House of cards : a tale of hubris and wretched excess on Wall Street

Summary: At the beginning of March 2008 the monetary fabric of Bear Stearns, one of the world's oldest and largest investment banks, began unraveling. After ten days, the bank no longer existed, its assets sold under duress to rival JPMorgan Chase. William Cohan exposes the corporate arrogance, power struggles, and deadly combination of greed and inattention that led to the collapse not only of Bear Stearns but the very foundations of Wall Street.-- From publisher's description.

Record details

ISBN: 9780767930895
ISBN: 0767930894
Physical Description: print
592 pages ; 21 cm
Edition: 1st Anchor books ed.
Publisher: New York : Anchor Books, ©2010.

Content descriptions

General Note:	"With a new afterword"--Cover. Originally published, Anchor Books, 2009.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 571-576) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	pt. I. How it happened : ten days in March -- 1. The ultimate roach motel -- 2. The confidence game -- 3. "Bear Stearns is not in trouble!" -- 4. The run on the bank -- 5. The armies of the night -- 6. Feeding frenzy -- 7. Total panic -- 8. The price of moral hazard?: $2 -- 9. The Fed comes to the rescue (after the battle is over) -- 10. Mooning at the wake -- 11. New developments from hell -- 12. "We're the bad guys" -- pt. II. Why it happened : eighty-five years -- 13. Cy -- 14. Ace -- 15. Jimmy -- 16. May Day -- 17. Haimchinkel Malintz Anaynikal -- 18. The joy of mortgage-backed securities -- 19. "Bullies always cave" -- 20. The math whiz and the baseball star -- 21. "We're all going to a picnic and the tickets are $250 million each" -- 22. The fish rots from the head -- pt. III. The end of the second Gilded Age -- 23. The 10-in-10 strategy -- 24. Cayne CAPs Spector -- 25. Cioffi's bubble -- 26. "The entire subprime market is toast" -- 27. "If there's fraud, we're gonna pay" -- 28. A very stupid decision -- 29. Nashville -- 30. The Cayne mutiny -- 31. Desperate times call for hare-brained schemes -- Epilogue. The deluge -- Afterword to the Anchor Books edition.