Extreme Money The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk

Author: Satyajit Das
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9781118153697
Published In: August 2011
Format: Paperback , 484 pages
Jurisdiction: International ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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A definitive cultural history of high finance from one of the industry's most astute analysts

Written by internationally respected financial expert Satyajit Das, Extreme Money shows how real engineering was replaced by financial engineering in the twentieth century, enabling vast fortunes to be made not from goods produced or services performed, but from supplying and trading money.

Extreme Money focuses on this eviscerated reality—the monetary shadow of real things—and what it means today. The high levels of economic growth and the wealth that inevitably follows, driven by cheap debt, financial engineering, and speculation, were never sustainable, and the last few years have borne this out. The book shows how policy makers and regulators unknowingly underwrote the risks, substantially reducing their ability to control economic outcomes. Extreme money concentrated economic power, wealth, and risk in the hands of a small community of gifted, dynamic financiers largely outside the regulatory purview and the democratic process, and there's no going back.

Explains the extreme money games (via private equity, securitization, derivatives, hedge funds, and other means) invented by the elite financiers of last century
Raises deeper questions about the nature of the economic structure and assumptions about ongoing financially engineered prosperity that readers, politicians, and financial figures need to be asking
The book is timed to coincide with the next phase of the financial crisis, as prospects of recovery diminish and the global economy becomes mired in a Western version of Japan's "Lost Decade"

Ambitious in scope and coverage, the book is the indispensible, in-depth guide to the age of modern money. An age defined by extremes of financial behavior.

Prologue: Hubris 1

Part I: Faith

Chapter 1 Mirror of the Times 21

Chapter 2 Money Changes Everything 38

Chapter 3 Business of Business 52

Chapter 4 Money for Sale 65

Chapter 5 Yellow Brick Road 78

Chapter 6 Money Honey 89

Part II: Fundamentalism

Chapter 7 Los Cee-Ca-Go Boys 101

Chapter 8 False Gods, Fake Prophecies 116

Part III: Alchemy

Chapter 9 Learning to Love Debt 133

Chapter 10 Private Vices 153

Chapter 11 Dice with Debt 168

Chapter 12 The Doomsday Debt Machine 188

Chapter 13 Risk Supermarkets 208

Chapter 14 Financial Arms Race 226

Chapter 15 Woodstock for Hedge Funds 239

Chapter 16 Minsky Machines 253

Part IV: Oligarchy

Chapter 17 War Games 264

Chapter 18 Shell Games 279

Chapter 19 Cult of Risk 294

Chapter 20 Masters of the Universe 307

Chapter 21 Financial Nihilism 321

Part V: Cracks

Chapter 22 Financial Gravity 337

Chapter 23 Unusually Uncertain 348

Epilogue: Nemesis 367

Notes 384

Select Bibliography 420

Index 429

Satyajit Das is an internationally respected expert in finance with 33 years' experience. He has worked for the 'sell side' (Citicorp Investment Bank and Merrill Lynch), the 'buy side' (as Treasurer of the TNT Group), and as a consultant advising banks, investors, corporations, and central banks worldwide. Das is the author of many highly regarded standard reference books on derivatives and risk management. In 2006, he published the international bestseller Traders, Guns & Money, an extraordinary insider's account of the world of derivatives trading. In Traders, Guns & Money and a series of speeches delivered at the time, The Coming Credit Crash, he provided a highly prescient insight into the structure and risk of the world financial system exposing the problems that subsequently became apparent. He was recently featured in Charles Ferguson's 2010 Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job.