Extreme Money

Cutting to the bone Professor Jensen goes to Wall Street Drowning by numbers Censored loans High opportunity bonds Fallen angels Junk people Milken's mobsters The sweet envy of bankers Thank you for borrowing One bridge too far National treasure 10 Private vices Excess returns Sexy private equity Inflight entertainment Selling the family silver Holey dollar Money for nothing Public squalor, private profits Locust plagues Vain capital Amateur hour Turbulence 11 Dice with debt Securitisation recipes Slice and dice Almost as safe as houses Synthetic stuff Get copula-ed Sticky mess Several houses of one's own Cheaper cuts of mortgage ARMs race Heroes for one day 12 The doomsday debt machine Alpha-debt soup In the shadow of debt Virtual loans Counting on the abacus Intellectual masturbation Used to be smart Chain reaction Phase transition Terra icognito 13 Risk supermarkets Mind your derivatives Particle finance Hedging your bets Sewer bonds Harvard case studies The Italian job Betting your hedge TARDIS trades I will kill you later First to lose Toxic municipal siblings Playing swaps and robbers The Greek job Madman's games 14 Financial arms race Shock-Gen Evil Kerviel Soldier monks Mystere Kerviel Risk is our business Free money Credit's fatal attraction Post-modern contradictions Derivative deconstruction Pinata parties 15 Woodstock for hedge funds Keeping up with the Joneses In search of Moby Dick Style gurus Magic wand Lucky man Sharpe practice Embedded In the long run, we are all dead The game The more things change Hedgestock 16 Minsky machines Affinities and curses Crowded hours Crime without punishment Fast cars, slow hedge funds Fast cornering Children of privilege Make money not war Part 4 Oligarchy 17 War games Borrowed times Liquidity factory Six degrees of separation Paper chains Toxic pathologies Relying on the Zohar Blind capital Rent collectors Best in best possible world 18 Shell games Central bank republics Games of old maid Protection rackets Stockholm syndrome Free speech No accounting for values Mark to make believe Out of sight Creeping crumble Management by neglect Directing traffic 19 Cult of risk Growth for all season Financial groupthink Celebrity central banking Dealing with dissent Noneofuscouldanode Je ne regrette rien! Last supper 20 Masters of the Universe Money illusions Factories for unhappy people War versus money Shop floors Smiling and killing Pay grades Much more than this Attached Bonus season Plenty Tipping points 21 Financial nihilism Cosmetic consumption The physical impossibility of spending the amount earned by someone living Celebrity finance Manque not monkey Wizard and muggles In the midnight hour Last rites Safe as Snuff movies Financial nihilism Part 5 Cracks 22 Financial gravity Air pockets Mass extinction ER This is not a seminar! ICU Country for sale Crying games Financial gravity 23 Unusually uncertain Botox economics China syndrome Regulatory dialectic Patient zero Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide Built to fall End of Ponzi prosperity? Losing the commanding heights Zen finance Unusually uncertain Epilogue: Nemesis Marginal Widows and orphans Nausea Crunch porn, crash lit Economic rock stars Showtime Meta money Economic trivialities This time, it is no different! Suicide is painless The turning world Notes Select bibliography Index

Ishmael with an attitude, a weathered seaman who has witnessed firsthand the crazed hunt of hedge-fund captains for alpha, the great whale of superior investment returns. ... I could only endorse the conclusion. "There is no simple, painless solution" to the fix we're in, Das writes. "The world has to reduce debt, shrink the financial part of the economy, and change the destructive incentive structures in finance. Individuals in developed countries have to save more and spend less." Doomsday Debt Machine Roars as Wizard Das Chides Buffett: Books, By James Pressley, Sep 19 2011 " a fast paced ride...Das manages to be both an insider and outsider -- much of what he covers is based on first hand experience...there's no of the faux glamour that infuses many otherwise critical books on finance... this is a thoughtful, interesting and unusual book that deserves to jostle for shelf space alongside classics such as Charles Kindleberger's Manias, Panics and Crashes and Devil Take The Hindmost by Edward Chancellor. It is well worth a read by anyone seeking to grasp the broader impact of the recent crisis." Chris Sholto Heaton, Money Week, November 2011 "...Mr Das has a keen eye for an anecdote ... give[s] the reader plenty of chances to chuckle at the hubris he reveals. the views of people like Mr Das were consistently ignored