From the Publisher
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
The Undoing Project |
Flash Boys |
The Big Short |
The Blind Side |
Moneyball |
Liar’s Poker |
|
| More from Michael Lewis | “A spectacular account of two great men who faced up to uncertainty and the limits of human reason.” ―William Easterly, Wall Street Journal | A small group of Wall Street iconoclasts realize that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders. | The #1 New York Times bestseller: “It is the work of our greatest financial journalist, at the top of his game. And it’s essential reading.”―Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair | “Lewis has such a gift for storytelling…he writes as lucidly for sports fans as for those who read him for other reasons.” ―Janet Maslin, New York Times | “This delightfully written, lesson-laden book deserves a place of its own in the Baseball Hall of Fame.” ―Forbes | The time was the 1980s. The place was Wall Street. The game was called Liar’s Poker. |
@BobbyGvegas –
I just finished. A great job. Thank you Michael. I’ve been following this debacle closely for a long time (I used to work in financial risk management). Everything in this book squares closely. And, there was much I could not have known but for Michael’s penetrating interactions with Sam and his cohort. The entire “Effective Altruism” is preposterous on its face, as is the absurd “cryptocurrency” fallacy (it’s simply “gambling”). I will leave it to the legal system to determine Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal culpability. At a minimum I regard him and his crew as having indulged in egregious, ruinous global recklessness. I also note that the FTX bankruptcy CEO brought in to deal with the mess, John Ray, does not come off looking very well here—and I seriously doubt Michael Lewis would go anywhere near defamation. Ray’s cynical bias is rather disturbing. It will not help matters going forward.I agree with another reviewer about the obvious 1-star negative “review” trolling. I would broadly favor all reviews be limited to “verified purchasers” and legit “advance comp copy” reviews. This is hardly the first time I’ve seen partisan disinfo “reviews” on Amazon where topics are controversial.
inframan –
I’m only part way through the book but I felt I had to comment in view of all the negative comments that have already been posted (by mostly reviewers w/o “verified purchase” notations, I noticed).Personally I think the book is brilliant, the best book I’ve read in years and for me the best book yet by Michael Lewis. What he does is extraordinary. He gets right into SBF’s head & shows us how SBF sees & thinks, no easy task. A large portion of the negative reviews of the book focus of SBF’s apparent display of autistic behavior. On the spectrum” is a common reference. Well, duh. He hasn’t much use for social graces or conventions, small-talk or facial expressions and excels at puzzles & games. He dislikes Shakespeare (whom he dismisses based on Bayesian Priors) but devours Harry Potter books.I’ve long suspected that people like SBF, “on the spectrum” so to speak, are part of a new breed, a kind of mutation of humanity. This book is the best argument I’ve found so far of that argument.I will probably revise this review as I continue reading this intriguing book.
Bryan Desloge –
Interesting read – Like watching an accident in slow motion … hard to tell if Sam was naive or criminal –
Charlie –
This book was not what I was expecting. Everyone knows Michael Lewis and I was expecting this book to explain the salacious details reported in the media about SBF and his weird friends that created the $100B FTX, only to see it utterly implode. I was expecting extravagant parties and rampant fraud. Instead, Lewis explains what he observed and concludes that SBF is an oddball and many of the “obvious” assumptions surrounding the case are still very early in their development and likely will not remain as obvious as this saga continues. Don’t worry there are still plenty of mind-blowing stories and difficult-to-fathom sums of money sloshing around.Several reviewers impugn Lewis’s motives and assume he’s an idiot or some sort of shill for SBF. Given Lewis’s credentials, I find this implausible but the reader will have to determine that for themselves. Effective Altruism plays a big role in the book and is arguably SBF’s defining belief. I think that philosophy is absolute poison so I am not in anyway defending SBF or FTX, but I will surely follow the current case more closely now that my initial assumptions have been put into question. Hopefully the location of the missing $8B is identified, but chances of that are low. If you enjoy finance or anything crytocurrency related, this book is a must read. It is written in the usual Michael Lewis manner- fast paced and engaging.
Timbo –
First of all, upon reading the real book, as opposed to the early reviews – the supposed overly-sympathetic treatment of SBF by author was impossible to find. It’s just not there. Yes, Michael Lewis did go to great pains to explain the complicated nature of SBF in a fairly kind manner, like a gentle anthropologist. But he laid out the chronology in an impassive way, and the reader knows that SBF was guilty of at least great irresponsibility.In the end what mattered most to this telling is that SBF was not a sociopathic fraudster like Elizabeth Holmes or Jeffrey Skilling; the fact that no documents or data were destroyed stands out in comparison to any real devious criminal enterprise like Enron or Theranos. SBF lacked those criminal intentions, but due to his incredibly poor custodianship of huge amounts of money, will probably still likely be culpable for a huge misappropriation of customer funds. My takeaway from the book is that he will get 10 years give or take a few. In contrast Jeffrey Skilling served 14 years for being ringleader of a group which committed massive financial fraud and also hugely manipulated public utilities like the California power grid. (Note: that’s this reviewer’s take, not in the book other than a very slight implication due to bankruptcy CEO John Ray having also handled Enron.)Most of all, the book is a cautionary tale about another new thing which seemed different than the last thing – of course! – a 5-6 year blip in financial history where many otherwise sane people seemed to have lost their marbles in the rise and fall of yet another new way to make and lose great fortunes. In that sense it’s a classic Michael Lewis book.Highly recommended.
