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A First-Class Catastrophe
- The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
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The definitive account of the crash of 1987, a cautionary tale of how the US financial system nearly collapsed - from the best-selling author of The Wizard of Lies.
Monday, October 19, 1987, was by far the worst day in Wall Street history. The market fell 22.6% - almost twice as bad as the worst day of 1929 - equal to a one-day loss of nearly 5,000 points today.
Black Monday was more than seven years in the making and threatened nearly every US financial institution. Drawing on superlative archival research and dozens of original interviews, Diana B. Henriques weaves a tale of missed opportunities, market delusions, and destructive actions that stretched from the "silver crisis" of 1980 to turf battles in Washington, a poisonous rivalry between the New York Stock Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and the almost-fatal success of two California professors whose idea for reducing market risk spun terribly out of control. As the story hurtles forward, the players struggle to forestall a looming market meltdown, and unexpected heroes step in to avert total disaster.
For 30 years, investors, regulators, and bankers have failed to heed the lessons of 1987, even as the same patterns have resurfaced, most spectacularly in the financial crisis of 2008. A First-Class Catastrophe offers a new way of looking not only at the past, but at our financial future as well.
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Story
To save the economy and keep Citi afloat in 2008, the government provided huge infusions of cash through multiple bailouts that frustrated and angered the American public. But, as Wall Street Journal writer James Freeman and financial expert Vern McKinley reveal, the 2008 crisis was just one of many disasters Citi has experienced since its founding more than 200 years ago. In Borrowed Time they reveal Citi’s disturbing history of instability and government support. It’s a story that neither Citi nor Washington wants told.
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Biased
- By CF on 08-09-19
By: James Freeman, and others
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The Lost Bank
- The Story of Washington Mutual - The Biggest Bank Failure in American History
- By: Kirsten Grind
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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During the most dizzying days of the financial crisis, Washington Mutual, a bank with hundreds of billions of dollars in its coffers, suffered a crippling bank run. The story of its final, brutal collapse in the autumn of 2008, and its controversial sale to JPMorgan Chase, is an astonishing account of how one bank lost itself to greed and mismanagement, and how the entire financial industry - and even the entire country - lost its way as well. Kirsten Grind’s The Lost Bank is a magisterial and gripping account of these events.
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Sad and Angry by Turn
- By Johnnie Walker on 07-24-12
By: Kirsten Grind
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The Greatest Trade Ever
- The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History
- By: Gregory Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized something few others suspected - that the housing market and the value of subprime mortgages were grossly inflated and headed for a major fall. Paulson's background was in mergers and acquisitions, however, and he knew little about real estate or how to wager against housing. He had spent a career as an also-ran on Wall Street. But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark. He just wasn't sure how to do it. Colleagues at investment banks scoffed at him and investors dismissed him.
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Better Books Now Available
- By David on 05-02-11
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Volcker
- The Triumph of Persistence
- By: William L. Silber
- Narrated by: Ross Douglas
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of nearly half a century, five American presidents - three Democrats and two Republicans - have relied on the financial acumen, and the integrity, of Paul A. Volcker. During his tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, when he battled the Great Inflation of the 1970s, Volcker did nothing less than restore the reputation of an American financial system on the verge of collapse.
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Required Reading for 2022 Economy
- By Marc Uknis on 11-19-22
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King of Capital
- The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone
- By: John E. Morris, David Carey
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The financial establishment---banks and investment bankers, such as Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Lehman, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley---were the cowboys, recklessly assuming risks, leveraging up to astronomical levels, and driving the economy to the brink of disaster.
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Great Story Ruined by Monotone Reading
- By Marc on 04-23-13
By: John E. Morris, and others
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Overhaul
- An Insider's Account of the Obama Administration's Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry
- By: Steven Rattner
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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This first real look inside Team Obama mixes political warfare and big-business shakeups in equal proportions, and comes from a uniquely informed source. Steve Rattner is not just the man brought in by the president to save the auto industry, he is a former New York Times financial reporter who also earned a place among the top tier of Wall Street's most informed investment bankers and corporate experts.
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Overhaul - A Memoir
- By Roy on 12-05-10
By: Steven Rattner
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Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929
- Oxford University Press: Pivotal Moments in US History
- By: Maury Klein
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The first major history of the Crash in over a decade, Rainbow's End tells the story of the stock market collapse in a colorful, swift-moving narrative that blends a vivid portrait of the 1920s with an intensely gripping account of Wall Street's greatest catastrophe. The book offers a vibrant picture of a world full of plungers, powerful bankers, corporate titans, millionaire brokers, and buoyantly optimistic stock market bulls.
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Plenty of fine detail, especially of the 1920s
- By Philo on 04-18-13
By: Maury Klein
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The Story of Silver
- How the White Metal Shaped America and the Modern World
- By: William L. Silber
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of silver's transformation from soft money during the 19th century to hard asset today, and how manipulations of the white metal by American president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s and by the richest man in the world, Texas oil baron Nelson Bunker Hunt, during the 1970s altered the course of American and world history. FDR pumped up the price of silver to help jump start the US economy during the Great Depression, but this move weakened China, which was then on the silver standard, and facilitated Japan's rise to power before World War II.
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A Detailed Account of Silver's Monetary History
- By Brandy Crosby on 01-11-21
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Reckless Endangerment
- How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon
- By: Gretchen Morgenson, Joshua Rosner
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson, the star business columnist of The New York Times, exposes how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy.
