Fiasco - Hardcover

A lively account of life in the mid-1990s by one of Wall Street's own, Frank Partnoy. . . . Mr. Partnoy's book has a serious mission. It seeks to show that derivatives . . . are but the latest method that Wall Street is using to skin Main Street. . . . Mr. Partnoy's detailed allegations of specific trades and the cynical way that Wall Street treats its customers is likely to attract attention.--Peter Truell F.I.A.S.C.O. is a ringside seat on the nastiest and most important game being played on Wall Street today. Think of derivatives trading as a blood sport, with the unsuspecting consumer as the prey. Read this book, or else. . . . --Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker--Michael Lewis

F.I.A.S.C.O. is an insider's diary, a shocking education in the jungle of high finance in the 1990s from New York to Tokyo. It tracks the progress of a young Morgan Stanley salesman as he learns the ropes of this sophisticated jungle, where billions of dollars are lost in the creation and trading of securities so unlikely and so complicated that almost nobody - certainly not the unwary or undereducated buyer - understands them. And some of that money, whether you know it or not, may be yours. Frank Partnoy's journey is partly comical, and full of incredible characters, but what he learns should stir fear in anyone who owns mutual funds, stocks, or even insurance. Partnoy's colleagues sharpen their killer instincts at an annual drunken skeet-shooting competition called F.I.A.S.C.O., the Fixed Income Annual Sporting Clays Outing. Against well-trained derivatives salesmen, buyers don't face much better odds than a clay pigeon, and the actual fiascoes involve billions of dollars of well-publicized losses at Orange County, Barings, Procter & Gamble, and many others. In 1994, when the author attended F.I.A.S.C.O., and when the first big derivatives losses hit, the rallying cry at Morgan Stanley should have struck fear into the heart of any investor: "There's blood in the water. Let's go kill someone." Partnoy's story shows how Morgan Stanley's sales force put that advice to work.