'Liar's Poker' an amusing inside look at Wall Street

Books about bond trading aren't usually the books one has trouble putting down -- but "Liar's Poker," a memoir penned by Michael Lewis, is not your average book about bond trading. Lewis chronicles his career with Salomon Brothers in the heady 1980s, when the excesses of Wall Street were quite possibly at their most ostentatious. Devilishly funny, Lewis describes his rise from a "geek" to a "big swinging dick" with panache and a large dose of humor. "Liar's Poker" should be required reading for any person considering a career in investment banking.\nAs a graduate from the London School of Economics with no job offers, Lewis attends a royal fundraising dinner at Buckingham where he has the extraordinary luck to sit in between the wives of two senior managers at Salomon Brothers. After unsuccessfully applying to be an investment banker after graduating from Princeton three years earlier -- investment banks weren't interested in an art history major -- he was offered the opportunity to work with Salomon Brothers. He entered the Salomon Brothers trainee class and began his education in what made the traders tick.\nWhat Lewis learned is that trading at Salomon Brothers -- the most desirable placement within the firm -- was not a place for the weak at heart. His trainee class, all 120 of them, wanted to be placed as close to the bond trading action as possible. Bonds were where the action was, and equities were for wimps. Instead of a civilized environment, the jungle mentality pervaded the trainee class, and the respected members were the ones who heckled the lecturers and harassed their colleagues. Lewis got lucky at the end of his five-month training program; he was accepted as a bond salesman in the London office of Salomon. \nHowever, the ridicule and low-level hazing that characterized the training program didn't stop once he got there; new salesmen were referred to as "geeks," not yet worthy of being called men. Lewis was given inconsequential clients and proceeded to make gaff after gaff, losing his customers' money -- or in Salomon terminology, "blowing them up." After a series of missteps, he manages to move over $86 million in bonds in one day. Suddenly Lewis was no longer a "geek," but a "big swinging dick," a term afforded to only the best of the best in the company. He was paid lavishly, even after Salomon began its decline in the late '80s. Despite the compensation, Lewis left the job at the firm because, as he said, "I didn't need it any longer."\n"Liar's Poker" is a raucously funny book about the collective greed that consumed Wall Street in the in the 1980s. Lewis carefully crafts his co-workers -- whom he gives clever nicknames like "the Human Piranha" -- to avoid turning them into blatant caricatures of Wall Street stereotypes, even though some come close. His first-hand account of the bond-dealing brouhaha rips the lid off of the obsessed, closed world of Wall Street. Breaking through the wall of gray suits, he honestly portrays the absurdity of it all without sounding like a pariah. As the bond traders would say, this book is a definite buy.\n"Liar's Poker," by Michael Lewis, is published by Penguin Books and has a list price of $14. It is available at www.amazon.com.