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Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World Paperback – 26 Apr 2012

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William D. Cohan (Author)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 672 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin (26 April 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0241954061
  • ISBN-13: 978-0241954065
  • Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 2.9 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 213,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Revelatory, engrossing, penetrating ... Cohan revels in a good bust-up (Financial Times)

The best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts

(Economist)

Startling ... lifts the lid on Goldman's pivotal role in the meltdown (Mail on Sunday)

Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder - and horror - of Goldman Sachs (Businessweek)

Cohan's book tells of bitter power struggles and business cock-ups (Guardian)

A definitive account of the most profitable and influential investment bank of the modern era (New York Times Book Review)

About the Author

William Cohan is an award-winning journalist and Wall Street veteran. His first book, The Last Tycoons, about Lazard, won the 2007 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award and was a New York Times bestseller. His second book, House of Cards, also a bestseller, is an account of the last days of Bear Stearns & Co, described as "gripping...high drama" by Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times. He is a regular on the pages of the Financial Times, is a contributing editor at both Vanity Fair and Fortune, and is an online columnist for The New York Times.

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful
The Real Smartest Guys In The Room. Compulsive, Fascinating, Damning
By PawelMorski on 4 May 2011
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Try to get past the snake on the cover and the subtitle - there's nothing lazy or simplistic about this book. It's an amazingly complete look at an institution that says an awful lot about modern capitalism and how we got into this mess.

The most striking thing about the book is how much of it there is - almost 700 pages in the print edition. Mr Cohan has done a lot of research, interviewed an awful lot of people and come up with a lot of new facts. It's not for the faint-hearted - as a finance nerd I enjoyed reading for hours on how Goldman turned the subprime situation from a disaster to the foundation of global financial dominance, but many will have less patience.

The first half of the book covers the earlier history of the bank, and I'll confess I skimmed some of this. Mr Cohan uses this to build up to the central theme of what makes Goldman different from other banks; then, covering the period from 1998 on, the story changes gear and it becomes clear what we're hearing is based on verbatim accounts from interviews (and a lot of material that was subpeonaed by the US Congress).

Crucially, Mr Cohan has the skill to appreciate two things - in my experience it's rare for people to get both : just how good Goldman Sachs are at what they do; and just how few people outside the bank benefit from what they do. There's something deeply depressing about the maths genius (who found the Math Olympiad "laughably easy") who now spends his days building models to help good traders exploit suckers. Mr Cohan's refusal to follow the cheap sneer route makes the book actually all the more damning about our financial system.Read more ›
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Money and Power
By Rolf Dobelli TOP 1000 REVIEWER on 1 Jun. 2012
Format: Hardcover
Whether you think Goldman Sachs is "doing "God's work" or acting like a money-sucking "vampire squid," William D. Cohan, a journalist and former investment banker, will challenge your opinion with his sweeping history of the vaunted Wall Street firm. From its beginnings in the 19th century to its dominance in the 20th and its slight ebb in the 21st, Goldman Sachs presents a fascinating case study of the talent, determination and hubris that informs Wall Street. Cohan compiles top reporting with interviews with Goldman's current and former leaders, and with insiders, outsiders, pundits and critics, to present a detailed, sometimes tedious but usually riveting look at the complex, secretive company. getAbstract recommends this history to those compelled by the enigma that is Goldman Sachs.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Nice try - no cigar (maybe cigars not available)
By Fonaweb on 15 Aug. 2013
Format: Paperback
After Cohan's utterly compelling Last Tycoons (surely the best business book ever written) and the jaw dropping House of Cards, I was as excited as an investment banking nerd can be when I heard that Goldman was next up for the Cohan treatment. This really had to be the number on Goldman, right?

Alas, for those of you hoping for the real deal, the wait continues. This is a fine read, no doubt, and Cohan really comes as close as you can to understanding how the bank works and some of the tricks of the trade embedded in its wonderful model. But in the end, there just isn't enough inside insight into the personalities, the power struggles and the transactions to really match his earlier reads.

There can be two explanations for this. Conventional wisdom says it's because nobody at Goldman ever talks out of school so the concept of a Michel David Weill spilling the beans over cigars cannot exist in the Goldman diaspora - therefore, the truth is out there but omerta means you won't find out what it is. But I think that conspiracy theory is Goldman's best PR.

