House of cards : a tale of hubris and wretched excess on Wall Street / William D. Cohan

Includes bibliographical references (p. [451]-456) and index

On March 5, 2008, at 10:15 A.M., a hedge fund manager in Florida wrote a post on his investing advice Web site that included a startling statement about Bear Stearns & Co., the nation's fifth-largest investment bank: "In my book, they are insolvent." This seemed a bold and risky statement. Bear Stearns was about to announce profits of 115 million for the first quarter of 2008, had 17.3 billion in cash on hand, and, as the company incessantly boasted, had been a colossally profitable enterprise in the eighty-five years since its founding. Ten days later, Bear Stearns no longer existed, and the calamitous financial meltdown of 2008 had begun. How this happened - and why - is the subject of William D. Cohan's superb and shocking narrative that chronicles the fall of Bear Stearns and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street.