Title: ⚡PDF ❤️ Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud
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and the Golden Age of Fraud Kindle Edition
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Sinopsis
John Meriwether, a famously successful Wall
Street trader, spent the 1980s as a partner
at Salomon Brothers, establishing the best--and
the brainiest--bond arbitrage group in the
world. A mysterious and shy midwesterner, he
knitted together a group of Ph.D.-certified
arbitrageurs who rewarded him with filial
devotion and fabulous profits. Then, in 1991, in
the wake of a scandal involving one of his
traders, Meriwether abruptly resigned. For two
years, his fiercely loyal team--convinced that
the chief had been unfairly victimized--plotted
their boss's return. Then, in 1993, Meriwether
made a historic offer. He gathered together his
former disciples and a handful of
supereconomists from academia and proposed that
they become partners in a new hedge fund
different from any Wall Street had ever seen. And
so
Long-Term Capital Management was born.Â
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  In a decade that had
se
longest and most rewarding bull market in
history, hedge funds were the ne plus ultra
of investments discreet, private clubs limited
to those rich enough to pony up millions. They
promised that the investors' money would be
placed in a variety of trades simultaneously--a
hedging strategy designed to minimize the
possibility of loss. At Long-Term,
Meriwether Co. truly believed that their finely
tuned computer models had tamed the genie of
risk, and would allow them to bet on the future
with near mathematical certainty. And thanks to
their cast--which included a pair of future
Nobel Prize winners--investors believed
6them.Â
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From the moment Long-Term opened their offices in
posh Gr
Connecticut, miles from the pandemonium of Wall
Street, it was clear that this would be a hedge
fund apart from all others. Though they viewed
the big Wall Street investment banks with
disdain, so great was Long-Term's aura that these
very banks lined up to provide the firm with
financing, and on the very sweetest of terms. So
self-certain were Long-Term's traders that they
borrowed with little concern about the leverage.
At first, Long-Term's models stayed on script,
and this new gold standard in hedge funds boasted
such incredible returns that private investors
and even central banks clamored to invest more
money. It
seemed the geniuses in Greenwich couldn't lose.Â
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Four years later,
w
default in Russia set off a global storm that
Long-Term's models hadn't anticipated,
its supposedly safe portfolios imploded. In five
weeks, the professors went from mega-rich
geniuses to discredited failures. With the firm
about to go under, its staggering 100 billion
balance sheet threatened to drag down markets
around the world. At fearing that the financial
system of the world was in peril, the Federal
the eleventh hour, Reserve Bank hastily
summoned Wall Street's leading banks to
underwrite a bailout. Â
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Rog
Lowenstein, the bestselling author of Buffett,
captures Long-Term's roller-coaster ride
in gripping detail. Drawing on confidential
internal memos and interviews with dozens of key
players, Lowenstein crafts a story that reads
like a first-rate thriller from beginning to end.
He explains not just how the fund made and lost
its money, but what it was about the
personalities of Long-Term's partners, the
arrogance of their mathematical certainties, and
the late-nineties culture of Wall Street that
made it all possible.Â
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Whe
Genius Failed is the cautionary financial tale of
our time, the gripping saga of when an elite
group of investors believed they could actually
deconstruct risk
what happened and use
7virtually limitless leverage to create limitless
wealth. In Roger Lowenstein's hands, it is
a brilliant tale peppered with fast money, vivid
characters, and high drama.