One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been answered until now. What happened at Lehman Brothers and why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Lehman Brothers Vice President gives us the straight answers—right from the belly of the beast.

In A Colossal Failure of Common Sense , Larry McDonald, a Wall Street insider, reveals, the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has ever done. The book is couched in the very human story of Larry McDonald’s Horatio Alger-like rise from a Massachusetts “gateway to nowhere” housing project to the New York headquarters of Lehman Brothers, home of one of the world’s toughest trading floors.

We get a close-up view of the participants in the Lehman collapse, especially those who saw it coming with a helpless, angry certainty. We meet the Brahmins at the top, whose reckless, pedal-to-the-floor addiction to growth finally demolished the nation’s oldest investment bank. The Wall Street we encounter here is a ruthless place, where brilliance, arrogance, ambition, greed, capacity for relentless toil, and other human traits combine in a potent mix that sometimes fuels prosperity but occasionally destroys it.

The full significance of the dissolution of Lehman Brothers remains to be measured. But this much is certain: it was a devastating blow to America’s—and the world’s—financial system. And it need not have happened. This is the story of why it did.

From the Hardcover edition.

宋鴻兵，現任宏源證券首席國際金融戰略分析師、結構融資部總經理。1994年赴美留學，2002年起先後擔任過美國最大的非銀行類金融機構房利美(Fannie Mae)和房地美(Freddie Mac)的高級谘詢顧問，主要從事房地産貸款自動審核係統設計、金融衍生工具的稅務計算分析、MBS(住房按揭支持證券)的風險評估等工作。2007年5月齣版超級財經暢銷書《貨幣戰爭》，成功預測瞭2008年全球金融海嘯。2009年創辦新型獨立全球戰略智庫——環球財經研究院，齣任院長，並於2009年7月參與籌備中國“超級智庫”中國國際經濟交流中心(CCIEE)舉辦的“全球智庫峰會”，成功承辦瞭“全球儲蓄消費與金融安全”分論壇的“金融安全”專題。入選美國《商業周刊》“2009中國最具影響力40人”。