Buzzards Gotta Eat

Another Day, Another Book about financial crises.

It's shaping up to be a rather repetitive semester for reading.  Between my two classes, I have assigned 9 books which relate in some way to financial crises.  My tutorial is reading War and Peace, but it will be the end of the semester before we finish that one.  And, between the reading for my classes, and the other assorted obligations which life imposes, my other reading has been coming in bits and pieces.  And so, unless I take up reviewing short stories or some such thing, it will be all financial crisis all the time here for a bit. 

Fortunately, financial crises are really interesting.

Today's entry:  Roger Lowenstein, The End of Wall Street.
The alert reader will notice this is the second Lowenstein book this semester---he also wrote the book on Long-Term Capital Management (When Genius Failed) previously reviewed in this space.  When Genius Failed  is a classic.  The proposal for this book writes itself, "After Lowenstein's smashing success in writing a book about a previous fiancail crisis, Lowenstein's book about the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 is a sure-fire, can't miss."  It missed.

Don't get me wrong.  The book is OK.  I has some decent anecdotes in it, and it does tell the story.  Perhaps the problem is that it is really not good at all compared to Sorkin's Too Big to Fail.  Without Sorkin's book, this one might seem better.  But, all in all, it just isn't that good.  And the problem is interesting.  In When Genius Failed, it seemed like Lowenstein talked to everyone--the book read like an authoritative account.  Surely, there are some details here and there which Lowenstein did not know, but it is hard to imagine that there is much we will ever discover about LTCM which isn't in Lowenstein's book.  the End of Wall Street tries to emulate that feeling of an authoritative account, but this crisis is too big for a 300 page book to have everything.  And so, the book skips lightly across the crisis.  Ultimately, the timeline is all there, and if you knew nothing about what happened, at least this book has the story from beginning to end.  But, there isn't much that is really interesting to someone who knows about the timeline.  And, if you want to just read one book about the crisis, Sorkin's is vastly better. 

[My favorite anecdote from this book doubles as a Rorschach test.  When everything was melting down, Pandit, CEO of Citigroup went out to dinner, and wanting a good glass of wine, ordered a bottle of wine which cost $350, and drank just one glass.  Lowenstein presents this as an example of outrageous "excessive indulgence."  I couldn't see the problem--if Pandit wants to spend $350 for a glass of wine, what difference does it make to me?  I told Janet the story.  She, like Lowenstein, thought it was outrageous.]

It will be interesting to see what my students who have not read Sorkin think about the book.  I get the impression that while they enjoyed When Genius Failed, it is taking a long time for them to force their way through this book.

And in a serendipitous note:  last night Emma and I watched The Outlaw Josey Wales.  That movie is just like The End of Wall Street.  If one had never seen a Clint Eastwood western, it might have been a good movie.  But, if you have seen his other westerns, this one is just OK.  A few good parts, Eastwood is Eastwood, and Dan George (or as he is listed in the credits Chief Dan George) was fantastic, but on the whole, neither Emma nor I  was really all that impressed with the movie.  If you want to watch an Eastwood western, try A Fistful of Dollars or The Good, The Bad and the Ugly or Unforgiven.