Credit Insurance Defaulted on Greece
Nothing seems to work anymore as it used to do in the past. There was a time, not long ago, when a credit default swap… Read More »Credit Insurance Defaulted on Greece
Nothing seems to work anymore as it used to do in the past. There was a time, not long ago, when a credit default swap… Read More »Credit Insurance Defaulted on Greece
Well, this was a treat for me. The book was launched on July 12th in the US, and by a day later it landed on my desk, courtesy of the publishers (Harvard Business Review Press), who by a skillful marketing found out that I like such (financial management) books … and sent me this copy without any request from my side. Nice surprise.
I have read many books about the financial innovation and the crisis (at least 5 in the last year) – this should qualify me not as an expert, but at least as a knowledgeable person.
“The Devil’s Derivatives” is a book about both, so if you expect some stories about the history of the derivatives or a crash course on how to make money late in the night in front of your computer screen – call an expert. “The Devil’s Derivatives” rather illustrates the point of view of an outside historian – thus representing a relatively objective view on how the derivatives world exploded and then imploded in the last years.
“The Devil’s Derivatives” tells the most interesting financial story of our times – how the banks invented new financial products to make more money, how were the worldwide investors lured to buy them and how regulators were seduced by the siren song and adopted lax rules for the derivatives. It is a story of greed and deception, a story of smoke and mirrors in the heart of the world’s financial system.
Nicholas Dunbar is well placed to tell such a story. First of all, he is a well known financial journalist in the UK, and thus he followed the story step by step as it developed. Secondly, by his own account he lived in both London and New York and saw live the banking mentality. From the money splashing of the bonus system to the secrecy of the boardrooms, nothing is missed by “The Devil’s Derivatives”.
At last (but not at least), Dunbar is a physicist by education – thus the assertions that the derivatives are more complex that the quantum physics has finally found a worthy tester. He is actually drawing a very neat comparison between the two fields of science – with interesting results.Read More »“The Devil’s Derivatives” by Nicholas Dunbar – a Financial Book Review
Everybody’s obsessed with finance and the flow of money these days. No wonder that we at doitinvest.com go for the same theme and now wonder that the Nobel committees are looking at the same stuff.
This year the Nobel prize for economics was shared by three gentlemen. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2010 was awarded jointly to Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen and Christopher A. Pissarides “for their analysis of markets with search frictions”. The guys looked actually at the imperfections of the markets – why are they not frictionless but full of hidden costs?Read More »2010 Nobel Prize in Economics vs Ig-Nobel Prize…On Economics Too, of Course
I think I said this before, here on doitinvest.com: banking is a trust business. And when the trust is lost, you can bet that half of your clients are almost gone for the emergency exit.
The reason for this is quite simple – in banking a customer buys your ability to deliver a promise. He/she wants your financing for the long term (mostly desirable for the seller), your ability to generate revenue for the customer, your superior investment yields. It is all about the money.
In their book “The Trusted Advisor”, the Harvard professors who authored it argued that a counselor of any king must strive in essence to do 2 things:Read More »What Means the Goldman Sachs Fraud Charge for Other Banking Stocks?