Books › When Genius Failed
When Genius Failed
First published 2000 · 288 pages
A gripping autopsy of intellectual hubris where the smartest guys in the room mathematically guarantee their own spectacular ruin.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like watching a slow-motion train wreck engineered by the smartest people on earth. It begins with a sense of awe, immersing you in the rarefied air of Wall Street's most brilliant minds as they build an unstoppable money-making machine. But as the narrative accelerates, the mood shifts from triumphant to dread-soaked. The prose is sharp and accessible, effortlessly translating complex financial arbitrage into a propulsive human drama about arrogance and the illusion of control. You don't need to understand bond spreads to feel the suffocating tension of the trading floor as the markets turn against them. It is a masterclass in narrative non-fiction that will thrill fans of corporate post-mortems and cautionary tales of unchecked ambition.
- Mood
- tense
- hubristic
- dread-soaked
- high-stakes
- Tone
- analytical
- cautionary
- gripping
- ironic
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- intellectual hubris · the illusion of control · psychology of risk · fragility of systems · blind ambition
- The writing
- Clear, journalistic, and accessible, translating complex financial mathematics into compelling human drama.
- The arc
- Moves from awe at sheer intellectual firepower to mounting anxiety, culminating in the catharsis of a spectacular, inevitable collapse.
- Who it's for
- Readers fascinated by Wall Street history, behavioral economics, and the psychology behind spectacular corporate downfalls.
Content notes
- financial ruin
- high-stress environments
About the book
"John Meriwether, a famously successful Wall Street trader, spent the 1980s as a partner at Salomon Brothers, establishing the best - and the brainiest - bond arbitrage group in the world. A mysterious and shy midwesterner, he knitted together a group of Ph.D.-certified arbitrageurs who rewarded him with filial devotion and fabulous profits. Then, in 1991, in the wake of a scandal involving one of his traders, Meriwether abruptly resigned.
For two years, his fiercely loyal team - convinced that the chief had been unfairly victimized - plotted their boss's return. Then, in 1993, Meriwether made a historic offer. He gathered together his former disciples and a handful of supereconomists from academia and proposed that they become partners in a new hedge fund different from any Wall Street had ever seen. And so Long-Term Capital Management was born.".
"When Genius Failed is the cautionary financial tale of our time, the saga of what happened when an elite group of investors believed they could actually deconstruct risk and use virtually limitless leverage to create limitless wealth."--BOOK JACKET.
Description from Open Library.
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