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Confidence Game: How Hedge Fund Manager Bill Ackman Called Wall Street's Bluff Paperback – March 29, 2011

by Christine S. Richard (Author)

4.5 285 ratings

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An expose on the delusion, greed, and arrogance that led to America's credit crisis

The collapse of America's credit markets in 2008 is quite possibly the biggest financial disaster in U.S. history. Confidence Game: How a Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street's Bluff is the story of Bill Ackman's six-year campaign to warn that the $2.5 trillion bond insurance business was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Branded a fraud by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, and investigated by Eliot Spitzer and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ackman later made his investors more than $1 billion when bond insurers kicked off the collapse of the credit markets.

Unravels the story of the credit crisis through an engaging and human drama
Draws on unprecedented access to one of Wall Street's best-known investors
Shows how excessive leverage, dangerous financial models, and a blind reliance on triple-A credit ratings sent Wall Street careening toward disaster

Confidence Game is a real world "Emperor's New Clothes," a tale of widespread delusion, and one dissenting voice in the era leading up to the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Confidence Gamethe inside story of how an investor made more than $1 billion betting against the flaws that toppled the financial systemis a window into all that went wrong on Wall Street.

Praise for Confidence Game

"Christine Richard's Confidence Game is an insightful, timely, and fascinatinghigh-speed drive into the often difficult-to-penetrate world of short sellers."Scott B. MacDonald, Senior Managing Director, Aladdin Capital LLC,and coauthor of Separating Fools from Their Money

"How to head off the next crash? Listen to the dissidents now. Christine Richard'sdeeply researched and deftly written account of Bill Ackman's high-stakes struggle with a leading pillar of a now-collapsed system is the right book at the right time, and a mesmerizing read."Dean Starkman, business section editor, Columbia Journalism Review

"Bill Ackman's battle with MBIA will be remembered as one of the great epics ofWall Street history, and no one followed the story more closely than Christine Richard."Bethany McLean, coauthor of The Smartest Guys in the Room

"Finally, a financial crisis book with a hero. It's a compelling morality tale of howone man uncovered a massive fraud and then fought tenaciously to show the world he was right. Richard weaves the threads of complex financial shenanigans into a page-turning narrative. Ackman emerges as the Don Quixote of financial markets: you will root for him and a happy ending."Frank Partnoy, author of F.I.A.S.C.O., Infectious Greed, and The Match King

"Confidence Game is a lesson for all investors on the value of independent and exhaustive research. It's also a riveting story." Todd Sullivan, creator of valueplays.net and a regular contributor to theStocktwits blog network and Seeking Alpha

From the Back Cover

Confidence Game the inside story of how an investor made more than $1 billion betting against the flaws that toppled the financial system is a window into all that went wrong on Wall Street.

Praise for Confidence Game

"Christine Richard's Confidence Game is an insightful, timely, and fascinatinghigh-speed drive into the often difficult-to-penetrate world of short sellers." Scott B. MacDonald, Senior Managing Director, Aladdin Capital LLC,and coauthor of Separating Fools from Their Money

"How to head off the next crash? Listen to the dissidents now. Christine Richard'sdeeply researched and deftly written account of Bill Ackman's high-stakes struggle with a leading pillar of a now-collapsed system is the right book at the right time, and a mesmerizing read." Dean Starkman, business section editor, Columbia Journalism Review

"Bill Ackman's battle with MBIA will be remembered as one of the great epics ofWall Street history, and no one followed the story more closely than Christine Richard." Bethany McLean, coauthor of The Smartest Guys in the Room

"Finally, a financial crisis book with a hero. It's a compelling morality tale of howone man uncovered a massive fraud and then fought tenaciously to show the world he was right. Richard weaves the threads of complex financial shenanigans into a page-turning narrative. Ackman emerges as the Don Quixote of financial markets: you will root for him and a happy ending." Frank Partnoy, author of F.I.A.S.C.O., Infectious Greed, and The Match King

"Confidence Game is a lesson for all investors on the value of independent and exhaustive research. It's also a riveting story." Todd Sullivan, creator of valueplays.net and a regular contributor to theStocktwits blog network and Seeking Alpha

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1118010418
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomberg Press; 1st edition (March 29, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781118010419
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1118010419
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.1 x 8.8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,173,026 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,779 in Company Business Profiles (Books)
- #1,829 in Economic Conditions (Books)
- #2,325 in Economic History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 285 ratings

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Howard

A really great read!

Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2015

Verified Purchase

I bought this book along with David Einhorn's ( Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, A Long Short (and Now Complete) Story, Updated with New Epilogue ) which is very similar in the storyline and end result.

I thought this book was presented much better and I found myself more immersed in it than with Einhorn's. I was fighting to get through Einhorn's book, while I found myself wanting to read more of this one.

