Pricing information not available.
Read an
interview with Satyajit Das, author of Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk.
“A true insider’s devastating analysis of the financial alchemy of the last 30 years and its destructive consequences. With his intimate first-hand knowledge, Das takes a knife to global finance and financiers to reveal the inner workings without fear or favor.”
–Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics at NYU Stern School of Business and Chairman of Roubini Global Economics
“Das describes the causes of the financial crisis with the insight and understanding of a financial wizard, the candor and objectivity of an impartial observer, and a wry sense of humor that reveals the folly in it all.”
–Brooksley Born, Former Chairperson of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
“This is the best book yet to come out of the financial crisis. Das is a graceful, witty writer, with an unusually broad range of reference. He is also a long-time master of the arcana of the netherworlds of finance and nicely balances historical sweep with illuminating detail. Extreme Money is lively, scathing, and wise. ”
–Charles Morris, Author of The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash
“Like Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Extreme Money launches you into a fascinating and disturbing alternative view of reality. But now greed predominates, the distorted world of finance is completely global, and the people making crazy decisions can ruin us all. This is an informative, entertaining, and deeply scary account of Hades’s new realm. Read it while you can. ”
–Simon Johnson, Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management and Author of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown
“You know when Lewis Caroll, Max Weber, Alan Greenspan, and Sigmund Freud all appear on the same early page that you are about to read an intellectual tour de force. Das is an authoritative and colorful critic of modern markets, and here he weaves financial history and popular culture into an entertaining and blistering social critique of how so many people have come to chase endless financial reflections of the real economy. Extreme Money speaks truth to power. ”
–Frank Partnoy, George E. Barrett Professor of Law and Finance at the University of San Diego and Author of F.I.A.S.C.O, Infectious Greed, and The Match King
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews39 of 40 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Moving away the mirrors, Blowing away the smoke of Financial Engineering, August 10, 2011
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (
What's this?) This is a "tell all" book surrounding the financial disasters that most people have heard about, but only a few understand. The author provides with high energy and more metaphors than atoms in the universe the financial underpinnings that created all the financial disasters over the past five years. This includes the failure of many of the big names of
finance as well as those implicated in the sub-prime mortgage diabolical. A majority financial collapses leaving investors holding the bag is outlined in this book. More importantly, the book attempts to provide the "math" or the structure of how the financial mechanisms worked to produce large virtual gains leading ultimately to literal financial bankruptcy.
The author himself is a financial advisor with over 30 years of experience. The basic thread or meta message through the book is the inability to analyze and sometimes the resistance to accept the inherent risk in the investment structures that were producing huge returns for their customer base. The book provides the culture and attitude of those working in high financing which is pivotal to understanding the reluctance to understand the long term risk of the analyzed investment mechanisms. The author is probably complicit as a financial advisor for over thirty years, but that really isn't discussed in any great detail. He provides sage wisdom after the fact, but really was not the "ethical fighter" in the battle against the balloon ready to pop (not at least in this book).
So who might want to read this book?
This book probably will appeal to anyone who reads the Business section or listens to the news and sees guys with suits talking about how derivatives were responsible for the demise of someone, something, or even some country, and wants to understand what all the double talk means.
Also, anyone who wants to better understand his own investment strategy should read this book. There is one important thing that has not changed, the availability large pools of retirement funds. A great deal of 401Ks and other retirement funds are still out there with large pools of cash looking for investment opportunity. This was the starting point for the last calamity. These contrived financial structures (and opportunistic financial engineers) were just waiting to take a piece of America's retirement funds. This is really contemptible when you really think about it. There are few people that are immune while the financial "criminals" still on the loose looking for a way to manipulate the system yet again. The author spends considerable time illustrating how the "system" enabled this in the name of economic growth.
In addition, anyone who is wondering how the sub-prime mortgage problem occurred with a desire to understand the structures and mechanisms that created and enabled these financial disasters.
