---
product_id: 86276157
title: "House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street"
brand: "william d. cohan"
price: "44875CFA"
currency: XOF
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 6
url: https://www.desertcart.sn/products/86276157-house-of-cards-a-tale-of-hubris-and-wretched-excess
store_origin: SN
region: Senegal
---

# House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street

**Brand:** william d. cohan
**Price:** 44875CFA
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by william d. cohan
- **How much does it cost?** 44875CFA with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.sn](https://www.desertcart.sn/products/86276157-house-of-cards-a-tale-of-hubris-and-wretched-excess)

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- william d. cohan enthusiasts

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## Description

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Publish in hindi
  

*by R***H on Reviewed in India on 25 January 2019*

Please Publish book in Hindi , many people want to read this book but not available in Hindi. 50 crore Indian people talk to each other in  Hindi.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Great BooK
  

*by L***N on Reviewed in Canada on 8 February 2019*

Scary how some huge companies operate.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Most Enlightening book On the Crisis so Far
  

*by G***R on Reviewed in the United States on 23 March 2009*

This book concentrates on the fall of Bear Stearns which was the first major financial institution to crash here in the USA. The book is casually written and does map out how quickley liquidity crisis can wipe out a leveraged firm by stepping you through the day to day happenings of the last 10 days of the firm's life.  Wall Street firms are much different than other firms such as auto or computer firms. If you havent read much about Wall Street and havent understood this then this book is a good introduction to some of this. I have some sense of this as I have a brother who has worked on Wall Street for 20 years, but this book still gives a sense of what was going on in this particular crisis. Banking and especially investment banking is a highly leveraged business by definition and so the dynamics of these businesses are fundamentally different and you can get a good sense of this from this book.  After walking the reader through the last 10 days of the crisis the book then goes back and takes a much broader view filling in the context by giving the history of the Bear Stearns company and then giving very detailed background information on the key longtime leaders of Bear Stearns. It is clear that Bear Stearns was a bit of a rogue shop lead by a pretty independent minded group of traders who had been at the firm in some cases for 40-50 years. In giving the history of these leaders and also filling in their expertises one can see some of the strengths and weaknesses of the firm and of the leadership in place.There is enough history in place here that you can understand how this company came to be such a stalwart of the fixed income arena as they had some of their big wins in bond markets and that is what the leadership understood best. It does appear that they had a guy running a couple of their hedgefunds who while a smart guy was not a very skilled manager and they appear to have let this guy get over his head. His manager was protecting him from interference from the "compliance" officers of the company. It also appears that this manager of the two hedge funds was engaged in fraud to the extent that he clearly saw that the mortgage derivatives from the subprime market were riskier, he was much more dependent upon these securities than he was reporting to the investors. This guy is apparrently in the courts on a couple of charges.Bear Stearns was clearly filled with some interesting characters and there are enough anecdotes from the discussions to give you a pretty good feeling for the types of salty guys they were. There are also the reports on the lifestyle that some of these guys were living and of course it is clear that those at the top had some pretty interesting lifestyles. Some of these guys had like 5 houses and couple Ferrari's. The Ceo who was forced out just shortly before the company crashed had a summer routine where he would be helicoptered in the late afternoon on Thursdays to the golf course in new jersey for a quick afternoon round. (At a cost of 1700 bucks each time, which I guess if you are worth a billion you can afford).It is also clear that there were few people in the upper eschelons of the company who had a really firm grasp of the more complicated derivatives that were instrumental in blowing up the hedge funds. It becomes clear that the risks that they were running were not very well understood by all of those in the management. This of course is not necessarily very surprising, I have seen the same phenomenon in silicon valley managers understanding the risks of the technologies that they adopt.According to the story, one of the problems was that the key derivatives expert had had his compensation reined in and so may not have been minding the store as carefully as previously when his hedge fund managers were roaming into dangerous territory. It appears that to some extent this is a story of not enough adult supervision and not enough checks and balances on a fund that was investing in some risky and complicated securites. The Upper layers of management were not wartching it too closely, but part of that is that the returns had been quite strong for 40 months in a row and frankly he was misleading people in what he was investing in. (why is not clear but it appears he was running bigger risks to keep returns up).The end of the book details the last 9 months of the collapse of the Hedgefunds up until the final 10 day liquidity crisis which ends up ending the company. In this section there is information on the final weeks of Lehmann brothers giving the reader insight into the differences in that event and Bear Stearns. There is also some discussion of the perspective of the crisis from the point of view of the last Ceo of Bear Stearns. This view appears to me to be pretty good.The Author is a guy who has worked in this industry and he clearly communicates what the places are like. He is also fairly transparent in his discussion of certain events. In a number of places he indicates that different participants view things a bit differently and he clearly indicates the different viewpoints on what happened. The author has clearly researched most of the trade press publications about Bear Stearns during this period and has had the active participation of a good number of the senior managers of Bear Stearns as interview subjects for the story that he maps out. He has done an excellent job of mapping this one out.In summary I find this an extremely informative book on the Mortgage crisis as it hit Wall Street. You will understand much better the involvement of the Investment banks in this arena. You will understand very well what happened at Bear Stearns and to a much lesser extent Lehmann Brothers. However, be aware that this crisis involves many many different parts of the economy and therefore you will not understand in any detail what happened at say Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or Countrywide, these players in this debacle along with Congress and others like HUD are not at all discussed. This book focuses on Bear Stearns, whose collapse was pivotal and this book gives you a very good understanding of the dynamics of that, personalities, mistakes, personnel limitations, egos and all. It adds much to the picture but the overall economic debacle that we are dealing with is broader than just Wall Street. Regardless this is a valuable and well done addition to the literature. Cohan is to be commended.

## Frequently Bought Together

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*Product available on Desertcart Senegal*
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*Last updated: 2026-03-04*