- ISBN13: 9781591843511
- Condition: New
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Product Description
A first-person account of the white-knuckle weekend that brought the financial world to its knees and changed Wall Street forever, from America’s most famous business reporter.
During a single historic weekend (September 12-14, 2008) the fate of Lehman Brothers was sealed, Merrill Lynch barely survived, AIG became a ward of the federal government, and the roots of our seemingly strong economy teetered on the edge of collapse. As bankers and government officials scrambled to keep the economy from total collapse, and Americans tried to make sense of it all, top CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo spent the entire weekend taking frantic phone calls from the most powerful players on Wall Street and in Washington.
Those CEOs, politicians, and dozens of other sources gave Bartiromo behind-the- scenes details on the crisis and its aftermath, the personalities involved, and the emotions at work during one of the most stressful periods in America… More >>
The Weekend That Changed Wall Street: An Eyewitness Account
Maria writes about a complex subject in which she manages to help her readers understand. I have more respect for Maria after reading this book. Her humbleness and integrity suit the industry well.
Rating: 5 / 5
Maria Bartiromo has one of the strongest, if not the strongest brands in finacial media world. Her name is almost as recognizable as CNBC itself. With all of this comes many valauble things, most of which is access. Who has more access to Wall St. executives, traders, and bankers? Answer no one. This is what I found so attractive while reading The Weekend That Changed Wall Street: An Eyewitness Account. Her sources were something to behold. As an author of a New York Times best selling book on the crisis I know first hand how hard it is getting access to the right players. Being a former Lehman trader I found it easy to get access to Lehman Brothers executives but once I tried to get outside the firm it was difficult to say the least.
I felt even more comfortable reading the book knowing Maria’s character. You feel it on every page. You don’t doubt the blow by blow riviting breakdown of one of the most important moments of financial history becuase it’s Maria Bartiromo bringing you there. The best part of the book is she fills all the important voids. There were a lot of missing links in the chonicles of the financial crisis, not anymore. Her meticulous research, interviews, sources are 2nd to none. I couldn’t put it down. it’s that simple. Buy it. Lawrence G. McDonald
Rating: 5 / 5
There are few media people on Wall Street who command the respect that Maria Bartiromo gets. She is a great interviewer of the heavy hitters of not only the financial community, but of political leaders of foreign nations who control much of the world’s economy. She asks the questions that we would like to ask, and is not intimidated by wealth or power. This is a great behind-the-scenes recap of that unbelievable weekend of two years ago, when the world was positioned on a precipice to an abyss never before known in history.
Rating: 4 / 5
It is tough to write this review, because I actually like Maria Bartiromo. It is hard to explain to people who do not watch a particular TV network 12 hours a day how you can end up feeling like you literally know the people on the network, but I assure you that it has happened to me (having the same network on in your office is different than watching it, I agree, but you get the point). I am working on 10 years plus of having Maria on in my office at her given slot every single business day of the year. The couple times I have met her I had to remind myself that I did not actually know her because it felt like I was conversing with someone whom I converse with every single day.
When I say I like Maria, I mean it. She is reasonably conservative in some issues, a progression many of the talking heads on CNBC have gone through, and she is New York tough. I was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with a trader from my firm who has been there for over 25 years and he told me that when Maria first showed up guys would literally hit her, elbow her, run into her – all in a spirit of protest about a female intruding on their hallowed ground. Maria held her own, won everyone over, and she is now an icon. I see that as a remarkable accomplishment.
So when I say that I want to like her new book on the financial crisis of 2008, I mean it. But it is really tougn to read – disjointed, boring, re-hashed, just bad. This is not to say that there are no interesting parts, because there are. But Maria never comes close to justifying why she wrote the book, and worse, she tried to justify it with the most implausible of rationales: That SHE had an “insider’s” perspective on the crisis which would shed all kinds of light on what happened, how it happened, and what could be done going forward. Ummm, not quite. All narcissism aside, this was a rather silly objective, and Maria should have known better.
I do wonder why she says some of the stuff she says in the book, because I actually really do believe she knows better. “All the drawbacks of Lehman boiled down to one thing: It had no liquidity.”. What?? This is just patently absurd, unless by “liquidity crunch” you mean that they had about 30x the debt that they did assets, and the assets themselves were utter garbage. (And I am aware they had some fantastic operating units, and I believe their franchise was legendary; but to assert that THAT balance sheet suffered from a “liquidity” problem, and not an “insolvency” one, is to assert the ridiculous).
Another exanple is her apologetic for short-selling (an action that, I agree with her, is perfectly legitimate, legal, and in some cases, even valuable). While I defend the rights of short-sellers, Maria’s explanation that “this is what makes a market: a buyer, AND a seller”, is a little misleading, don’t you think? Don’t sellers in most markets actually own what they are selling? Ay yi yi. Short-selling is defensible, but Maria’s anecdotal apologetic makes things worse, not better.
To the extent that a large portion of the book is not ideological, and is not trying to be ideological, I have no gripe. It is pretty boring, it has been written 75 times already, and it is not even that comprehensive, but it is harmless. However, some of her passing attempts at political and economic theory are atrocious (though her final chapter conclusion that capitalism is still the best solution was refreshing). I am as tired as can be at the unbelievable idea that people who bought houses they can not afford are now in a position where they can not afford their house because of the activity of a high finance guy. No, the guy who bought the house he can’t afford is now stuck with a house he can’t afford because he, uh, can’t afford his house. The high finance guy may be stuck with a mess of his own, but the one did not cause the other. I absolutely promise you that Maria knows this. Her introductory rhetoric is silly.
A few thoughts came to mind in reading her book, though. I am growing in confusion at why the Treasury Department was ever so distraught that Bank of America decided not to buy Lehman Brothers. In hindsight, it is abundantly clear that if BofA had done so, it would have killed them (just as buying Merrill almost did in early 2009). Surely Treasury knew the reality of Lehman’s balance sheet, and knew that there was no possible way it could have been rescued, right? Wrong. That much is abundantly clear to me. The experts did not know what was happening (whether that is a good or bad thing, I have no opinion), and were seeking to find solutions that themselves would have solved nothing. I will be elaborating on this in my own writing about the crisis soon enough.
Skip Maria’s book. But watch her show. She is a talented member of the investment community, and I am proud to have her in my office, even if she’s not really there …
Rating: 2 / 5
Maria added one more book to already many on 2008 crisis. I read “Too Big To Fail” by Sorkin last year and “The Big Shot” by Lewis this year and Maria’s “The Weekend That Changed Wall Street” covers almost the same material but the stories are new. I would say that the events, which Sorkin left, got covered my Maria (her sources were different!)
One thing I noticed in “The Weekend That Changed Wall Street” is that Maria tries to get more attention by writing again and again “My source told me…”, “I learned from my source…” etc. This is something I didn’t find in Sorkin’s or Lewis’ books. Also, she started the book from her family and her career history and tried to establish a link with Wall Street events and so on.
“Too Big To Fail” is really a big book and takes time to go through and so Maria’s book is perfect for someone in rush.
Sorkin ended “Too Big To Fail” covering events till 2008 and Maria went ahead to cover 2009 and early 2010.
A good book (3/5).
Rating: 3 / 5
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