House of Cards(2009年出版的圖書)

《House of Cards》是2009年3月10日Doubleday出版的一本圖書，作者WILLIAM D. COHAN

基本介紹

• 書名：《House of Cards》
• 又名：失控的華爾街
• 作者：WILLIAM D. COHAN
• ISBN：9780385528269
• 頁數：468頁
• 出版社：Doubleday
• 出版時間：2009年3月10日
• 裝幀：精裝

內容簡介

On March 5, 2008, at 10:15 A.M., a hedge fund manager in Florida wrote a post on his investing advice Web site that included a startling statement about Bear Stearns & Co., the nation’s fifth-largest investment bank: “In my book, they are insolvent.”This seemed a bold and risky statement. Bear Stearns was about to announce profits of $115 million for the first quarter of 2008, had $17.3 billion in cash on hand, and, as the company incessantly boasted, had been a colossally profitable enterprise in the eighty-five years since its founding.

Ten days later, Bear Stearns no longer existed, and the calamitous financial meltdown of 2008 had begun.

How this happened – and why – is the subject of William D. Cohan’s superb and shocking narrative that chronicles the fall of Bear Stearns and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street. Bear Stearns serves as the Rosetta Stone to explain how a combination of risky bets, corporate political infighting, lax government regulations and truly bad decision-making wrought havoc on the world financial system.

Cohan’s minute-by-minute account of those ten days in March makes for breathless reading, as the bankers at Bear Stearns struggled to contain the cascading series of events that would doom the firm, and as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, New York Federal Reserve Bank President Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke began to realize the dire consequences for the world economy should the company go bankrupt.

But HOUSE OF CARDS does more than recount the incredible panic of the first stages of the financial meltdown. William D. Cohan beautifully demonstrates why the seemingly invincible Wall Street money machine came crashing down. He chronicles the swashbuckling corporate culture of Bear Stearns, the strangely crucial role competitive bridge played in the company’s fortunes, the brutal internecine battles for power, and the deadly combination of greed and inattention that helps to explain why the company’s leaders ignored the danger lurking in Bear’s huge positions in mortgage-backed securities.

The author deftly portrays larger-than-life personalities like Ace Greenberg, Bear Stearns’ miserly, take-no-prisoners chairman whose memos about re-using paper clips were legendary throughout Wall Street; his profane, colorful rival and eventual heir Jimmy Cayne, whose world-champion-level bridge skills were a lever in his corporate rise and became a symbol of the reasons for the firm’s demise; and Jamie Dimon, the blunt-talking CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who won the astonishing endgame of the saga (the Bear Stearns headquarters alone were worth more than JP Morgan paid for the whole company).

Cohan’s explanation of seemingly arcane subjects like credit default swaps and fixed- income securities is masterful and crystal clear, but it is the high-end dish and powerful narrative drive that makes HOUSE OF CARDS an irresistible read on a par with classics such as LIAR’S POKER and BARBARIANS AT THE GATE.

Written with the novelistic verve and insider knowledge that made THE LAST TYCOONS a bestseller and a prize-winner, HOUSE OF CARDS is a chilling cautionary tale about greed, arrogance, and stupidity in the financial world, and the consequences for all of us.

以下內容為中文翻譯：

在2008年三月5日上午10點15分，一位在弗羅里達的對沖基金經理在他的投資理財網站上寫了一篇文章，文章中有一段關於貝爾斯登公司（美國五大投資銀行之一）驚人的聲明：“在我的工作簿里，他們已經資不抵債。”這看起來似乎是一個大膽而冒險的聲明。因為貝爾斯登公司不停地對外聲稱在成立的85年來他們已經成為一個超級賺錢的公司，他們在2008年的第一季度盈利一億一千五百萬美元，並且擁有一百七十三億的現金流。

十天之後，貝爾斯登不復存在，災難性的2008年金融危機爆發了。

How this happened – and why –是William D. Cohan令人震驚文章的標題，文章細述了貝爾斯登公司沒落與華爾街第二鍍金時代結束。貝爾斯登公司像羅賽達石一樣解釋了風險混合投資（a combination of risky bets）是如何助力政治鬥爭，鬆懈政府管制，制定錯誤的決定，這一切對世界的金融系統產生了微妙的破壞

Cohan以分鐘為單位地講述著三月的那十天裡發生的事情，（讀者應接不暇，但又急於了解，不停地閱讀），在貝爾斯登的銀行家竭盡全力地控制一系列嵌套的可能是公司倒閉事件；美國財政部長Paulson開始意識到如果這家公司倒閉世界經濟的悲慘後果。

但是HOUSE OF CARDS不僅僅重新敘述了第一段經濟危機持續的恐慌。William D. Cohan華麗地說明了為什麼似乎無敵的華爾街金融體系崩塌。他逐年敘述了貝爾斯登虛張聲勢的公司文化，他所扮演的在各公司財產橋樑上奇怪的核心角色，權利鬥爭中兩敗俱傷的戰鬥，以及貪婪和放任的致命結合。這一切解釋了為什麼貝爾斯登公司的領導無視公司在業界有舉足輕重地位的按揭證券（mortgage-backed securities）業務存在的漏洞。

作者巧妙的描繪了許多傳奇人物。Ace Greenberg，貝爾斯登吝嗇的不與人為敵（take-no-prisoners）的董事，他的復古的（re-using）紙片便簽是華爾街的傳奇；他的死敵也是最終繼承人Jimmy Cayne，擁有世界冠軍級的溝通技巧（bridge skill），Jimmy是公司崛起的關鍵人物但同時也是促使公司倒閉的問題人物之一；Jamie Dimon，一個直言不諱的（JPMorgan Chase）的CEO，他最終贏得了這場令人瞠目結舌鬥爭。（曾經貝爾斯登總部比JP Morgan的所有公司總和的價值要高）

Cohan對像信用違約掉期（credit default swaps），固定收益證券（fixed- income securities）晦澀難懂的事物的解釋熟練且清楚，同時也正是因為這是一款“高端菜”以及有力的敘述才使得HOUSE OF CARDS成為了與LIAR’S POKER和BARBARIANS AT THE GATE同一標準的極有誘惑力的讀物。

與曾經最暢銷的獲獎作品THE LAST TYCOONS一樣，HOUSE OF CARDS有小說似的神韻和行業知識，它是對我們是一個關於貪婪，自大，金融世界中愚蠢行為及其後果的激冷警示。（翻譯不妥處歡迎修改）。

作者簡介

WILLIAM D. COHAN, a former senior Wall Street investment banker, is the bestselling author of The Last Tycoons and the winner of the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes for The Financial Times, Fortune, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Daily Beast, and appears frequently on CNBC.