⋙ Descargar Nothing Personal A Novel of Wall Street Mike Offit Books

Nothing Personal A Novel of Wall Street Mike Offit Books

Download As PDF : Nothing Personal A Novel of Wall Street Mike Offit Books

Nothing Personal A Novel of Wall Street Mike Offit Books

Given all the stories that came out of the financial crisis on how the big Wall Street firms manipulated markets and knowingly sold their clients bad deals to rack up huge fees, Mr. Offit's tale shouldn't be shocking. Yet reading his first-hand accounts of the personalities, culture, language and cynicism of the industry is still chilling. Add in a nice murder mystery and some hot women and you have a very engaging read!


Tags : Amazon.com: Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street (9781250035424): Mike Offit: Books,Mike Offit,Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street,Thomas Dunne Books,1250035422,Coming Of Age,Crime,Thrillers - General,Investment bankers;Fiction.,Investment banking;Corrupt practices;Fiction.,Serial murder investigation;Fiction.,American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +,Corrupt practices,FICTION Coming of Age,FICTION Crime,FICTION Thrillers General,Fiction,Fiction - Mystery Detective,Investment bankers,Investment banking,Serial murder investigation,Thrillers General

Nothing Personal A Novel of Wall Street Mike Offit Books Reviews

Warren Hament should be on top of the world. After graduating with his masters degree from Columbia, he joins the world of high finance, working as a bond trader on Wall Street. The salary is great and the commissions and bonuses are better. There are lunches and dinners at top-notch restaurants and plenty of client boondoggle vacations to take. He has a gorgeous apartment, makes more than anyone else he knew at school, and has an amazing girlfriend to boot. Why then, is he uneasy?

Warren becomes more and more uneasy as he realizes that the world of high finance is not only dog eat dog, but that the level of corruption is astonishing. Many of his peers aren't even that bright; they make their money by cheating the clients. Upper management takes the lion's share of the money while those at the bottom do the majority of the work. Warren can't even get excited about his quick promotion in the company since it occurred as the result of the sudden death of his supervisor. Can he find a way to reconcile the lack of ethics in his workplace with his own ethical standards, or will he need to find another way to survive?

Mike Offit knows the world of high finance from the inside out. Like Warren, he came to Wall Street after his college graduation where he found success. He was a senior trader at Goldman Sachs and also worked at First Boston, Prudential and Deutsche Bank, where he built and ran the Street's leading commercial real estate finance business. This is the world of the wealthy and of those who would do anything to join their ranks. It is the Street before the scandals and the collapse of the real estate market that ruined so many investors and businessmen. Readers will enjoy learning more about the inner workings of the world of finance, which is a closed environment to most individuals, who can only trust that those working there are doing the right things. This book is recommended not only for mystery fans, but for those readers interested in business.
I see five major themes or threads in this novel.

The least important and worst handled is the mystery story, which seems to me to have been tacked on to give the novel a conventional climax and conclusion. I don't like mysteries so I'm not the best judge, but I think it's a total failure as a mystery. The climax depended on a totally implausible coincidence, and I found the criminal's motive and behavior to be totally unbelievable, even senseless, psychologically.

The second thread is the narrator's love and sex life. Since this is a transparently autobiographical first novel, it would be interesting in a gossipy sort of way to know how much is real and how much is fantasy. The author/narrator has major relationships with two women. Their conversations are exactly the same, full of impossibly clever banter. We can see why the retired investment banker turned to writing, because he's clearly stimulated by extremely verbal, clever women. I found the love story to be pretty pedestrian in terms of exploring feelings and cluttered with too many secondary characters but at least I found the dialogue entertaining.

