A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers

One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been answered until now: What happened at Lehman Brothers and why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Lehman Brothers Vice President gives us the straight answers€"right from the belly of the beast.

In A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, Larry McDonald, a Wall Street insider, reveals, the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has ever done. The book is couched in the very human story of Larry McDonald€s Horatio Alger-like rise from a Massachusetts €œgateway to nowhere€ housing project to the New York headquarters of Lehman Brothers, home of one of the world€s toughest trading floors.
 
We get a close-up view of the participants in the Lehman collapse, especially those who saw it coming with a helpless, angry certainty. We meet the Brahmins at the top, whose reckless, pedal-to-the-floor addiction to growth finally demolished the nation€ s oldest investment bank. The Wall Street we encounter here is a ruthless place, where brilliance, arrogance, ambition, greed, capacity for relentless toil, and other human traits combine in a potent mix that sometimes fuels prosperity but occasionally destroys it.
 
The full significance of the dissolution of Lehman Brothers remains to be measured. But this much is certain: it was a devastating blow to America€s€"and the world€s€"financial system. And it need not have happened. This is the story of why it did.