in the run-up to the debt crisis.." More luck than judgment, The Economist, 15 October 2011 "...Extreme Money is not about the financial crisis, as such. It is about the history of money and the journey that brought us to 2011. Das writes in a clear, straightforward manner that is approachable to all readers and takes in a diverse range of references from Hollywood movies to mediaeval literature, with plenty of gags and reflections from his career in the industry, which make for an easy read." Nick Ferguson "A history of extreme money", 21 September 2011, Finance Asia "...exposes the shambles of a system characterised by bogus and failed economic market theory, a shamelessly rapacious finance industry, and a broad failure by governments to protect either their citizens or their productive industries from a finance industry driven by the most perverse incentives...Das writes colourfully, in short punchy sections, and countless memorable aphorisms...Politicians, please read this book." Richard Thwaites "Dangerous money games" Canberra Times, 17 September 2011 "Das is a chatty writer, with a style that combines elegance with wit, erudition and a large dollop of cynicism. He is also widely read, given to inventing unusual metaphors and quoting from sources as diverse as Trollope and Groucho Marx. As a result, he has succeeded in producing an entertaining page-turner on a subject considered both numbingly dull as well as frighteningly opaque." Devangshu Datta "World money, salted and seasoned" Business Standard, 16 December 2011 " Extreme Money is about much more than the financial crisis. ... Das is writing about the society that has been built under the suzerainty of finance over the last few decades. He uses the references to highlight, underline and contrast some of the features of this crazy society. At one level, Das gives us the conventional narrative of the crisis. ...At another level, he elaborates on the economic theory that provided the intellectual sustenance for the financial revolution. ... But at a more fundamental level, this book is about the corruption in values caused by what Das terms Extreme Money, by which he means not only the dangerous speculative games played with money, but also the attitudes and culture that have emerged out of casino capitalism. At the deepest level, this book is about hubris and the nemesis that inevitably follows." Manas Chakravarty "The money shot:The global society formed by the financial currents of the last few decades" Live Mint , 9 December 2011 "This is probably the finest financial history of the period... , it tells with great authority the real story of modern finance--how money mutated into a rogue virus-- something that finance students will otherwise never know. The book is a mirror of our financial times, a must-read for all." Debashis Basu "Extreme Money: Modern Finance--The Rogue Virus" Moneylife, 24 December 2011 "...Das dons a professorial cap to weave financial history and popular culture into an entertaining and blistering social critique of how so many have come to chase endless financial reflections of the real economy..." "No loss in the telling" Hindustan Times 23 December 2011 " Extreme Money is a morality tale of the cascade of massive wealth into the pockets of financial wizards at the cost of the stability of the global financial system... a cautionary tale from Faust warning what happens to those who trade their souls for lucre." Andrew Allentuck, Financial Post,5 Noof financial alchemy... lays bare the investment bankers' schemes and machinations which culminated in the worldwide financial crisis and Great Recession of 2007 to date... an illuminating text that has much to teach you about the world of high finance." Thomas Herold "An Inside Look Into The Masters of The Financial Sandbox", 30 August 2011 "Das' irreverent and sardonic wit permeates the book, making it an enjoyable read despite its dark tone." Barbara Whelehan "Money books for holiday giving" Bankrate.com, December 16 2011 "...an absolutely brilliant examination of the world of money and finance... a realistic, confronting and amazing critique of the machinations and workings of the global financial industry. an enlightening dissection of the world of high finance, policy making, and supposed regulation, and reveals how illusory is the ability of central banks and governments to control and manage economies ... The amount and depth of information in this book is amazing. It is essential reading for all those with an interest in the financial markets, delving into areas and subjects that most writers with a vested interest in the markets don't and won't cover.." Your Trading Edge (May-June 2012)