一本关于金融危机的书会让你想捧上一大碗爆米花，这事可不是经常发生。
但维姬•沃德(Vicky Ward)这本关于破产投行雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)的奇闻妙谈让人手不释卷，这可能是2008年金融危机催生的最接近言情小说的作品。
沃德是《名利场》(Vanity Fair)杂志的特约编辑。她将目光从雷曼悲剧性的倒闭中抽出来，转而关注持续了近三十年的勾心斗角与贪婪无厌。
她不仅采访了大部分核心人物，还采访了一部分人的妻子与前妻，更具戏剧性的是，她通过降神会的形式，采访了已故的雷曼前总裁克里斯•佩蒂(Chris Pettit)。沃德认为佩蒂代表着这家投行的真正精神。
如果你关心全球银行体系究竟在哪里出了错这样的技术细节，那么此书不适合你。
债务抵押债券(collateralised debt obligations)只在书末的索引中被提到了两次，信用违约互换(CDS)只占了两段半。
但《魔鬼的赌场》(The Devil's Casino)囊括了读者可能想知道的所有内容，从雷曼关键领导者及其夫人们的个性缺点到购物习惯。
沃德写到了乘坐直升机出行、使用公司的喷气式飞机、数百万美元的艺术品收藏以及恒久不变的诽谤中伤。
几乎没有谁的表现令人满意。艾琳•卡兰(Erin Callan)是首位担任大型华尔街银行首席财务官的女性。其在晋升后变得越来越漂亮、身材越来越姣好、衣着越来越光鲜，令同事很是恼火；随后她又向媒体大谈特谈自己的私人购物助理，也让他们感到局促不安。
野心勃勃的高收益债券业务主管安德鲁•柯克(Andrew Kirk)在2007年圣诞晚会结束后，坚持让公司公车改变路线，先把他送回家，因此被罚了100万美元。
尽管这本书看上去琐碎肤浅，但沃德对雷曼核心问题的揭示，甚至比她自己可能知道的还要好。通过描写横跨数十年的一系列事件，沃德揭示了雷曼交易员如何将交易风险隐藏起来，不让高管与公众知道的惯常做法。
在上世纪70年代，当负责监督的合伙人来参观时，交易员就把索引卡从墙上取下来，这样，合伙人就不会意识到他们当天的交易超出了头寸限制。沃德写道，在2006年，最高管理层将首席风险官排挤出了核心权力圈，只因后者胆敢提出房价可能会下跌的说法。
雷曼破产调查员最近公布的报告中指出，雷曼在季度报告期间，利用一种叫做“回购105”(Repo 105)的会计伎俩，使资产负债表缩小了数百万美元的规模。这种伎俩显然传统悠久。不过报告发布的时间太晚，没有被收录在沃德的书中。
尽管沃德进行了大范围的采访，但仍有漏网之鱼。她写道，雷曼首席执行官迪克•富尔德(Dick Fuld)的律师不允许富尔德接受她的采访。
雷曼总裁兼首席运营官乔•格雷戈里(Joe Gregory)也拒绝接受采访。沃德认为格雷戈里是这家投行倒闭的罪魁祸首。
不过，她对这两个人的描绘是毁灭性的。富尔德不管事，不容易亲近，而且注重外表到了偏执的程度。当驻伦敦证券业务联席主管罗杰•纳吉俄夫(Roger Nagioff)穿着宽松休闲裤，而不是要求的高尔夫球衫与斜纹棉布长裤，出席富尔德在爱达荷州太阳谷牧场举行的年度夏季聚会时，富尔德竟坚持让他更换衣服。
格雷戈里被形容为“有毒影响力”，他给人的印象是贪婪，对官僚程序及自己资助的慈善机构的担忧甚于对雷曼运营的担忧。
沃德指责格雷戈里是卡兰迅速晋升与降职的幕后黑手，他还将一系列潜在竞争对手排挤出了公司，其中包括1996年将凡事亲躬亲为且受人爱戴的总裁佩蒂赶出公司。
本质上，《魔鬼的赌场》将雷曼的最终灭亡追根溯源到了那场灾难性的权力争斗。沃德写道，起初，富尔德想聘请并购专家乔•佩雷拉(Joe Perella)，帮助增强雷曼相对较弱的投行业务，但佩蒂成了障碍。接着，格雷戈里、佩蒂的一些老朋友与富尔德密谋，将佩蒂驱逐出了雷曼。
这导致雷曼没有一个人拥有足够高的职位，来挑战富尔德与格雷戈里所承担的风险，尤其是在房地产业务上。
在沃德看来，剩下的故事就是一出无法阻止的悲情歌剧，尽管这个悲剧用了12年的时间才演完。不过书中俯拾皆是的设计师服饰与奢华游艇，让阅读变得十分有趣。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001032223
It is not often that a book on the financial crisis makes you want to get a big bowl of popcorn.
