Panic!

The Story of Modern Financial Insanity

De: Michael Lewis

Narrado por: Jesse Boggs, Blair Hardman

Featuring an exclusive interview with the author, "America's poet laureate of capital" (The Los Angeles Times)

When it comes to markets, the first deadly sin is greed. In Panic!, #1 bestselling author Michael Lewis has chosen several pieces of brilliant journalism to illuminate the most violent and costly upheavals in recent financial history: the Crash of '87, the Russian Default (and the subsequent collapse of Long Term Capital Management), the Asian Currency Crisis of 1999, the Internet Bubble, and the current Sub-Prime Mortgage Disaster. Among the unabridged selections are several pieces by Lewis himself, whose writing also introduces each section, as well as contributions from Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman, James Surowiecki and others writing in Fortune, The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Some of the pieces paint the mood and market factors leading up to the particular crash, or show what people thought was happening at the time. Others, with the luxury of hindsight, analyze what actually happened. There are sobering messages common to these narratives: the lessons that should have been learned along the way were for the most part ignored; and when push comes to shove -- when all investors run to the same side of the boat -- the carefully devised protections against risk turn out to be wishful thinking.

As proved in Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, and Moneyball, Lewis is without peer in his understanding of market forces and of human foibles. He is also, arguably, the funniest serious writer in America.©2008 Michael Lewis; (P)2008 Simon & Schuster Audio

Michael Lewis where are you?

This book is as if it were designed for a newspaper. It has no substance. The narrator is not Michael Lewis.

Interesting, but not as much as other Lewis books

Most of this book are newspaper articles from various stock market (or other) crashes from the 1980's up until the housing crisis of 2007-2009. Michael Lewis features some of his own articles written at the time of each crash and includes other well know financial commentators like Paul Krugman, and then offers some insight as to how and why each crash occurred.

The content is not as interesting as some of Michael Lewis's other books, but it is still worthwhile for anyone that is interested in better understanding the stock market, and particularly wants to understand how crashes and panics occur. Anyone looking for a more entertaining story should instead read Moneyball or The Big Short.

Great brief history on modern finance!

Great brief history on modern finance! You may not agree with all of the anecdotes but you'll lik likely appreciate thoughtfulness, research, and well crafted story.

Insightful but Don't Miss His Sequel

Michael Lewis is at his best writing about the business and personalities he has known first hand from his Wall Street experience. This book paints an in-depth and disturbing picture of the Wall Street "doomsday machines," as Lewis aptly calls them. What we see in the "sub-prime" collapse are our major investment banks--with a few notable exceptions--so driven by competitive and ego-centered pressures for ever-larger profits and bonuses that prudent and responsible management oversight was abandoned. The shame in this case is that the consequences of their irresponsibility fell not only on the banks' shareholders but on the country as a whole, because the painful day of reckoning has wreaked havoc throughout the credit markets. It is abundantly clear from this account that business as usual the old Wall Street way can no longer be tolerated by the country, and reform is inevitable. Let us hope the reform is sensible and responsible.

I gave the book only three stars, because the best chapters (by Lewis himself) are already available on the internet. Further, his best piece on the subprime crisis was not included in the book. You can find it, however, on the Conde Nast, Portfolio.com website--an article in the December 2008 edition, entitled, appropriately, "The End."

Just a Hint of Lewis Inside all the Panic

"No one believes the original assumptions anymore. It's hard to believe that anyone-- yes, including me-- ever believed it."
- John Seo, Fermat Capital, Quoted in 'Panic' by Michael Lewis

I'm not giving this book 3 stars because the writing is bad. Much of the writing is very, very good. I'm just giving it three stars because it technically is only an anthology edited by Michael Lewis. It is just a a collection of stories written by the author and many other financial writers divided into Four major parts/panics:

1. 1987 Black Monday
2. 1997 Asian financial crisis
3. 2000 Dot-com collapse
4. 2007-8 Global Financial Colapse

Lewis, apparently, got the idea of this anthology from a discussion with Dave Eggers. Dave offered up a "McSweeney's Intern" to compile and I'd assume edit and get permissions, Lewis would contribute an introduction and some transition writing, and obviously, some of his own pieces from each of these four panics. The book's proceeds would go to 826 National to fund relief in New Orleans (you can't strike a bargain with Eggers without it ending up benefiting someone) and boom! Book.

Anyway, if I was reading/listening to it as a textbook, I'd give it four stars, but it just seems a bit too easy, too forced, not enough original Lewis material to really give it much beyond the three stars I gave it. If you want great writing on panics, I'd just go read some of Lewis' original long-form pieces, books (Liar's Poker, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt), etc. If you want a survey from a bunch of good financial writers on recent panics, well ok, this one will do it and the money does go to a good place.