I'm a little torn by this book. It's well written, it's funny in places, some of Michael Lewis' observations are very astute and I'm sure that on some level this is an excellent commentary on the downfall of a once great company. Lewis was a trainee bond trader at Salomon Brothers when that firm was the most profitable on Wall St. He did very well out of his time there, and his analysis both here and in another of his works, The Big Short, pinpoints several of the problems that society has, or should have, with how the financial system works.

Yet, having read The Blind Side, Lewis' views on how one position, and in particular one person playing in that position, changed American football, before both The Big Short and then Liar's Poker, I can't help disliking the author. Intensely. His previous two books had given me no reason for this at all, with the possible exception of a little smugness in 'Short'. However, Liar's Poker drips with 'I could see it coming from the second it began', 'I hated screwing clients but it was what I had to do' (every uniformed low-level goon in a dictatorship's first excuse) and 'all these people [bankers] are so horrible'. The venom he has for banking and bankers made me laugh out loud when the final line of the book informed the reader that Lewis lives in London with his wife, an investment banker. When you factor in that Lewis made vast sums of money from the profession, it's easy to see all this as disingenuous, and that's my conclusion. Once it was popular to want to be a banker, so Michael Lewis became a banker, now it's popular to hate them, so he hates them. I can't help but think that if everyone said tomorrow that they'd made a huge mistake and bankers were not to blame and that they are in fact wonderful, that Lewis would call a few contacts and be back at his trading post in minutes.

Liar's Poker, part memoir part history, focuses on bond trading in the 80s, which doesn't exactly scream 'page turner'. But a page turner is exactly what Lewis delivers. He blends fast moving narrative, outrageous behaviour and actual financial history (I admit I have a professional interest in that part, I don't imagine everyone will find the origins of mortgage and junk bonds so gripping) into a book I didn't want to put down.

30 years later and the themes of greed, arrogance, and junior staff swallowing their integrity for the good of their employer are all just as relevant.

Highly recommend

Liar’s Poker is Michael Lewis’ memoir of his days as a bond salesman on Wallstreet at Salomon Brothers, time that coincides with some very eventful moments for both the firm and Wallstreet. Lewis’ superbly chronicles those events with a hefty dose of sly humor and amusing anecdotes.

The book highlights some of the inherent conflicts of interest that plague broker-investor relationships, and the inner workings of the financial system. Throughout the book, Lewis provides brilliantly simple explanations of some of Wallstreets’ most common securities on terms any layman can grasp.

He depicts his bond broker colleagues as highly motivated, smart and greedy salesmen with little in the way of scruples, morality or decency, and nothing but their personal gain on their agendas… although he ultimately claims virtue for himself.

The markets' sole rule of engagement: Caveat emptor (Buyer beware)

Well, I went through hell reading this book. But I was partly to blame because I put too much trust in the author hoping he will make matters easier to understand but clearly he didn't think it necessary. Anw, it still expanded my narrow mind a little bit. The dry humor, wisdom as well as humility of the author breathes a refreshing air into such a corrupt industry. Will try to return to this in the future!

First third was pretty interesting about how he accidentally got into the investment banking industry. But then started being lackluster because there wasn't enough character development.

Good storyteller.
Slow beginning with many chapters to give historical context. Still very interesting, and I found myself shaking my head several times. Sometimes also humorous.

Combines great with "Barbarians at the Gate" to show the craziness of the 80s. Both are highly recommended.

Сначала меня долгое время терзали сомнения читать ли эту книгу, а точнее данного автора или нет. Почему то несколько обзоров о этой книге вместе с интуицией подсказывали воздержатся от прочтения. Сложилось впечатление, что многие больше полюбили не саму книгу, а автора с его весьма хорошо подвешенным языком и контрастными метафорами. Жаль, но я в большинстве опасений ошибался...

Книга получилась не только информативной, но и невероятно захватывающей. Описанная изнанка жизни воротил с Уолл-Стрит, самой компании Salomon Brothers, а также и конкретно маклеров и брокеров сказать что удивила всё равно что ни сказать ничего. Со взгляда законности и этики - это полный ужас и беспредел. Да нет, иначе как криминал который не выгодно замечать руководству компаний и активно его покрывать в том числе активно лоббируя законы для его скрытия, запутывания и создавая лазейки это назвать никак не можно. Именно так - криминал почти на каждом шаге.

Преступления от самого элементарного бесчисленного надувательства своих клиентов не то чтобы на сотни тысяч, но и даже на сотни миллионов долларов и аж до крупных махинаций в мировом масштабе. Я даже не упоминаю массу списанную денег со счетов собственной компании на красивую жизнь торгового отдела. А разговор о дикой корпоративной среде Salomon Brothers вызывает отдельное отвращения...

