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Synopsis
Perhaps the only thing more remarkable than the astonishing meltdown of the financial goliath Bear-Stearns in March of 2008 is that there was someone who seemed to understand precisely how it all happened. That person is William D. Cohan, and he shares his knowledge in this incisive narrative of that economic cataclysm. Cohan's report clearly shows that there were signs of a demise before the first domino dropped, signs that were recognized and identified by scattered financial analysts around the globe, whose warnings were collectively ignored. As the financial foundation of the firm began to disintegrate, the CEOs struggled to maintain their cool façade, as underlings scrambled to contain and conceal the damage. By the time word spread to Washington, billions of dollars had evaporated into the ether--or had they? Cohan's concise explanation details every minute of the 10-day disaster, clarifying where the money went, who is to blame, and how the nation can begin to recover.
| Size | | Height: | 7.8 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 5.4 oz |
Industry Reviews
"[Y]ou should personally dog-ear a copy of William D. Cohan's HOUSE OF CARDS, so far the definitive work on....[the] March 2008 implosion of Bear Stearns....It's a page-turner...offering both a seemingly comprehensive understanding of the business and wide access to insiders."
(03/05/2009)
"Cohan does a brilliant job of sketching in the eccentric, vulgar, greedy, profane and coarse individuals who ignored all these warnings to their own profit and the ruin of so many others....[H]e deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation."
(03/06/2009)
"Meeting the characters in HOUSE OF CARDS, it's not easy to conceive of people less deserving of federal assistance.....Taxpayers reading this fascinating tale may wonder whether the fallout from the government's intervention can be contained and, if so, at what cost."
(03/06/2009)
"As William D. Cohan makes clear in his engrossing new book, HOUSE OF CARDS, Bear Stearns is also a kind of microcosm of what went wrong on Wall Street--from bad business decisions to a lack of oversight to greedy, arrogant C.E.O.'s-- and a parable about how the second Gilded Age came slamming to a fast and furious end."
(03/09/2009)
"Cohan's epic account chronicles a watershed moment in Wall Street history, when a dysfunctional bank collapsed and helped to trigger our dysfunctional economy."
(03/28/2009)
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