An alternative view on why the great work on Goldman hasn't been written is more prosaic: it's boring. There isn't a Bruce Wasserstein or an Andre Meyer or an Ace Greenberg (manufacturing by turn brilliant coups or stunning disasters) in this story. It's a type A machine full of rich people - and that's about it.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
governments dont rule the world goldman sachs rules the world
By edward on 31 Aug. 2013
Format: Kindle Edition
Its bit long and could have edited down bit to make it a sharper read also would mean that more people actually read this book as would imagine has low full read rate because needlessly long.

its interesting reading about these coperate employees the amognst the highest paid employees about.
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Not the story I had hoped for
By Northern Light on 31 July 2015
Format: Paperback
Chapter 1-12 is 0 stars and chapter 13-24 is 3.5 stars. The story up until 1990 is dry, boring and mainly derived from news and legal documents. After 1990 finally there is information from employees and former employees that does not consititute the officell Goldman version (as these people are still alive or gave interviews on things behing the scene).

Still, lots of info in the later part is rehashing of things we already have read in books by Lowenstein, Endlich and Partnoy. Sometimes one has to wonder if there were more than one writer. p423 “soon thereafter [9/11, i.e. September 2001] Paulson confided to some partners “I’m going to push Thornton out” but a few pages further one wonders what took so long p434 “by march 2003 Paulson decided Thornton had to leave Goldman, and quickly.”
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Doing God's Work
By Honrus Publicus on 26 Sept. 2012
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
There are loads of great quotes in this book, but perhaps the best one goes to the previous president of the USA, George W. Bush. When he announced in May 2006 that Henry "Hank" Paulson would be his new treasury secretary Bush stated, "The American economy is powerful, productive and prosperous, and I look forward to working with Hank Paulson to keep it that way."

That was just before the financial catastrophe that is still happening started to hit Wall Street and the rest of the world economy. Henry Paulson had just resigned as CEO of Goldman Sachs, the most successful financial institution on Wall Street.

Paulson's appointment to one of the most important positions in Bush adninistration is one reason why so many people point an accusatory finger at Goldman: they rig the game. In the previous Clinton administration another former Goldman CEO, Bob Rubin, was also in the government. Can these people really be impartial?

Put it another way: Would Henry Paulson have considered an "aggressive" action that may have harmed Goldman Sachs (and other banks) and eased the pain on the American taxpayer? Goldman's aggressive mark-down of its mortgage securities in the spring of 2006 could have been countered with an equally aggressive counter-measure - by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. All the government, and the Reserve did, was to give vast amounts of taxpayer's money to help the banks. Was this really Hank Paulson at his brilliant best?

If you want a (biased) rundown of the financial crisis try looking a chapter 14 of Bush's ...Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Four Stars

good

Published 7 months ago by Julia Treharne
a bit disappointing

A bit disappointing focuses on more of the history than how it survived after lehmans.

Published 11 months ago by Amazon Customer
a great book for every financial job

Great book about an amazing company. I have read two other books about GS and this is superior in terms of (i) comprehensive coverage of the firm's history, (ii) balanced and yet... Read more

Published 19 months ago by EhabGhellali
Interesting book

A little long on the extreme detail but still the storyline seems to encourage me to plough on.... interesting in any case as it builds up a picture of the culture and legacy... Read more

Published on 24 May 2013 by Natasha
Goldman are thieves

A very good history of what must be the biggest thieving company in the world. All their ex collegues in position of power so that they can merrily wipe out the opposition and... Read more

Published on 16 Sept. 2012 by Mr. Edward J. Greene
Other books were better

I agree with the previos review, this book was not very interesting. The message seems to be that GS is such a great and excellent despite occasional bad apples. Read more

Published on 6 Jan. 2012 by jukka
money and power - goldman sachs

interesting in places, self-indulgent in others, dull and laborious in some but then rivetting in others. Read more

Published on 16 Aug. 2011 by sb
In a class of its own

This is a great book. Following William D Cohan's The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co. Read more

Published on 4 Aug. 2011 by Thomas Koetzsch

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