This book takes you back to the early 90s - when headlines were filled with news that under the stewardship of Bob Citron, Orange County announced that its pension fund had suffered a 1.6 billion loss. It is an expose on the marketing and sale of derivatives as well as a peek into the frat boy culture of wall street. The book was an entertaining and educational journey tracing the author's career at Morgan Stanley as a derivatives sales person. Its strongest aspect was boiling derivative-speak down to plain-speak. I also found refreshing the author's admission that very few people involved in the derivatives industry (including himself) really understand the risks of the products. The book almost reads as a farce for laypeople not employed in the financial services industry - but for the unease that lingers from the realization that nearly all of us invest in mutual funds that regularaly purchase these products. One weakness of the book is that one never learns why the author chose to work on wall street as a salesperson - rather than practicing law. Having this information would have provided a full circle narrative framework for the reader - when the book concludes with the author's return to the law.

This book is a rarity in the financial world: blessed both with fascinating subject matter and a gifted author. Frank Partnoy takes the reader through his experience on Wall Street, most of which was spent in Morgan Stanley's nascent but lucrative derivatives group. Partnoy tells the story through the entertaining personalities of those he worked with, and his explanations of the derivatives transactions his firm sold in the latter half of the nineties gives a magnificent introduction to the basics of how derivatives work. Along the way, Partnoy amicably illustrates the global-economic oddities that predicated these derivatives transactions' creation, the contempt their creators had for those who would be buying them, and the oddities of a corporate world awash in money but barren of values. I enjoyed Partnoy's account wholeheartedly, and I consider it an instant member of the Liars Poker/When Genius Failed canon.

This book is an entertaining page turner, as we follow the author in his exploits and experiences in investment banking. However, as someone who knows a bit about the derivatives business, it is clear that the author tries to sensationalize the transactions, using the expression "ripping someone's face off" too often. Clients of investment banks are, for the most part, very experienced financial managers, who generally choose complex financial structures because these are the structures that exactly fit their needs. It is very rare (I have never seen it) that a customer would buy something he was not thoroughly familiar with. My only conclusion can be that the author was eager to write a book, and so chose every single transaction he was exposed to and created the image that customers were always innocent bystanders.

Very entertaining look at power, arrogance, and hubris among highly paid Wall Street "professionals". Clear explanation of some complex derivatives products is also a plus.

This is an entertaining dirt disher, but has no other merit. If you think that life in a Wall Street firm is really like this - these days, at any rate - think again. If you want a really salacious dirt disher, only well written - try Michael Lewis' Liars' Poker, on which the format of this book was surely based. FIASCO is a thoroughly inferior product.

Not only is it poorly written, it suffers from the fact that its author seems to have had very little understanding of what he was doing when employed at Morgan Stanley - this is apparent from simply reading his own explanations of the transactions. Mind you, this is no more than you'd expect from a junior associate who'd been on the derivatives desk for a very short period of time - investment banking is a difficult business (if it wasn't, people wouldn't get paid so much to do it) and it takes years to fully understand what is going on, let alone to get any good at it. And that's something this author never allowed himself the time to do. If he had (and was any good), my guess is he'd still be doing the job, rather than writing the kiss and tell expose.

Still this silly book sells - but maybe the writing's on the wall: right now, some clunker ex-Enron employee is probably writing the successor in line to FIASCO, only about Enron. With any luck, though, at least this time it'll be written with some style.