Poke a Liar

Being an type-A MBA type, I really should have read this book twenty years ago when it came out. It would have helped me believe that "Wall Street jobs" really did pay as much money as people said back then. Not that that would have made me want one, at least I think not. OK, maybe it's better that I didn't read this book back then!

This book tells a story of greed, envy, maliciousness, pride, cruelty and pettiness. It ain't pretty. But it helps one understand better all the cultural references of the last twenty years to Wall Street greed. The book is the story of the author's short time at Salomon Brothers in the 1980s. Salomon was THE Wall Street firm when it came to bonds, so this was a real "insider" story. Notably, it also focused on the trading of mortgage-backed bonds, which is where all the action and profit were during the story. Events stemming from the recent mortgage market collapse led me to this book, and it was interesting to read how scandalous it all seemed to the author in the 80s, when everything he was scandalized by was about twenty times worse by 2007. (I recently read an insightful article by the author about the contemporary crisis where he recognized as much.)

There were some great lines and excerpts, but the imagery in all of them is crude enough that I'm choosing not to reproduce them here. The reader should note that the crude imagery was supplied by the Wall Street trading environment, and the author presented it fairly and honestly and not for shock value.

By the way, the "Liar's Poker" of the title was a game of chance played by the traders involving serial numbers on paper currency pulled at random from one's pockets. Let's just say that one's bluffing skills were highly correlated with one's winnings.