But Vicky Ward's page-turning yarn about Lehman Brothers, the failed investment bank, is the closest thing to a bodice-ripper that the 2008 meltdown is likely to produce.
Ward, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine, backs up from Lehman's tragic collapse to take a look at nearly three decades of backstabbing and greed.
She has interviewed most of the key players as well as selected wives, ex-wives and even, rather dramatically, held a seance with the ghost of the man Ward believes was the true heart of Lehman, former president Chris Pettit.
This is not a book for people who care about the geeky details of what went wrong with the global banking system.
Collateralised debt obligations rate just two mentions in the index and credit default swaps get a paragraph and a half.
But The Devil's Casino has everything readers might want to know about the personal foibles and shopping habits of key Lehman leaders and their wives.
Ward writes about helicopter rides and corporate jets, multimillion-dollar art collections and constant back-biting.
Few people come off well. Erin Callan, the first female chief financial officer at a big Wall Street bank, annoyed her colleagues by becoming blonder, more toned and better dressed as she rose through the ranks – and then embarrassed them by talking to the media about her personal shopper.
Andrew Kirk, the ambitious head of high-yield debt, got docked $1m for insisting the company-chartered bus change its route and drop him home first after the 2007 Christmas party.
But for all the book's apparent fluffiness, Ward hones in on Lehman's central problems better than even she could have known. In a series of incidents stretching back decades, she shows how Lehman's traders routinely hid the riskiness of their trades from senior managers and the public.
In the 1970s, they pulled index cards off the wall when the supervising partner came to visit so that he would not realise they were exceeding their position limits in intraday trading. In 2006, she writes, top management sidelined the chief risk officer for daring to suggest that house prices might fall.
The recent revelations by the bankruptcy examiner that Lehman had used an accounting trick nicknamed Repo 105 to shrink its balance sheet by millions of dollars at quarterly reporting periods clearly came from a long tradition, even if the report came out too late to be included in Ward's book.
In spite of Ward's extensive interviews, there are some gaping holes. She writes that a lawyer for Dick Fuld, the Lehman chief executive, would not permit him to speak to her.
Joe Gregory, the president and chief operating officer who Ward blames for much that went wrong, also refused to talk.
However, the pictures she paints of both men are devastating. Fuld is hands-off, out-of-touch and obsessed with appearances. When Roger Nagioff, the London-based co-head of equities, made the mistake of showing up at the annual summer gathering at Fuld's ranch in Sun Valley, Idaho, wearing cargo pants instead of the required golf shirt and chinos, Fuld insisted that he change his clothes.
Gregory, described as a “toxic influence”, comes across as greedy and worried more about box ticking and the charities he supports than running the bank.
Ward blames him for rapid rise and fall of Callan and for forcing out a whole series of potential rivals, including Pettit, the hands-on and well-liked president, in 1996.
Essentially, The Devil's Casino dates Lehman's ultimate demise back to that cataclysmic power struggle. As Ward tells it, Fuld first tried to recruit Joe Perella, the mergers and acquisitions maven, to build up Lehman's weaker investment banking side, but Pettit proved an obstacle. Then Gregory and some of Pettit's oldest friends conspired with Fuld to push Pettit out instead.
That left Lehman without anyone in a position to challenge Fuld and Gregory on the risks they were taking, particularly in real estate.
To Ward, the rest of the tale is an unstoppable operatic tragedy, albeit one that took 12 years to play out. But it is chock-full of designer clothes and fancy yachts that make for a fascinating read.
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