Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers

Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers

When Jared Dillian joined Lehman Brothers in 2001, he fulfilled a life-long dream to make it on Wall Streetâ€”but he had no idea how close to the edge the job would take him.

Like Michael Lewisâ€™s classic Liarâ€™s Poker, Jared Dillianâ€™s Street Freak takes readers behind the scenes of the legendary Lehman Brothers, exposing its outrageous and often hilarious corporate culture.

In this ultracompetitive Ivy League world where men would flip over each otherâ€™s ties to check out the labels (also known as the â€œLehman Handshakeâ€), Dillian was an outsider as an ex-military, working-class guy in a Menâ€™s Wearhouse suit. But he was scrappy and determined; in interviews he told potential managers that, â€œNobody can work harder than me. Nobody is willing to put in the hours I will put in. I am insane.â€ As it turned out, on Wall Street insanity is not an undesirable quality.

Dillian rose from green associate, checking IDs at the entrance to the trading floor in the paranoid days following 9/11, to become an integral part of Lehmanâ€™s culture in its final years as the firmâ€™s head Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) trader. More than $1 trillion in wealth passed through his hands, but at the cost of an untold number of smashed telephones and tape dispensers. Over time, the exhilarating and explosively stressful job took its toll on him. The extreme highs and lows of the trading floor masked and exacerbated the symptoms of Dillianâ€™s undiagnosed bipolar and obsessive compulsive disorders, leading to a downward spiral that eventually landed him in a psychiatric ward.

Dillian put his life back together, returning to work healthier than ever before, but Lehman itself had seemingly gone mad, having made outrageous bets on commercial real estate, and was quickly headed for self-destruction.

A raucous account of the final years of Lehman Brothers, from 9/11 at its World Financial Center offices through the firmâ€™s bankruptcy, including vivid portraits of trading-floor culture, the financial meltdown, and the companyâ€™s ultimate collapse, Street Freak is a raw, visceral, and wholly original memoir of life inside the belly of the beast during the most tumultuous time in financial history. In his electrifying and fresh voice, Dillian takes readers on a wild ride through madness and back, both inside Lehman Brothers and himself.
Country USA
Manufacturer Gallery Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2011-09-13
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Gallery Books
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2011-09-13
Format	Kindle eBook

Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers

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