Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk Review

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk
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Extreme Money delves into the realm of financial alchemy and reveals the practices of investment bankers that resulted in the global financial crisis. A word of warning: this book is not a breezy read. It cuts to the nitty gritty of the finance world. It's intense and thought-provoking, well worth the time of anyone who dares learn about the new financial fundementalism.
For the most part, I enjoyed the book. I didn't care for the prologue (without some foreknowledge of finance, it fell a little flat). Part one gives a great introduction on evolving banking practices. Part three does a great job of detailing debt, securitization, derivatives, and hedge funds. I have no background in finance, and while it was overly technical in some places, I found the book gives quite a good explanation of it. Part four is extremely good, even if it makes me want to scream. So many "you have got to be kidding me" moments.
One thing I didn't like -- the text itself feels like it has a serious case of ADHD. Das includes many historical examples and literary/pop culture tie-ins. About half of them are illustrative and helpful, but the rest are distracting or only tangentally related to the subject at hand. One minute you're reading about Enron or GE, only to be interrupted by something that happened in the 1600's. Then there could be a passage from "Alice in Wonderland" before you get back to the subject. I didn't need a lesson on quantum mechanics, and I think most people know what a pinata is. In places, it's overdone and distracting. They take away from the points Das strives to make and just seem pretentious. Some people might enjoy the style of breaking up the monotony of reading like a textbook. I didn't care for it much.
Overall, a good read. I learned a lot about how the world got into this mess. The only question left is how will we get out of it. After reading this book, I wish I could be optimistic.

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The human race created money and finance: then, our inventions recreated us. In Extreme Money, best-selling author and global finance expert Satyajit Das tells how this happened and what it means. Das reveals the spectacular, dangerous money games that are generating increasingly massive bubbles of fake growth, prosperity, and wealth--while endangering the jobs, possessions, and futures of virtually everyone outside finance. "...virtually in a category of its own — part history, part book of financial quotations, part cautionary tale, part textbook. It contains some of the clearest charts about risk transfer you will find anywhere. ...Others have laid out the dire consequences of financialisation ("the conversion of everything into monetary form", in Das's phrase), but few have done it with a wider or more entertaining range of references...[Extreme Money] does... reach an important, if worrying, conclusion: financialisation may be too deep-rooted to be torn out. As Das puts it — characteristically borrowing a line from a movie, Inception — "the hardest virus to kill is an idea". -Andrew Hill "Eclectic Guide to the Excesses of the Crisis" Financial Times (August 17, 2011)Extreme Moneynamed to the longlistfor the 2011FT and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award.

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