Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street by Kate Kelly
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.99 You Save: $21.96 (85%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $3.26 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street
Book Review: Who To Blame For The Bear Stern Collapse? Meet the Suspects....
Summary: 5 Stars
Kate Kelly originally wrote this story for the Wall Street Journal last May, detailing the events that lead up to the complete collapse of Bear Stearns during last year's mortgage meltdown. Here in //Street Fighters//, she expands the story, covering the 72 hours from Thursday, March 13, to Sunday, March 16, 2008. There are plenty of flashbacks of the previous year, explaining how Bear became over-leveraged in toxic mortgage assets and how they ended up "suddenly" with too little operating cash for business the next day and ended up being sold to JP Morgan for a rock-bottom $2.00 a share.
Kelly interviewed players in and out of Bear, coordinating stories to create a compelling narrative of hubris, greed, and a culture of doing whatever it took to make the deal; including the last-minute fire sale.
There are plenty of personality vignettes, from Alan Schwartz, Bear's CEO and Jimmy Cayne Bear's Chairman to Tim Geithner, the president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Warren Buffett. Her accusation of Cayne's preference for bridge or smoking pot (or both) rather than going to work at Bear may be either be the titillation to sell the book or State's Exhibit One for why the environment at Bear Sterns lead to its ignominious end.
It is a highly readable account, both of the failure of Bear Stern and the trading in Mortgage Backed Securities that lead to the entire market meltdown. In some ways, it is a disturbing story, with then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson insisting on the $2.00 a share buyout price to punish Bear for their recklessness and how many of the Bear traders and executives not only landed on their feet, but are still active in the trading community.
Bear may be gone, but their spirit still lives on.