Lawrence G. McDonald

A New York Times bestselling author and leading expert on market risk argues that seismic shifts in the global economy will trigger a multi-trillion-dollar migration of wealth, tracing the fateful decisions that created this crisis--and outlines new rules of investing for the forward-thinking. From Wall Street to the White House, the fantasy of an eventual "return to normal" is still alive and well, nurtured by dangerously outdated theories. But the economic world as we know it--and the rules that govern it--are over. In the coming decade, we'll witness sustained inflation, a series of sovereign and corporate debt crises, and a thundering of capital out of financial assets into hard assets--and few are prepared. Lawrence McDonald got a real-world education in market risk when, as a Lehman Brothers VP, he watched the firm ignore flashing warning signs before its collapse. His analysis led him to identify twenty-one indicators for gauging the health of an economy and detecting early signals of opportunity and danger. In How to Listen When Markets Speak, McDonald unveils his unique predictive models, connecting surprising dots between past, present, and future and outlining actionable trading ideas. Readers will learn: How disastrous Fed policy will collide with an increasingly fragmented geopolitical landscape to keep U. S. inflation near 3-5% for the next decadeHow growing energy demand, underinvestment in infrastructure, and cozy Russia-Saudi Arabia relations will keep oil prices at historic highsWhy hard assets and rare minerals like lithium and cobalt will outperform growth stocks, U. S. treasuries, and passive investment strategiesWhy America will likely lose its position as a global superpower and holder of the world's premier reserve currency, and may be forced to slash Social Security, Medicare, and military spending Rather than merely doomsaying, How to Listen When Markets Speak equips readers to make sense of our current moment, resist reactionary narratives and baseless analysis, and pounce on a new investing playbook.

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.