All that being said, what Ackman did was tremendous - truly a David vs. Goliath task. However, as much respect as I have for Ackman and what he did and accomplished - as I read the book, I found myself questioning "Did Ackman simply uncover what was going on and made money being right"? or "Did Ackman actually cause the series of events to take place which caused the collapse of MBIA and other insurers after years of pitching his story"? It's sort of the same kind of thing that Dick Fuld brings up when discussing Lehman and Hank Greenberg discussing AIG...would the events which took place and the ultimate demise have happened on their own had short sellers and some of the nefarious actors not done what they did? Or would business have just continued as it always had? Though each of the companies did have problems, I'm not so sure that they would not have been able to muddle through...I believe it was with the added pressure applied by folks like Ackman and Einhorn that undermined public confidence in these companies that ultimately threw them into turmoil. Of course the financial crisis threw gasoline into the fire, but again, had public confidence not been undermined, perhaps they would have been able to raise additional money, righted their ships, and continued? The fact that MBIA is still in business today makes you really ask these questions. How could MBIA still be in business if what they were offering provided no benefit to the purchasers of municipal bond insurance and was simply added cost to taxpayers? Is there business really so different today?

Today, MBIA does $1B in revenues while carrying $9B in debt - however, they are posting decent/strong earnings - $1.81/share over trailing 12 months with a stock price at $6.00. Ackman called for MBIA to go to bankruptcy, and it still has not happened...even after everything which has taken place.

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Ira E. Stoll

Amazing

Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2010

Verified Purchase

This book came out in late April, and the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Financial Times have all ignored it.

The lack of attention is a shame, because it's an amazing, amazing book.

Hedge fund manager William Ackman gave author Christine Richard impressive access. She writes, "Ackman gave me a CD-ROM containing every e-mail he had written or received that mentioned MBIA as well as years of appointment calendars and access to an office filled with more than 40 boxes of documents he'd collected in researching MBIA. He encouraged colleagues, advisers, and friends to talk with me and spent hours answering my questions."

The result is a fast-paced, behind-the-scenes look at how a "short" investor uses the press, stock analysts, and the government to beat down the price of a stock he has bet against.

Mr. Ackman's campaign that is at the heart of this book is his war against Municipal Bond Insurance Association, or MBIA.

Here the key journalist seems not to have been anyone at the New York Times, or even Ms. Richard, who worked for Dow Jones and Bloomberg. No, it was "Marty Peretz, the editor-in-chief of the New Republic magazine, who had been Ackman's thesis adviser when he was an undergraduate at Harvard."

Mr. Peretz, reports Ms. Richard became the first investor in Mr. Ackman's hedge fund after Mr. Ackman "drove from Boston to Peretz's summer house on Cape Cod to pitch him the idea." (Mr. Peretz tells me the investment was $500,000, made at the time and not subsequently increased.)

By Ms. Richard's account, Mr. Peretz wasn't exactly what you'd call a passive investor. After the SEC didn't really follow up on a meeting in which Mr. Ackman aired his allegations about MBIA to SEC staff, Mr. Peretz wrote in July 2004 to the chairman of the SEC, William Donaldson, "with whom he was friendly." Reports Ms. Richard, "Peretz's appeal stirred a response at the SEC, which asked Ackman to return to Washington."

If the SEC did not act against MBIA, Mr. Ackman would try another regulator, the attorney general of New York, Eliot Spitzer. Ms. Richard reports that in January or February 2005: "Ackman, along with Marty Peretz, and Eliot Spitzer were huddled around a small table in the attorney general's office, eating pressed turkey sandwiches. Peretz had arranged the lunch meeting. Ackman wanted to point Spitzer toward the important issues at MBIA."

If Mr. Spitzer and the SEC both did not act, there was always the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank. The book recounts Mr. Ackman and his lawyer flying to Boston on June 5, 2007 for a meeting with Congressman Frank, with whom they visited only after they "picked up Marty Peretz, who knew Frank from their student days at Harvard." Mr. Frank agreed to hold hearings on MBIA.

There's plenty of other rich detail here. The broker who gave Mr. Ackman the idea to short MBIA worked for, of all places, Lehman Brothers.

The dependent relationships among short-sellers, regulators, and the press are illuminated for all to see. At one point, Mr. Ackman asks an SEC official what it would take to get the agency to act. The SEC official's reply? "A story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, especially the New York Times."

What to make of the whole episode? Well, it's certainly a newsworthy tale, and not only for those interested in hedge funds or short-selling. One MBIA vehicle named something like Latin for "black hole," Ms. Richard reports, "owned liens on 11,000 properties in Pittsburgh, nearly 10 percent of the entire city."

As an investment idea, shorting MBIA was a big success. The shares lost more than 80% of their value. "Pershing Square investors made about $1.1 billion," Ms. Richard reports. About $140 million of that was Mr. Ackman's personally, though, Ms. Richard reports, he has pledged the entire amount to charity.

Those troubled by Mr. Ackman's use of the regulators to press his position at least have to concede that MBIA and its allies also used the regulators to press their own case against Mr. Ackman, subjecting him to SEC and New York attorney general inquiries that were eventually dropped.

While Ms. Richard's book is finished, the story isn't over. Some value investors are now placing bets on an MBIA recovery. And short-sellers are circling the for-profit education industry using the same strategy of press and regulatory pressure that was deployed so successfully against both Farmer Mac and MBIA.

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