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Gutfreund is the book's hero. He is cast as a kind of Isaiah figure, an unworldly suffering servant of Salomon. He describes making his transition from trader to manager, for example, with this passage: "While I enjoy the management role," he said, "it's because I feel a challenge, not because I th…

A young Salomon Brothers trader named Howie Rubin began to calculate the probability of homeowners' prepaying their mortgages. He discovered that the probability varied according to where they lived, the length of time their loans had been outstanding, and the sizes of their loans. He used historic…

If you are a self-possessed man with a healthy sense of detachment from your bank account and someone writes you a check for tens of millions of dollars, you probably behave as if you have won a sweepstakes, kicking your feet in the air and laughing yourself to sleep at night at the miracle of your…