Finally, anyone who wants to know why countries like Greece and Iceland (you can add Ireland and many other countries to the list) have and continue to have financial problems. Everything seems great and then suddenly a single event creates a financial avalanche of bad debt.
Why I personally liked the book.
You almost always need an insider to get to the guts of the matter. In this case, an insider is needed that has tracked and analyzed all the problems worldwide. Many smart people fell into financial traps including Harvard University with all their financial and economic advisors. With that happening, what chance does the every day guy have of saying "no" to possible big returns using risky financial mechanisms? The chance is bettered with an education of what has failed. It goes without saying that Harvard now understands as does many governments, institutions, and other large mechanisms that felt like they could win big because they play big. Sounds like a professional gambler in Vegas, doesn't it?
I have to admit that I'll need to reread this book to really pick up the subtleties and nuances. The material is complicated at times and often the author makes it overly-complicated (my main complaint about this book). The diagrams in the book were generally not helpful because they parroted the text almost verbatim and really didn't provide any additional insight into the structure. I do believe that better diagrams would have been very beneficial in this book.
Overall, I'd recommend this book for those interested in how the practical financial world is evolving. The material will take some mental work, but worth the effort if the interest is great enough.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you?
43 of 48 people found the following review helpful: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Masters, again..., July 6, 2011
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (
What's this?) Satyajit Das presents an erudite, insider's view of the world of very high
finance, far removed from the every day money transactions on "Main Street." This world is as different, and as counter-intuitive, as quantum mechanics is from classical Newtonian physics. Das has "paid his dues," working on both the "buy" and "sell" side in this ethereal world for 33 years. His 2006 book
Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and unknowns in the dazzling world of derivatives Revised edition (Financial Times Series) raised the specter of a "crash," due to leverage and the concentration of economic power, as opposed to the carefully promoted image of "risk management" that has been flogged by the salesmen for derivatives, including Alan Greenspan. As is well-known, the crash did come in 2008, requiring a massive government bailout as it is politely called (in actuality, it is the many who pay, and continue to owe so much to the few). The Few have survived, Masters again of the universe, and the good times (for them) roll on. Das does a fairly good job of making these whirlwind events intelligible.
Fittingly, his Prologue is entitled "Hubris." As indeed it was (and is). I was recently at a dinner in Orange Co. CA., and the consensus was the 2008 debacle was all Barney Frank's fault! Well, Das has a more nuanced, and comprehensive view. Starting with George Bush, who wanted home ownership to be as widespread as possible in America, and that meant more "affordable" products which led down a very slippery slope to a toxic asset cesspool that was somehow labeled "Triple A." The author fleshes out this story with abundant anecdotes; certainly the one most referenced is über-hedge fund manger Steve Cohen's $12 million purchase of a shark stretched over a weighted fiberglass mold entitled: "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living." And, no doubt as intended, the shark was a wonderful metaphor for the business.
The book is divided into five parts. The first looks at the sheer faith involved in money transactions, and how it has involved from shells and silver coins to bits and bytes. The second part looks at financial "fundamentalism," an all too apt term, with the ground center of such thinking, which has come to dominate the world, being at the University of Chicago, with its arch-gnome, Milton Friedman. Personally, I think Naomi Klein, in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism covered this ground much better, but Das is incisive too, with a chapter entitled "False Gods, Fake Prophecies." Imagine being dominated by the thoughts of an individual who believed government should not be involved in the business of education or the national parks, as a small sample (ah, but it should be involved in enforcing contracts). Yet that has come to pass, since the so-called "free market" is the magic elixir that fixes all. The third part focuses on how we have become enthralled with debt (and drowned in it), all because one makes a higher percentage return when less actual equity is retained in a company (well, when one makes a return at all). In this part there are numerous diagrams which readily explain to the non-financial "layman" how those mortgages were "sliced and diced," and what the actual underlying assumptions were that governed the "tranches." In the fourth part, on the oligarchy that now governs us, Das explains how Ayn Rand has dominated the thoughts of so many of the elites, and reminds us, fittingly again, of a particular S-M scene in The Fountainhead (Centennial Edition Hardcover). And I shuttered to learn that now Fed Chairman Bernanke was attending Milton Friedman's 90th birthday party. More frightening still, is Bernanke's thesis that the real problem is a GLUT of global savings! The concluding part, and epilogue are not optimistic; featuring Bernanke's comment that the future will be "unusually uncertain."
