments themselves and the cluelessness of the customers who trade in them making huge money - though true, is something I despised. So all through the downward spiral of the author's experience and the organisation's fortunes - I could not wait for it to come down. By that logic it was long drawn.

The home mortgage instruments origin (thrift instruments) was a trivia of sorts and the German bonds episode an anecdote for pettiness. The last part of the company takeover and layoffs I sort of speed read skipping a few pages (something I dont do normally). I felt bored and desperate to get the book over with and it is never a good sign.

Skip it and you won't miss a thing.

It's rare to find a book that is both informative and also so funny that you actually laugh out loud, but Liar's Poker was that book for me

"The belief in the meaning of making dollars crumbled; the proposition that the more money you earn, the better the life you are leading was refuted by too much hard evidence to the contrary."

A very well-written page-turner that tells the true story of the financial world with humble tone, many witty remarks and valuable inside observation. Michael Lewis is the evidence of why a combination of a financial brain and a writer soul is irresistible!!!

Eye-opening, informative, and entertaining.

It starts slow and the back story is a bit dry, but its incorporation is necessary to make sense of the big picture that was once Salomon Brothers. At a certain point, it's difficult to put down.

Entertaining chronicles of a bunch of clever thugs! The author does a great job of pulling away the veil of jargon to expose a lot of the traders' moves for what they truly are- WAYS TO PROFIT FROM COMMISSION!!! Took a while to process the first half of the book, but by the second half I could barely keep it down. I sped through the last few chapters fuelled simultaneously by schadenfreude and absolute astonishment at the ways in which a lot of the management still got away pretty much unscathed in what seemed like "dire circumstances" for Salomon.

My very basic personal takeaway is to never be intimidated by FinBros lol.

Might reread in the future when I become more familiar with the jargon to see if I missed nuances.

In a previous review, I talked about The Bonfire of the Vanities and about the mastery of Tom Wolfe in crafting his characters, the story line and the various social types he described there. There was one aspect of that book that I did not talk much about and yet which was prevalent in my attraction to the story: not only it is one of the iconic stories that symbolizes Wall Street in the 1980s but it is also taking place at a very specific time when Wall Street was actually part of History. Indeed, Wall Street was at that juncture the mighty knight that was spearheading the victory of capitalism over communist. It was backed by the arrogant success of the money business of these days, that Ronald Reagan and Maggy Thatcher overpowered their arch enemy and delivered the final blow to the crumbling Soviet Union. No moral judgement of good or bad here, just an observation of a given point in history.

I love history and I work in New York, at the core of the world’s financial center. Therefore when Finance becomes part of history, I feel as if I can touch history up close. This is why I was looking for another story in that vein and I found it with the Liar’s Poker.

Like myself, Michael Lewis was writing as an insider and therefore what he writes feels very real. I prefer fiction and therefore I would have liked it more if he had turned the book into a novel but it is nevertheless very good. Lewis describes his experience as bond salesman on Wall Street during the late 1980s. This book too is considered iconic of the Wall Street of these days with all the excesses of greed, the ruthless race among competitors to be the first to rip the shirt off each client:

P22 “To succeed on Salomon Brothers trading floor a person had to wake up each morning ‘ready to bite the ass off a bear.’”

Once the wolves were let loose there was no mercy to expect:

P200 “like all of us, he lived by the law of the jungle and the law of the jungle said Geek salesmen are red meat for traders. No exception.”

P208 “the best thing was to pretend to others at Salomon that I had meant to screw the customer. People would respect that. That was called jamming.”

P274 “’Every company has got people sitting around who do nothing for what they get paid’ says Joe Perella. ‘If they take a lot of debt, it forces them to cut fat.’ The takeover specialists did for debt what Ivan Boesky did for greed. Debt is good they said. Debt works.”

In these days, Salomon Brothers’ mortgage department made history because it was successful, obnoxiously, filthily successful at taking advantage of the deregulation by selling big chunks of mortgages like bonds. As a result, individuals that were not particularly polished in the first place to say the least turned into a crowd of grotesque Jabba the Hut who suddenly could leave their shady pubs and have their moment of glory at the top of the world:

P89 “If you fuckin buy this bond in a fucking trade, you’re fucking fucked. And if you don’t pay fuckin attention to the fuckin two-year you get your fuckin face ripped off.”

