BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Jon Stewart was blown away by the revelations in this book. On his April 9th "Daily Show" he interviewed William Cohan, the book's author, and pretty much asked him questions that reflected issues that BuzzFlash has been raising for months.

Particularly, Stewart wanted to know how the U.S. government could give hundreds of billions of dollars to the same riverboat gamblers who sunk the economy. Cohan's response was that if a bunch of people build a bomb, you need them to dismantle it because they are the only ones who know how it was constructed.

That sounds like blackmail to us, and you and the rest of the American taxpayers are footing the bill for the ransom.

"Engrossing....[Cohan] gives us in these pages a chilling, almost minute-by-minute account of the 10, vertigo-inducing days that one year ago revealed Bear Stearns to be a flimsy house of cards in a perfect storm....He does a deft job of explicating the underlying reasons that put Bear Stearns in peril in the first place....turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping — and almost immediately comprehensible — to the lay reader....riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading"
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Cohan vividly documents the mix of arrogance, greed, recklessness, and pettiness that took down the 86 year old brokerage house and then the entire economy. It's a page-turner in the tradition of the 1990 Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Heylar, offering both a seemingly comprehensive understanding of the business and wide access to insiders....hard to put down, especially thanks to its dishy, often profane, quotes from insiders" --BusinessWeek

"Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation...the other great strength of this important book is the breadth and skill of the author's interviews...Cohan does a brilliant job of sketching in the eccentric, vulgar, greedy, profane and coarse individuals who ignored all these warnings to their own profit and the ruin of so many others. It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." -- Los Angeles Times


BUZZFLASH REVIEWS