SMITHFIELD TRUST COMPANY BOOK REVIEWS

The Big Short
By: Michael Lewis

If you share my contempt of Wall Street, The Big Short will reinforce, and even strengthen, your bias. The greed, recklessness and, in the final analysis, stupidity of the Wall Street principals taking advantage of the real estate bubble are nearly unfathomable.

Michael Lewis tells the story of the crash of the real estate markets and mortgage-backed securities through the eyes of the few wise Wall Street outsiders who saw the impending collapse and took advantage of it. This unlikely group of “heroes” did, interestingly, have common characteristics. Each was tough, non conformist, quirky and willing to take on the establishment.

The most fascinating hero is Mike Burry, a one-eyed graduate of UCLA and Vanderbilt Medical School, who became bored with medicine. Burry left medicine and proved to be a successful value investor in the 1990s in the middle of the dot-com bubble. Burry has Asperger’s disease, which causes him to look at situations through a different, and arguably better, prism. Through pure tenacity, Burry was able to create a market where it became possible to short credit default swaps – hence, the Big Short. Credit default swaps are, in essence, contracts insuring the pools of mortgage obligations packaged by Wall Street. When the real estate securing the mortgages began to plummet, Burry’s shorting of the swaps was prescient.

Michael Lewis, who wrote Liar’s Poker, another expose of Wall Street, writes well with humor and great clarity. Unfortunately, The Big Short will add materially to your level of cynicism as you see our government bail out the scoundrels who created the financial mess in the first place.

- Bob Kopf

The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill
By: Richard M. Langworth

Readers of The Forecast may know that I am a great admirer of Winston Churchill. Part of that admiration stems from Churchill’s verbal dexterity or, in the words of Richard Langworth, his “ability to associate words and thoughts in an arresting fashion.” The book is cleverly arranged so that Churchill’s quotations are assembled, in part, by topics. Some quotes are humorous; some are simply sage observations.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Bernard Shaw: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend – if you have one”. WSC: “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second -- if there is one.”

• Churchill referring to his desertion of the Conservatives for the Liberals in 1904, and returning to the Conservatives again in 1925: “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”

• On Stanley Baldwin: “Occasionally he stumbled over the truth but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.”

• On Aneurin Bevan: “I should think it was hardly possible to state the opposite of the truth with more precision.”

This is a great book to read in snippets or all at once.

- Bob Kopf

Innocent
By: Scott Turow

Scott Turow is, in my opinion, the best of the current crop of mystery/thriller novelists. Perhaps this is because, unlike John Grisham, he doesn’t write a new novel every few weeks.

Innocent features a likeable, yet flawed, Rusty Sabich, an appellate court judge whose wife, Barbara, is found dead under odd circumstances. Sabich is indicted for murder by a long-standing rival, District Attorney Tommy Molto. The trial takes some unpredictable twists and turns with a believable ending. Turow’s depiction of the characters makes this a worthwhile, yet easy, read.

- Bob Kopf

Citizens of London
By: Lynne Olson

A friend of mine, Mike McCann, recommended this book to me, and I am glad that he did.

Lynne Olson tells the story of how three Americans, Edward R. Morrow, John Gilbert Winant and Averell Harriman, helped to push a reluctant United States into an alliance with Great Britain before the Battle of Britain.

Edward R. Morrow, the head of CBS News in Europe, and John Gilbert Winant, the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, are portrayed as idealistic and effective. Olson shows Harriman in a somewhat less sympathetic light, with Harriman being more ambitious and less intelligent.

The romantic foibles of the three Americans are incredible. Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law, Pamela, had an affair with Harriman and then with Morrow. Winant was romantically involved with Churchill’s daughter, Sarah. Olson implies that Winston knew of these affairs but looked the other way to allow the three to induce Roosevelt to support the British.

Well written and researched, Citizens of London is an especially powerful tribute to the English and their American champions during the Battle of Britain.

- Bob Kopf

Open
By: : Andre Agassi

Although I am a true tennis fan, I actually did not expect to like this autobiography. I was wrong.

Andre Agassi was raised by a lunatic of a father who drove him to be a star tennis player. Abusive, violent and seemingly without any compassion toward his son, Agassi’s father planted the seeds for later social dysfunction in Andre. It is, frankly, astonishing that Agassi did not self destruct.

The stress and level of physical exertion required to play professional tennis come across clearly in the book, and one must admire the successful players for their sacrifices. Andre’s relationships with the other players, as well as Brooke Shields and Stefi Graf, are interesting. Not surprisingly, Jimmy Connors is a colossal jerk.

You will, I think, have a heightened sense of empathy for Andre Agassi after reading this.

- Bob Kopf