Льюис красиво вскрыл и описал ещё многое чего от чего волосы не раз становилысь дыбом. Стиль написания автора великолепный, плотность фактов, много острот, множество хороших шуток, применяемые великолепнейшие контрастные ассоциации делают Льюиса словно шеф-повара мирового класса, а его книга как вкуснейшее блюдо для его проголодавшегося по вкусностями читателя.

Я был прав только на половину. В той части, что автор мастер слова, но ошибался в качестве материала. А он весьма хорош. И если вам интересна изнанка Уолл-Стрит в начале и средине восьмидесятых в одном из его центров - несомненно читать стоит! Да и ещё потому важно прочитать, что по моему мнению атмосфера с тех времён сильно не изменилась и подобная жизнь царит и кипит там сейчас такая же как и тогда, если конечно не намного хуже...

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.

To write a non-fictional portrayal of your life during your 20s is not an easy task. To do this while still in your 20s, to have it be your first book, and to have the story revolve around bond trading / Wall Street - and not have the book be as dry as it sounds - seems an almost cruel undertaking. But Lewis managed to do this. Despite what would seem to be the worst idea for a first book, Lewis keeps the reader interested and turning pages, even with a cast of execrable people that are only made more loathsome by the fact that they do, indeed, exist.

With unwitting prescience, Lewis writes about the creation of the mortgage bond business in the early/mid '80s that would take center stage in 2008 during the global economic meltdown. The unadulterated, unchecked greed with which the bond traders knowingly fleeced "suckers" in the market is staggering not by the reaches of their malfeasance, but rather that those unsavory characters continue to exist, in increasingly more dastardly versions as the years go by, and in all areas of Wall Street, banking and government. I'm happy I read this book after The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine because it makes that more recent book much more poignant in retrospect. I can almost see Lewis' head shaking as he was penning "Big Short" realizing he had seen all of this first hand 20 years before, knowing that nothing would really be done to make meaningful changes to avert a future disaster, and that as this event plays out again and again into the future the reality is that there is going to be a time when the wheels come off for good - and no amount of government intervention or "market self correction" is going to fix the problem. Doomsday Machine, indeed.

Entertaining read that takes a deeper dive into the 1980’s bond markets with comedic commentary. The trading floor environment is well established and the excitement behind risk-filled strategies flows through from real experiences. I would only recommend this to people that have a very basic knowledge of finance lingo and a general understanding of trading because it starts to get “in the weeds” pretty quickly.

A brilliant and funny memoir of life on Wall Street in the 1980s. Michael Lewis shows exactly how craven and self-serving his firm, Salomon Brothers, had become by the time of his arrival in 1985. Previously a backwater, Jewish-led, bond trading firm, Salomon rode the wave of leverage in the Reagan era to become the most profitable investment bank in the world. Yet part of that success came from keeping good deals on its own books and passing bad bets to its customers. Lewis describes his first qualms and eventual acceptance of "jamming" bad bond deals down the throats of European investors and the praise from his superiors whenever he had sold a horrible deal. For instance, after selling some crappy AT&T bonds to a German investor he was praised as corporate hero, though he had to endure the "primal Teutonic scream" of his irate customer on an almost daily basis thereafter. As one of the teachers at his training program told him "Some people were born customers," meaning born-suckers. (Not surprisingly, Salomon's irate customers soon stopped taking the abuse and not long after Lewis published this book it was bought up by Traveler's Group and later Citi.)

Perhaps most interesting for those reading the book today, Lewis takes a strange 100-page segue to describe the history of mortgage-backed securities, the first of which was sold by Salomon brothers trader Lewis Ranieri in 1979. He describes the MBS as an only slightly less important financial innovation than junk bonds, which, in light of current events, is an amazing understatement. Lewis, who has a fine eye for business culture, describes how Ranieri self-consciously assembled a group of fat, slovenly, back-office Italian traders (their words) to compete in the then impoverished mortgage market. He strove to create his own oppositional culture inside the increasingly WASPish firm, and, after Congress liberalized Savings and Loans investment rules in 1982, his band of misfits became some of the most profitable traders on planet earth. The rest is history.

Parts of the book move surprisingly slow (he takes almost a 100 pages describing his training program), and I wish there was more focus on his own experience as a salesman, but all of it is engaging and well-written. It's a great inside look at how Wall Street worked, and works.

No need to recount the reviews of over 2 decades. I'll just say that it is extremely relevant today in 2015 as it was in 1989. The Solomon traders created the foundation on which the mortgage market would balloon and eventually collapse in 2008. It reminds the readers that financial engineering is completely unproductive and dangerous, making a few rich and society to foot the eventual bill. It is also insightful into how corporate culture can promote greed and the worst of human nature to build and ultimately destroy companies.