Das repeatedly references his financial story to both the popular and academic culture. There are plenty of "bon mots," like: "Greenspan excelled at lacquering a slate of ignorance with a thin coating of knowledge." Das also refers to the "Greenspan put," meaning that there was always an assumption the Fed would bail Wall Street out of any folly; an assumption that came to pass. Das quotes Martin Baker on the magic formula of hedge funds: "Take a speculative cocktail shaker. Add four parts public ignorance, and 33 parts greed. Toss in a little perceived genius...Season generously with mystique. Add apparent publicity shyness to taste. Serve in opaque tumbler of awed, to ill-informed media coverage." Das even works in my favorite quote (and proverb for paranoids) from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition): "If you have them asking the wrong questions, you don't have to worry about the right answers."
But that is also the problem with this book. I hate to say it, since in general I like the references, but there are simply TOO many, madly tacked together at times, and they simply don't work. And Das throws them at the reader staccato style, bam, bam, processing the relevant and the irrelevant like the trader he once was. For example, one paragraph of three sentences goes from an expert at the Heritage Foundation to another commentator on the 2008 Beijing Olympics to Lillian Hellman. He does this repeatedly. Another swings from Arundhati Roy to John Steinbeck. He ties in Edward Abby's comment about growth and cancer cells; aphorisms from Yogi Berra and Mark Twain, and obscure 16th century Portuguese writers. Erudite yes, but also slap-dash, lacking a central thesis that holds it all together. At times, it dazzles; at others, it was simply exhausting, and seems to reflect Baker's comment above about tossing in a little perceived genius.
Overall, though, a book well marked-up, with passages that will be reviewed, and re-reviewed in the future. 4-stars.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you?
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding analysis of the crash of 2008, July 21, 2011
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (
What's this?) This is a very impressive book! It details how, over the years, money progressed during history from a means of commerce to the ultimate goal, and the financialization of the US from a nation which was centered on producing things to producing debt, camouflaged as things. Plus, all kinds of derivative concoctions, resulting in just moving around forms of money, with financial insiders and middle people collecting fees, bonuses, etc, all the while these concoctions were so difficult to understand that many didn't even try to understand them, just relying on rating agency ratings while the rating agencies were just a
marketing tool of the financial industry, bought and paid for - another form of money exchanging hands with no, or little, analysis of risk. So, the whole thing was a financialization of risk using debt. The book does make a good case that insiders in the financial institutions intentionally wanted many mortgages to fail and used another concoction, credit default swaps (an over-leveraged form of
insurance). What they didn't count on were the senior level mortgage concoctions failing because no one really anticipated how far
home prices could fall.
And, the creators of this mess were bailed out by everyday taxpayers. If you are a fan of Ayn Rand and free-market capitalism, embraced by Milton Friedman and Chicago economists, you probably will be critical of that part of the book, as the author finds much fault with them, including Greenspan, but does also cover that blame extends pretty much everywhere - everyone wanted to prosper. But, it really was a phony prosperity.
The last words in this terrific book, as an epilogue to the financial mess we are still going through...."Extreme Money, the idea of universal wealth and prosperity engineered by financial alchemy, was immensely powerful, impossible to resist. Was it possible to turn back? As Leonardo DiCaprio understands in the film, 'Inception,' 'the hardest virus to kill is an idea.'"
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you?