Clay Yearsley –
As usual, Michael Lewis takes a dense subject and makes it accessible to the reader. In many of his books, there are “good guys” – Billy Beane, the Tuohys, Tversky & Kahnemann. This isn’t one of those books. It’s hard to find anyone who wasn’t a bad actor, even if it was unintentional.As for the primary subject, Sam Bankman-Fried, I think he’s far less complex than he or others (including Michael Lewis) would have you believe. He’s a narcissistic a-hole with a savior complex, thinking that humanity needs him, with his far superior intellect, to save it. He’s so far above other people in his own mind that he can’t bother having a conversation without playing games and not paying a bit of attention to them. He needs to be spanked and sent to his room without his games and toys. As I type this, it appears that’s exactly what has happened. A jury found him guilty of seven counts of fraud. He faces sentencing of up to 110 years in March 2024.I recommend the book, even if the subject is a jerk, the writing is excellent.
Thomas James Fitzpatrick, IV –
Lewis does it again, making wonky, complex financial instruments not only accessible, but come to life through a series of colorful personalities at the center of the most spectacular crypto crash in history. His unexpected front-row seat to this incredible, awful event makes gives the reader a unique view of events and the people who instigated themMany seem to dislike the fact that the events and people at the center of Lewis’s work are not clearly and unredeemably evil, but I think that’s what makes it such a good story. I hope you’ll pick it up and learn more about the events that may have doomed crypto to the fringes of the financial system for another decade to come.
BigCat –
I’ve read just about every book by Mr. Lewis , from his first “Liar’s Poker” to now his latest, and I’m left a bit more knowledgeable about the world’s financial systems and the various personalities, some virtuous, most perfidious, that operate inside of it. With “Going Infinite” I’ll add a new adjective to the characters involved in this drama: dumb. Gullible, incompetent, naive also work. Mr. Lewis does a great job of explaining the many machinations involved in this latest expose of “late stage capitalism”, “where everything is made up and the points don’t matter” to quote “Who’s Line is it Anyway?” Except it matters to all the working stiffs who lost everything because they trusted an oddball in cargo shorts and droopy socks.
Charles Hesse –
The Big Short was one of the best books I’d ever read. I was very excited when news came out the Michael Lewis was present to witness the collapse first-hand and in the process of writing about FTX.Much of the book is written exactly how he intended it, prior to the news of the fraud that was occurring. The book then offers a brilliant first hand experience of the downfall as it happens. This was an excellent approach. It sets the standard for how so many people felt. It’s easy for many people who only heard about FTX upon news of it’s bankruptcy to go, “Oh yeah, of course that was a scam!”. It takes a lot of integrity and provides a much greater lesson to share all the ways SBF was perceived as a eccentric genius then explain all the mechanisms contributing to his failure, and how so many people elected to overlook those problems, including SBF himself.It’s an easy read, probably provides one of the best explanations of what really happened, and offers some really cool perspectives and insight. The book is broken up into ten chapters and it’s around chapter eight that things start to get damning, because that’s the time in the story when it all falls apart.
Gerald Walsh –
You want some inside skinny and you get it.I like a riches to rags story. I have a Series 7 trading credential, and the adrenaline rush is the thing one gets vicariously I suppose.Written before Sam’s guilty verdict there’s many questions raised here.Were Sam and the companies involved reduced to rags? Or was there a misunderstanding by the courts?The early history of Sam is well written and quite cool. An autistic physics major plays video games and mental games of all sorts so well he becomes a star in the Jane Street trading firm, a home to other outlier geniuses.The climax and dénouement are less crystalline. Not Mr. Lewis’s doing, but the most annoying detail is re: Is the money still out there?I tend to believe a crash is a crash and we know players lost thier funds. If the court knows they’ll never know if Sam stashed billions on the web, do they give him the 110 consecutive years imprisonment so he never enjoys it? Want another thought? This man-child’s autism appears so severe he may get himself killed in prison.The math is harder to understand than the tranches in The Big Short. I made a couple bucks in crypto but I did it by guessing it was coming to an end when Matt Damon made that ridiculously long commercial before the Superbowl.Love the inimitable Micheal Lewis. Just thought the many new characters covered in the middle and end of Sam’s story were less clear than I would have liked.Kids today.