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Required reading
- By David on 10-24-11
By: Gretchen Morgenson, and others
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The Hellhound of Wall Street
- How Ferdinand Pecora's Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance
- By: Michael Perino
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Hellhound of Wall Street, Michael Perino recounts in riveting detail the 1933 hearings that put Wall Street on trial for the Great Crash. Never before in American history had so many financial titans been called to account before the public, and they had come within a few weeks of emerging unscathed. By the time Ferdinand Pecora, a Sicilian immigrant and former New York prosecutor, took over as chief counsel, the investigation had dragged on ineffectively for nearly a year and was universally written off as dead....
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Great Story
- By Lynn on 03-22-11
By: Michael Perino
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Bought and Paid For
- The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street
- By: Charles Gasparino
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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According to business reporter Charles Gasparino, President Obama is faking his outrage at Wall Street, and his calls for new policies to rein in banks that are "too big to fail" are just pabulum. In reality, Obama has climbed into bed with Wall Street CEOs, giving them what they want so they will support his liberal, big-government agenda.
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Revealing and Convincing
- By Walter on 10-24-11
What listeners say about A First-Class Catastrophe
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Susanne M. Lord
- 09-10-21
Enter with Caution, financial markets
Very instructive on a specific meltdown, with salient points regarding others. Pay attention not only to the narrative, but also to implications. l found the narrator's tone and pace engaging.
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- Philo
- 10-02-17
Some OK history; fuzzy conclusions and wrapup
This segment of Wall St. history is glossed over or poorly-explained elsewhere. So, points for tackling it. I do not regret listening to this. However, I didn't get much clarification here. There is a fair introduction to main players as we move along, and the narrative is comprehensive enough, though sometimes plodding and perhaps padded to fill out a book. Succinct explanations would often be better -- less is often more. Toward the end, the pace picks up and I consider this an improvement. However, suddenly the pace is too fast, as the links between the '87 crash and the present seem fuzzy and tenuous.
The parallels to 2008 seem facile and hurried. In my opinion, the most trite, cheap shot common to financial writers of popular works, amply shown here, is simply calling for more regulation and buzzwords like transparency, stability, and liquidity, wonderful things we could somehow and should supposedly have had, had the ball not been dropped by clueless regulators and free market zealots, all in hindsight, without any real map or plan going forward. (And this means, not really founded on a sharp critique to begin with.) Various regulatory failings, apparent to anyone paying attention for the last 10 years, are ticked through without any real ties to what happened circa '87. And, large bits of legislation that HAVE changed the landscape, such as the macro-prudential regulations under 2010's Dodd-Frank, are brushed aside here in a few words, as inadequate and poorly-conceived -- though this new structure is extensive. The discussion of it here does not make the case being claimed. This newer structure has not been rolled back by Trump (who tossed off a sentence or two, as usual, in 2016, with an even worse superficiality and shallowness, vowing to repeal it, and as we have come to know him, this cheap bluster vanished from his radar, thankfully, once he scored the desired votes and PR points), and has yet to be stress-tested in any actual financial panic scenario. Instead, here, we get metaphors of sports cars barreling through dark mazes, with rapid-fire ticking off of a list of various fast and (supposedly) scary market structures now, really with no critiquing here, or tying back to the '87 crisis. These market features are simply bad and scary, trust me, seems to be the approach. So the substance here lacks a certain discipline and sharpness, in my opinion. The end, the whole upshot, seems casual and careless to me. That is not a requirement of popular finance writing.
The narration has an odd quirkiness -- the narrator has two modes. One, first noted when she is quoting males, is a low, almost cutting staccato that whips quickly through words. It does sound pretty male, so that works OK. The other voice mode is a silky, soothing almost whisper that is quite female. But then the narrator oscillates randomly between low-cutting-staccato and silky whisper. Sentences often begin low and mean and fast, and end floating in silk. Early on, I wondered whether there was a recording speed problem. It was mildly distracting to me throughout. Her error rate is extremely low, though. I can't recall one mispronunciation, so points for that. In all, I would have liked a tight editor to cut this to about 2/3 this length, and some more focus on the epilogue. OK, but could be better.
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- David Larson
- 10-07-17
Financial History Rhymes
To me, the most interesting part of this book was how it presaged the 2007/8 crash (as being caused by misunderstood derivatives), and just like in 2008, very little was done to fix the underlying problem. Reading this book reminds you that we might just be heading for another crash in a year or so.
Some parts of the book are a little technical and inside baseball. If you don't understand what triple witching is, or how hedging works, it might help you to stop the book and look it up at Investopedia. But in general, this book is very well written, and the author, Diana Henriques, tells a very compelling story, just as she did in her other book Wizard of Lies (that was later made into an HBO movie starring Robert De Niro as Bernie Madoff.
Read the book and learn its lessons before it's too late...
One brief point I need to address: Another reviewer said something about this book not being good because it doesn't finger Black-Scholes as being the main cause of Black Monday. I am a former Wall Street options trader, and the Black-Scholes model did not cause the 1987 crash. The main culprit was the belief that it would always be possible to dynamically hedge (i.e. sell futures or options to offset a long position as the value of the underlying drops). That turned out not to be the case when the market dropped very quickly and all buyers disappeared. The key moral of the story is thus: Financial engineers had better double-check their assumptions. Just because something works in theory, doesn't mean it works in reality when a bunch of emotional humans are at the controls. For some reason we never seem to get this point right.
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3 people found this helpful