Extreme Money

Satyajit Das is an internationally respected expert in finance with 33 years’ experience. He has worked for the “sell side” (Citicorp Investment Bank and Merrill Lynch), the “buy side” (as Treasurer of the TNT Group), and as a consultant advising banks, investors, corporations, and central banks worldwide. Das is the author of many highly regarded standard reference books on derivatives and risk management. In 2006, he published the international bestseller Traders, Guns & Money, an extraordinary insider’s account of the world of derivatives trading. In Traders and in a series of speeches in 2006 entitled - The Coming Credit Crash, Das anticipated many of the problems that became apparent in the financial crisis and are still affecting the global economy. He was recently featured in Charles Ferguson’s 2010 Oscar®-winning documentary Inside Job and the 2009 BBC documentary Tricks with Risk.

Prologue: Hubris

Sub-prime dialects

Best in show

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

Retreat

Swiss inquisitions

Idea of an investment

Ambush

Mega presentations

Fording streams

Liquidity and leverage

Democracy of greed

Pick and pay

Black Sea real estate

Life on the margin

Racing days

Dr Doom

Extreme money

 

 

Part 1 Faith

1          Mirror of the times

Some kinda money

Trading places

The invention of money

Barbarous relic

The real thing

The Hotel New Hampshire

Collapse

Money machines

Debt clock

Money is nothing

The mirrored room

 

2          Money changes everything

Mrs Watanabe goes to Wall Street

FX Beauties Club

Plutonomy

Trickling down, trading up

I shop, therefore I must be!

Spend it like Beckham!

Golden years

Tax avoidance

Japanese curse

The god of our time

 

3          Business of business

Limited consciences

A brilliant daring speculation

Dirty tricks

Marriages and separations

The house that Jack built

Capital ideas

WWJD – watch what Jack did!

Business dealings

 

4          Money for sale

It’s a wonderful bank!

Pass the parcel

Loan frenzy

Plastic fantastic money

Casino banking

Confidence tricks

The Citi of money

Sign of the times

 

5          Yellow brick road

Monumental money

The battle of the ‘pond’

Cool Britannia

Barbarian invasions

Unlikely centres

El-Dollardo economics

The unbalanced bicycle

Foreign treasure

Fool’s gold

Liquidity vortex

 

6          Money honey

Printing it

Column inches

Video money

Studs, starlets

Financial porn

Speedy money

Literary money

Money for all

 

 

Part 2 Fundamentalism

7          Los Cee-Ca-Go boys

Dismal science

Chicago Interpretation

Economic politics

Academic warfare

The Gipper and the Iron Lady

Political economy

New old deal

The monetary lens

Unstable stability?

 

8          False gods, fake prophecies

Mystery of price

Demon of chance

Corporate M&Ms

Risk taming

Slow and quick money

Corporate practice

Everything is just noise

Perfect worlds

Financial fundamentalism

Fata morgana

 

 

Part 3 Alchemy

9          Learning to love debt

Fixed floor coverings

By the bootstraps

Leverage for everything

Cutting to the bone

Professor Jensen goes to Wall Street

Drowning by numbers

Censored loans

High opportunity bonds

Fallen angels

Junk people

Milken’s mobsters

The sweet envy of bankers

Thank you for borrowing

One bridge too far

National treasure

 

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