Share your thoughts with other customers: if (typeof uet == 'function') { uet('cf'); } if(typeof window.amznJQ != 'undefined') {amznJQ.completedStage('amznJQ.criticalFeature');}
var msg = document.getElementById('sitbUnsupportedBrowserMessage'); if (msg) { msg.style.display = 'block'; var reftagImage = new Image(); reftagImage.src = '/gp/search-inside/reftag/ref=rdr_bar_nobrowser'; }
Satyajit Das is an internationally respected expert in
finance, with over 30 years' experience. He worked for the "sell side" (banks such as Citicorp
Investment Bank and Merrill Lynch), the "buy side" (Treasurer of the TNT Group) and acted as a consultant advising banks, investors, corporations and central banks throughout the world. He has been within touching distance of many of the pivotal events in
finance during his long career.
Das presciently anticipated many aspects of the Global Financial Crisis in his 2006 book Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives In a speech that year - The Coming Credit Crash - he argued that: "an informed analysis of the structured credit markets shows that risk is not better spread but more leveraged and (arguably) more concentrated amongst hedge funds and a small group of dealers. This does not improve the overall stability and security of the financial system but exposes it to increased risk of a "crash" during a credit downturn." He has continued to be a respected commentator on developments in the crisis, accurately anticipating many subsequent phases.
He was featured in Charles Ferguson's 2010 Oscar winning documentary Inside Job and a 2009 BBC TV documentary - Tricks with Risk.
Das is the author of many highly regarded books on derivatives and risk management, which are regarded as standard reference works for professional traders. In 2006, he published the international best seller Traders, Guns & Money, a satirical insider's account of derivatives trading. The Financial Times described it as explaining "not only the high-minded theory behind the business and its various products but the sometimes sordid reality of the industry".
His latest book is Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011) described by Nouriel Roubini as: "A true insider's devastating analysis of the financial alchemy of the last 30 years and its destructive consequences. With his intimate first-hand knowledge, Das takes a knife to global finance and financiers to reveal its inner workings without fear or favor."
He appears regularly in the media in the US, Canada, UK, Australian, New Zealand, India and South Africa. His opinion pieces appear in prestigious publications throughout the world including the Financial Times. His blogs can be found on a number of on-line financial sites, including www.wilmott.com, www.roubini.com, www.minyanville.com, www.eurointelligence.com, www.nakedcapitalism.com and www.prudentbear.com.
(
What's this?) Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.Check the boxes next to the tags you consider relevant or enter your own tags in the field below.
Like 1330011424 false 0 9 9 8 (9)
Discussion Replies Latest Post
Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Active discussions in related forums function cdLLFailure(divErrorID, divLoadID) { jQuery(divErrorID).css('display', ''); jQuery(divLoadID).remove(); } function cdLLSuccess(response, divErrorID, divLoadID, divContentID) { if (response.hasError) { if (response.content.length > 0) { jQuery(divErrorID).html(response.content); } cdLLFailure(divErrorID, divLoadID); } else { jQuery(divContentID).html(response.content); } } function cdLLHandler(masterID, handlerURL, handlerArgs, activationRange, timeout) { var divContentID = masterID + 'Content'; var divLoadID = masterID + 'Loading'; var divErrorID = masterID + 'Error'; if (window.cdLLoading[masterID]) return; var winPositionY = jQuery(window).scrollTop() + jQuery(window).height(); var elementFound = jQuery(divContentID).size(); var divPositionY = jQuery(divContentID).offset().top; if (elementFound && ( divPositionY - winPositionY
How To Make Money Today, Tomorrow and Everyday (Kindle Edition)
Save Money Beat Recession & Become Rich (Kindle Edition)
Trista Ericks is a long time reader, author and teacher. Her books and 
Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (Kindle Edition)
Fifty Nifty Money Making Ideas (Kindle Edition)
How to Live the James Bond Lifestyle: The Complete Seminar (Kindle Edition)
20 Places to Make Money Online (Kindle Edition)
Paper Money Collapse: The Folly of Elastic Money and the Coming Monetary Breakdown (Kindle Edition)