by Jack Lee
A new book by Lawrence G. McDonald and New York Times bestselling author Patrick Robinson exposes the truths and dispells the myths about one of the greatest financial implosions of our time. This is a black box of secrets. And now Larry McDonald rips the lid off. This is an easy to understand and gripping novel for anyone who has ever held a strong opinion about who caused the housing implosion and who/what set off the great recession.
As Larry says, “America has two distinct groups of people; Wall Street and Main Street – the financial plumbers, and those who have only the most basic notion of the ebb and flow of economics. Wall Street, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, was the epicenter of the worldwide financial crisis that brought the global economy to its knees.
A Colossal Failure of Common Sense” was twofold. First, to show Main Street how markets really work. Second, to provide a crystal clear explanation of why the fabled merchant bank, Lehman Brothers, met with such a swift and brutal end. The lessons are important, not just to warn of such disasters in the future. But ultimately to provide a beacon, to help us serve Main Street better.”
They stand alone – the zillion-dollar questions of the financial crisis : What the hell happened at Lehman Brothers? And why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Vice-President of Lehman gives us the straight answers – right from-the-belly-of-the-beast. Larry McDonald is the first senior Wall Street trader ever to write such an expos – revealing at last the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has ever achieved before.
“A Colossal Failure of Common Sense” is a human story of McDonald’s rise from a Massachusetts project, to the New York headquarters of Lehman Brothers, home to one of the toughest trading floors in the world. He posed as a pizza delivery man to get past receptionists, to score interviews at brokerage firms. He peddled frozen pork chops, door to door, to hone his sales skills, desperate to realize his dream of working on Wall Street.
We get a close-up view of the other participants in the Lehman collapse, those who saw it coming with a helpless, angry certainty. We meet the Brahmins at the top, whose reckless, pedal-to-the-floor addiction to growth finally demolished the nation’s oldest investment bank. The Wall Street we encounter is a ruthless place, where brilliance, arrogance, ambition, greed, and all the human traits, combine in a potent mix that sometimes fuels prosperity, but sometimes destroys it.
McDonald’s gripping story of the firm’s death spiral is a modern-day thriller, studded with incredible, insider revelations no one else knows, or would dare reveal.
The collapse of Lehman Brothers was no surprise and didn’t have to happen. In fact, CEO Richard Fuld and President Joe Gregory were confronted with warnings on three occasions — starting as far back as 2005 — that the property market, on which they were betting the ranch, was teetering toward collapse. Fuld and Gregory turned their backs each time.
McDonald paints a vivid picture of life inside Lehman in “A Colossal Failure Of Common Sense,” where the isolated and reclusive chief executive ‘reigned’ in his sumptuous 31st floor office, accessible only by private elevator. From this Ivory Tower so much of the firm’s brightest talent was driven out of the door. The full significance of the Lehman bankruptcy remains to be measured. But this much is certain: it was a devastating blow to both America and the world beyond. And it need not have happened. This is the story of why it did.