P214 “The only thing that saved me in meeting after meeting in the early days at Salomon was that the people I dealt with knew even less. London was or is a great refuge for hacks.”

So why would there be an interest for the average reader to dive in this world of slobs and frat boys? Well, why would an honest Roman citizen be interested in a detailed description of a barbarian tribe living somewhere off in the forests of Germany? He wouldn’t except at the very moment of the barbarian invasion when those slobs are about to take over the whole world and impose a new world order and this is exactly what had happened back in the eighties.

These “big swinging dicks” as they called themselves triggered the first business revolution of the post cold war world. They would have a massive impact on the economy. There would be other such revolutions in the new globalized jungle created by ruthless capitalism of course such as the dot-com bubble that I witnessed up close and that I described in my novel “Bubble Boys” and of course the leverage revolution and its subsequent liquidity crisis of 2008.

Each time, the world shook harder, a little like these barbarians who, from invasion to invasion, come every time a little closer to Rome. So what will be the next financial crisis about and what impact will it have on history? Some of the clues are right there, in Michael Lewis’ book. A must read.

A nicely written book on saloman brothers and the start of its downfall. lewis has penned what goes in an investment bank in a very witty manner which keeps the reader curious about what's gonna happen next. Not a very technical book but has described beautifully what different jargons that goes on a trading floor means. Would recommend anyone who is interested in knowing how it was to work on a trading floor back then. Although things have changed a lot in the last decade with algo trading replacing the conventional traders..

Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker was fun as well as informative about wall street in the 70 and 80s. I learned about the Solomon Brothers' culture and the introduction of mortgage trading as a product. It was interesting to learn about how someone started of in the training program and would quickly be fed to the wolves. I am not sure if I would have been a good fit back then but probably for the best. None the less, the book kept me on my toes. It sounded like there were excess greed and disregard for the client's best interest back then. It was also interesting to see how the firm had a disregard for the excess growth through exorbitant new offices, especially in London, and the cutthroat culture that ultimately led to the demise of the firm in the end because they were not open to new ideas. In this case, letting many of their star players leave because they would not compensate them "fairly" considering how much money they made the firm and would just go to another firm that would pay them better. In the end, these individuals wound up creating a new market for junk bonds and Solomon was not about that. It is a great reminder you can be a leader in the industry but if something new comes along and you just disregard it because it would take away business from your breadwinner it may end up ruining you.

This was my 7th book by the author and I have loved all his earlier books. Even I was surprised how much I disliked this one.
Unlike the other books, this was a memoir of the author's days from investment banking. Remember U.S. Investment bankers ? The guys who paid themselves fat bonuses after the govt bailout in 2008. The guys who broke every barrier of greed in their insane lust for profits. This is about how one of the biggest investment banking firms "Salomon Brothers" worked in the 1980s.
Somehow, it failed to interest me.

I found this worn down bestseller in the investing for dummies section at the library. I read it in a few days and I have a short attention span so it's a good read. This could be easily made into a movie and the author has written books such as Blind Side and Moneyball which were turned into movies.

This is all about the life of a Wall Street bond salesman in a big firm called Salomon Brothers, the firm basically, in the 1980s. It mixes biography with the rise and fall of a company. The company still exists, so maybe not fall, but it's decline as being the top dog. A lot of ruthless horrible people just trying to make money basically.

If you are new to investing, it's a good read since it talks about some concepts that you may not have heard of such as junk bonds and selling mortgage bonds. I had to look up some of the terms.

All the short quick stories of where the term big swinging dick came from and him talking to his trader friend like two old Jewish grandmothers is entertaining. Just a lot of entertaining crazy day in the life of a big shot type of thing.

Terrific robin. Mick Lewis has a way of bringing you along for the ride, providing great transparency into the world of bond trading in the 80s. Definitively 5 stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️