Liars Poker ...worth a read !!

For the last two days I have been hooked to a book called "Liars poker".Though I had planned on reading this one for a long time ,never been able to get time.Finally at home I had loads of time on my hands and decided to take it up .The book describes the happening in one of the wall street's biggest investment bank during the mid 70's "Salomon brothers" through the eyes of a Bond salesman Micheal Lewis .His portrayal of life as student at Princeton university,as a trainee at the Salomon office in New york gives us a glimpse of darker side of the route to one of the most monetarily rewarding profession of our times Investment Banking.The books introduces how the otherwise silent world of bond markets became the epicenter of all the financial activity,how enormous profits were made by selling housing mortgages as securities and how new shortsighted financial instruments were invented by the ever so smart traders to make a quick buck.

Apart from the working of the bank the author also describes the ways of working of traders,salesman & managers ,their aspirations and how they went about achieving it.The vivid and metaphorical descriptions of the traders did succeed in creating highly demonic impression of the traders ..if that was the author intended to do .The books ends with the author describing how greed,fall in the markets ,infighting within the organization for superiority and the inefficacy of Salomon brothers management resulted in the downfall of this great financial giant.

As mentioned by the author in his epilogue, this book is not a product of a disgruntled or estranged investment banker( the author himself was successful and liked his work) , its just the story of his life ,an unbiased description.It is essential for all to know this else the book would be worthless & will be viewed as a writing of a sad unsuccessful trader.Besides the other frank admission of his greed and incompetence made by the author during the course of his story add a great deal of credibility to his work.Even though a lot of financial terms sound gibberish to us ,a bit of goggling or as they say now a bit of "binging" will help.The different possibilities in the financial world is bound to stir one's imagination.A nice book...a good two days work