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Oprah Time: A Colossal Failure Of Common Sense by Lawrence G. McDonald with Patrick Robinson

In oprah time on 25 August 2009 with 1 comment

Every financial point of inflection be it a recession or a boom has its signature event. The internet boom was marked by the IPO of Netscape and the merger of AOL with media company Time Warner. The internet bust was marked by Worldcom and Enron’s collapse. The current subprime implosion in the US was marked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Lawrence McDonald is a former vice president at Lehman Brothers got his story out in A Colossal Failure of Common Sense. Unlike similar books like Barbarians at the Gate, A Colossal Failure of Common Sense was written too close to the event as the author’s recollection is very emotionally charged, McDonald sets up the story with his own story front-and-centre.

I found it interesting that McDonald discussed the kind of derivatives employed by Lehman Brothers as a radical new low, yet he referenced Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker  which illustrated the dark side of bonds and derivatives some two decades previously as a book that he knew well.

McDonald talks about the efforts that his department made to try and balance out the carnage that collateralised mortgage debt caused at Lehman Brothers. Ultimately it reads like a litany of stupidity and missed opportunities. It’s like as if two decades after Liars Poker and F.I.A.S.C.O. that no one learned any lesson at all.

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