Probably the least interesting thing by Michael Lewis that I've read. Billed as an expose of Wall Street greed, I found it more to be a story of incompetent management and political infighting by conceited executives who found themselves successful by being in the right place at the right time, but think themselves as geniuses.

Some of this reminded me a lot of my father's stories of the politics at his former law practice. Why anyone would want to work in a place with so much backstabbing and viscousness is beyond me. Shows the value of company culture.

It's funny to see Lewis wishing the company had been bought out by private equity firms just so they would fire the management. To me this book is another example that companies can sometimes be successful in spite of their leaders if they have a decent product and some luck.

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.

I finished this two days ago but I keep falling behind on posting my reading updates

This was a fascinating book to be reading in the midst of the biggest financial crisis of the past 75 years. Liar's Poker records the author's experience as a bonds trader for Solomon Brothers, at the height of the 80's trading explosion - an accurate, and frightening, account of the ludicrous nature of the whole industry. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the book is the attitude of the traders: to make money at any cost, regardless of the consequences. In this world, it was perfectly acceptable to "blow-up" (bankrupt) a customer with a trade, because the company would make a hefty commission, regardless of the outcome for the others involved in the trade.

It's easy to see how the groundwork for our current financial mess was laid in this environment. Lewis talks about how new sources of income were constantly being made by cutting up bonds into new derivative securities - similar to the derivatives used from the sub-prime mortgages. When they mortgages collapses, so did all the derivative securities - but the obfuscation was deep enough so that many, many people bought those derivatives who should have known better.

Overall, Liar's Poker is well-written and entertaining enough to recommend to anyone, but it's also a disturbingly enlightening lens through which to see our current financial struggles.