Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 30
 Depends on what you're really looking for August 26, 2009
Kivanc Cubukcu (NY, USA)
Expectedly just as in every book review, people have very different opinions regarding Kate Kelly's work. In my opinion if you're looking for a very general synopsis of what happened to the giant investment bank as a whole, this book will disappoint you. However if you're already aware of the hedge fund collapse during summer of 2007, Bear's "liquidity problem" gossips circulating around Wall Street for weeks even months, and want to get a more detailed rundown on what really happened in those past 3 days, then look no further because you found the correct reading material. I also enjoyed the writers style where talking about senior members of the bank (Molinaro, Cayne, "Ace" Greenberg, etc) she pauses the story for a little while and gives some background information about their career and life stories which is quite informative. The book is also written in a way where you feel like you are living the catastrophe with the upper management by describing little details here and there that gives the work a true excitement. I certainly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to readers who are interested in learning how this investment banking giant came to its knees in just a matter of 3 days.
 A more entertaining book... August 26, 2009
Jon Swift (Baghdad, Iraq)
A more entertaining book is Bahrabian Bacchanal- The Untold Story about Arabia by Abu Mohammed .. it reveals the exploits of an ex-Goldman Sachs banker and an ex-SAC trader in Saudi and other parts of the Middle East.
 What a story August 14, 2009
Mariusz Skonieczny (ClassicValueInvestors.blogspot.com)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
What an amazing story. Bear Sterns, one of the most powerful financial companies in the country, trades at $57 on Thursday, March 13, 2008, and within 72 hours it is sold for $2, on Sunday, March 16, 2008. I found this book to be just incredible. The author writes in a narrative format about the 72 hours detailing all the events that lead to the collapse of Bear Sterns. It almost seems like you are in a movie theatre watching a documentary.
The book presents how the hubris, greed, and culture of the firm's employees made them care about one thing - the money. In the end, they ended up paying a steep price for their actions. If you want to read an amazing story, this is a good book.
- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market
Denial July 25, 2009
Stephen T. Hopkins (Oak Park, Illinois)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Kate Kelly expanded her 2008 reporting on the fall of Bear Stearns for The Wall Street Journal into a book titled Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street. The hour-by-hour structure of the book increases the intensity of the action Kelly describes. The context she creates by references to earlier times allows the tension to relax periodically. Throughout, Kelly highlights the many ways in which CEO Alan Schwartz and Chairman Jimmy Cayne ignored or denied the gravity of the situation the company was in. By the time reality sank in, there were few options remaining. Kelly dedicates the book to the 14,000 people who worked for Bear Stearns, and those potential readers won't like a lot of her explanation of what happened. The rapid demise of Bear was surprising at the time, and understandable in the context that Kelly presents. I wanted to learn more about many of the conversations that Kelly referenced as happening, but doesn't elaborate. While JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon seemed to be on the phone constantly about a deal, Kelly doesn't provide much insight into the details. I wondered a lot about the progression of Dimon's conversations, especially with Tim Geithner. Nonetheless, Street Fighters provides fast reading about the final hours of a once-successful company, and most readers will find the story captivating.
Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)
 I'm baffled by the applause for this book July 19, 2009
Aaron C. Brown (New York, New York United States)
43 out of 45 found this review helpful
Two previous reviewers suggested you read House of Cards instead, and got slammed by negative comments and "unhelpful" ratings. I'll take my chances seconding that recommendation. House of Cards covers the history of Bear Stearns, gets most of the technical details and chronology right and (despite the inflammatory subtitle) is fair and balanced.
I do admit Street Fighters is a faster read. It cuts out all the boring history, and gets right to the three-day collapse. Characters are simple and financial details swept under the rug. Excitement is provided by constant overstatement. No one rests after working hard, they "drop from exhaustion," or, if they take an Ambien first, "lapse into a drug-induced" stupor. No one gets a telephone call at night, they are "jolted awake." Someone is "slammed," "electrified," or "devastated," nearly every page and almost as often we find it is the worst day of someone's life.
Okay, that's just style and if you like your writing lively, that's fine. It also helps if you like to hear about people washing their hair, taking showers, buying iPhones or playing on-line games. You'll find out who's a snappy dresser, who eats greasy food and especially what kind of houses different characters own. I don't care for that stuff, but I suppose it gives some people a feel for the situation.
My biggest gripe about the book is the author's treatment of disputed information. Time and again we get stories from anonymous or indirect sources in full-size print in the text, with an asterisk at the end to a fine-print notice that a named direct witness denies the story. An author is entitled to choose whom to believe, but presentation should be determined by normal standards of credibility. If you do read this book, pay careful attention to the asterisks and fine print, they make a big difference.
Moreover, in every single instance, the author goes for the more sensational and scandalous version. Eventually I lost my faith that she was exercising judgment, and decided she was trying to make the story as juicy as possible, regardless of the facts. This is corroborated by lots of barely relevant side stories, all of which involve some type of scandal (for example, Deryck Maughan, who is not involved in the story, snubbed Debbie Black, who is not involved in the story, at a Citigroup party in 1998, unrelated to the story; but it gets a full description because Debbie is married to Steve Black, who is an important participant).
My second-biggest gripe is she gets the basic facts wrong. Her description of repo, a key ingredient to the story, is wrong in a way that makes it irrelevant (which explains why she drops it from the story, I guess). She believes Bear had the option of a Chapter 11 restructuring, when broker dealers are allowed only Chapter 7 liquidations, another essential factor. She completely misses the crucial terms of JPMorgan's deal documents signed on Sunday night, which means she misses all the excitement of the subsequent several days.
My third-biggest gripe is the hour-by-hour format is a disaster for this story. There were too many streams of events to keep track of this way. Instead of breaking the story down into meaningful parts and then showing how and when they interacted, we get more or less random updates. This causes her to miss major parts of the story, and in some of the parts she does describe the essential context is either missing, or dozens of pages away. To makes things worse, at unpredictable times she goes into historical accounts. These are not set off in any way. So you read the events of 9 AM Saturday under that subheading, then 11 AM Saturday under that subheading, then within the 11 AM subheading you're suddenly back in 1978 for nine pages, with nothing to warn you, after which we go back to 11 AM Saturday, again with no subheading change. With all the abrupt switches of place required by the ticking-clock format, including unlabeled time switches destroys the coherence of the story.
I can see why this book would be fun for someone interested in a fast, scandalous read. But if you want to learn about what happened to Bear Stearns, I suggest you look elsewhere.
Showing reviews 6-10 of 30
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