The career story probably takes the most words, and here the author is on his strongest footing. I'm knowledgeable about and interested in stocks and options, not bonds, so I glazed over at the technical bond talk, which seemed to me to be laid on too thick just to establish the author's credibility. I'm sure he knows his stuff on bonds, but I was skeptical about the narrator's claim to multiply his money fairly quickly trading spreads on the futures market. I've never traded futures but I know the risk and reward on hedged positions is drastically less than bold directional bets, which is where the big money is made and lost. Apart from the financial stuff, the brutal office politics are engrossing and well described. Detracting from the office politics story is how most of his male colleagues are very much the same, communicating mostly through clever but sophomoric insults. Some readers I'm sure are highly entertained by a stream of cleverly worded insults, but I found it tiresome, especially the character whose only defining characterisc is his use of the f-word in every sentence.

A major theme is social condemnation, mainly of Wall Street. This got to be such a caricature it was unconvincing to me. I'm certainly willing to believe there is a lot of crime on Wall Street, ethics are lax, and no choirboys get better than menial jobs, but the pervasive and casual felonious behavior got to be too incredible for me. I don't know if the author wanted to work the unoriginal post-recession meme of Wall Street as a criminal enterprise or if he was working off his anger at the machine he worked in for so many years, or both, but as social commentary it didn't do much for me. Not so clear to me is the author's view of the super-rich. You could argue that there is some biting satire, including two instances of naked racism, but on the other hand the narrator frequently displays suave acceptance of the super-rich. This is most striking in the loving and detailed descriptions of rich people's decor and artwork. His depth of knowledge in this field is not credible, unless he majored in decorative arts and didn't bother to reveal the fact. My guess is that the author made a half-hearted effort to work the meme of the super-rich as somewhat evil but really preferred to glamorize them, so any satire or critique is undermined.

The most interesting theme to me is the narrator's corruption. This corruption happens quickly, and the point seems to be that in an amoral system, corruption is easy. That's a valid point, but it would have been much more interesting if the main character had some internal conflict beyond having gnawing doubts.

I have to admit I'm putting this book up against tough competition. It reminded me a lot of Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire of the Vanities," which is totally free of autobiographical first novel issues, focuses much more on character than on Wall Street machinations and crime, and which I consider a masterpiece. On more superficial grounds I was also reminded of Erica Jong's autobiographical first novel, "Fear of Flying," which is also set in part on Manhattan and whose narrator also went to Columbia. While I don't put Jong quite in Wolfe's class, they are both far and away above Offit.

In spite of my critical view, I think there's some potential here. If the author stays away from mysteries and can get away from writing about himself, his wife, and his lovers/friends/acquaintances, I would like to read his next novel.
I love mysteries and thrillers and this is one of the better books I have come across in a long time.
Robert Ludlum meets Gordon Gekko. Mike Offit's book is a gripping, must-read for anyone interested in the dark underside of Wall Street. A real page-turner mystery written with wit, style and a unique insight into a world where money doesn't just corrupt, it can kill.
A realistic insiders look at Wall Street...especially Bond trading. Thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Would recommend it to anyone in the market even though parts are extremely technical.
I love Wall Street novels, a great read!
This first novel by Mike Offit lands him squarely, shoulder to shoulder, and on par with the authors that he grew up venerating. A masterful storyteller, his dexterity with language allows him to shoot from the hip with a salient wit and rhythmic conversational ease. He is equally qualified to take us for the cinematic long shot, a poetic pan of a city, a room well appointed, a man and what makes him tick. Offit can talk us in and out of a metagon puzzle box of trade logic. He does this without leaving us in the dust or sacrificing the narrative. This highly entertaining, hysterical thriller manages to expose the dark underbelly of unmitigated greed while leaving its moral compass intact. Equally relevant in 1984 or 2014, "Nothing Personal" is the "Space Mountain" of financial hijinx. It is one hell of a ride.
Given all the stories that came out of the financial crisis on how the big Wall Street firms manipulated markets and knowingly sold their clients bad deals to rack up huge fees, Mr. Offit's tale shouldn't be shocking. Yet reading his first-hand accounts of the personalities, culture, language and cynicism of the industry is still chilling. Add in a nice murder mystery and some hot women and you have a very engaging read!