|
|  | Creator: Michael Lewis
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
List Price: $27.95
Buy Used: $4.33
as of 11/24/2009 22:30 CST details
You Save: $23.62 (85%)
New (44) Used (71) Collectible (4) from $4.33
Seller: goodwill_industries_san_francisco
Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 26471
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0393065146
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.542
EAN: 9780393065145
ASIN: 0393065146
Publication Date: November 17, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Book is in Good Condition. We ship Monday - Friday. Easy returns if you are unhappy with the book. Proceeds benefit non-profit Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties. We create solutions to poverty through the businesses we operate. Your purchase creates jobs and transforms lives. Thank you.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 40
 be observant June 16, 2009
Kate Crone
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Did you all miss the words at the top of the book cover: "Edited by?"
That does not mean "written by."
The book presents a chance to learn from history. We humans forget the past too quickly, and we don't think about how to change behaviour based on past mistakes. Too bad.
 Not merely bad for being a disjointed heap... June 14, 2009
James R. Maclean (Seattle, WA United States)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Most of the unfavorable reviews for this book have slammed it for being a collection of many newspaper articles pertaining to "panics" (actually, to bubbles). I understood that was the deal, and I think I understand why Lewis included the articles he did, although I think it padded the book a lot.
My beef was with Lewis' arrant nonsense in defense of the whole concept of bubbles. First, there's the tiresome argument that "capitalism" (or markets) "never failed us; rather, we failed capitalism." Lewis argues that "everyone" fell for the bubble, therefore criticism of the system that created it is foolish; someone less besotted with the peculiarly twisted form of capitalism that we live under would draw the opposite conclusion. As he approaches the current (real estate-stimulated) bubble, he makes the argument again, with even more finger-wagging at the stupidity of people generally.
(Oddly enough, he pokes fun at the tendency of previous bubble histories to tut-tut the folly of people involved in them . Then he does the same thing himself in "In defense of the boom," p.239.)
He declares that the bubble was actually advantageous because it concentrated so much money on the development of new technologies, ignoring the fact that the Dot.Com boom used mostly technology from the 1970's. He doesn't appear to understand the concept of opportunity cost: that bubbles usually disrupt the creative powers of the market by concentrating so much money on what amounts to already-existing assets; the shakeouts do not discriminate between well-run and badly-run firms (sometimes they do, but often other, random traits decide who survives instead).All that capital, therefore, was actually tied up on stupidity rather than actual productivity.
He doesn't understand the difference between productivity (output per worker) and total factor productivity (TFP); the former can be increased merely by borrowing a lot from overseas to replace workers with machines, whereas the latter refers to the actual technical efficiency. And if we actually use a meaningful metric of economic health, rather than ciruclar reasoning, then we need to use human welfare relative to resource consumption as a true measure of economic health.
As a result, with circular reasoning you can blame whatever you want for the crisis. There's a lot of stuff in print about the current economic meltdown, some of which is useful. This is not.
At Times an Interesting Read May 20, 2009
Douglas C. Childers (Atlanta GA United States)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Like countless others who have reviewed Michael Lewis' "Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity", I didn't realize I was buying a collection of works of other authors in addition to Lewis' previously published pieces. However, it was interesting to get a glimpse into different financial eras to see how things have progressed over the past twenty years. Of the four sections, the Dot.Com was my favorite due to Lewis' defense of the entrepreneurial spirit within the Dot.com firms and criticism of Wall Street's post-crash, hypocritical stance of "don't blame us".
What is very interesting and what I came away with from reading about these unique events is the realization that the panic in 1987, as well as the Asian Currency crisis, really didn't affect the average American. However, beginning with the Dot.com stocks and continuing into the current subprime crisis, the markets have evolved into such a far-reaching force that the actions of Wall Street have significantly impacted all income classes. Also, Lewis does a good job in selecting pieces that, as a whole, portrays the evolution of investment banks as firms focused on servicing individual brokerage accounts to fee-driven, relationship banks for corporate clients. This has created significant conflicts of interests with regards to investment banks pushing the sale of stocks of their corporate clients to their individual investors. I perceived an implication from Lewis, through his selection of some of the pieces, that he places a large share of the blame on Wall Street for all of these Panics.
All in all, I felt the book was a good read that you can pick up over the course of a couple of weeks and read at your pace. However, there are articles that you will read and wish you had those ten minutes of your life back. I wish there would have been less focus on the Asian Currency crisis and more so on the current sub-prime mess but I suppose more time needs to pass in order to get a proper perspective on its historical significance.
Very disappointing work from a great writer May 12, 2009
R. C Sheehy (Foxboro,MA USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have seen some reviews similar to mine out there so forgive me if you've heard this all before. I checked this book out with the excitement that I was going to read something insightful and thought provoking along the lines of Liar's Poker or Moneyball. Rather what we got was a bunch of left overs from other peoples writing and thoughts. I found that even the collection of writing's didn't seem to offer any great insight into the nature of financial crisis. On the contrary they seemed to offer superficial commentary on what they were like just after or as they were occurring.
I would advise any Michael Lewis fan to wait for the next book and hope that he learns from this disaster not to try and do something half cocked but to do what he does best and write an original piece of work. Of all his books, this is by far the worst!
 What role the media? April 23, 2009
Paul Gargan (London)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Not a novel by Michael Lewis.
Not even a Michael Lewis book (strictly speaking).
Rather, what we have is a collection of short journalistic style pieces selected by Michael Lewis (articles, journal articles, book excerpts, interviews etc) and put together to make a fairly coherent overview of the four main market panics of the last 20 years - the 1987 sharemarket crash, the 1998 Asian currency crisis (together with the Russian bond default and LTCM meltdown), the dot-com bubble and the most recent global liquidy crisis.
So "edited by Michael Lewis" would be more accurate.
Anyway, the book is split into four equal parts with each part looking at an individual "panic". The treatment is basically the same each time - a few pieces that highlight the hype and exuberance on the way up; a few pieces that give an insiders view while the panic unfolded and then a few pieces from after the event analysing why everything went wrong.
While there is undoubtedly some interesting historical stuff here for people (like me) who like this sort of thing, what I really took from this book was a lesson in the role of the media. The media played a huge role in "ramping" up the market in the good times (the popular press in the case of 1987 and the dot-com bubbles and the trade press in the case of the current liquidity bubble). Although I doubt it was the intention of the book, I was left wondering where all the critical analysis was during these stages of the market cycle (i.e. on the way up).
When things go wrong and the world falls apart there is no shortage of smart-alec commentators who are prepared to say "I told you so" and point out what was "obviously" wrong and that things could not have continued as they were - but where were these people when they were really needed?
The book actually left me feeling incredibly sceptical about the role the media play in market panics. It seems that it wasn't just the regulators, the politicians, investors and everyone else that missed the problems on the way up - it was the media as well. At least that's the picture that this collection of essays suggests. I wonder if that is what Michael Lewis had in mind?
Showing reviews 6-10 of 40
|
|
|
Return to Math.com | |
