How Money Became Dangerous: The Inside Story of Our Turbulent Relationship with Modern Finance

by Christopher Varelas, Dan Stone

Overview

From a veteran of the trade, a provocative and entertaining voyage into the turbulent heart of modern money that sheds new light on the rise of our threatening and complicated financial system, how money became our adversary, and why finding a new course is crucial to a healthy society

In the not too distant past, money was simple. You might have had a bank account and a mortgage, perhaps some basic investments. Wall Street didn’t have a reputation for greed and recklessness. That all started to change in the eighties, as our financial systems became increasingly complex, moving beyond the understanding of the general public while impacting our lives in innumerable ways. The financial world began to feel like an enigma—a rogue force working against us, seemingly controlled by no one. 

From an industry veteran who’s had firsthand involvement in the events that shaped modern money, How Money Became Dangerous journeys from the crime-ridden LA jewelry district to the cutthroat Salomon Brothers trading floor, from the high-stakes world of investment banking to the center of the technology boom, capturing the key deals, developments, and players that made the financial world what it is today. The book illuminates the dark, hidden forces of Wall Street and how it has dehumanized and left behind everyday Americans. A fresh and enlightening take on how we reached this point, How Money Became Dangerous also makes the case for why Wall Street needs to be saved, if only to save ourselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062684769
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	766,640
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Responsible for brokering some of the biggest mergers and acquisitions in finance, Chris Varelas was listed among the top 100 dealmakers by the New York Times and was named top technology rainmaker by DealMakers Monthly magazine. After working as Citi’s head of technology, media, and telecommunications during the first dot-com boom and then leading the company’s national investment bank and regional offices, Varelas left Citi in 2008 to cofound Riverwood Capital, a premier private equity firm in Silicon Valley.

Dan Stone worked for many years at the National Endowment for the Arts as a program manager for the agency’s national initiatives, while also writing and producing dozens of radio documentaries about jazz and classic novels. He founded and served as editor-in-chief of Radio Silence, a magazine of literature and rock & roll, and he coedits the college textbook Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Stone owns North Light in Oakland, California, a hybrid of a bar, bookstore, and record shop.

Editorial Reviews

Both disturbing and fascinating.

Booklist

This book bites the hand that feeds it.

CNBC’s Squawk Box

Varelas has written a relatable, insightful, and often very funny treatise on how, why, and when our financial system started going off the rails and what might be done to fix. It’s Liar’s Poker with a twist of Why Wall Street Matters thrown in for good measure.

William D. Cohan

Both disturbing and fascinating.

Booklist

Both disturbing and fascinating.

Booklist

A cynical if often hilarious view of finance. . . In his time as a banker, Varelas met a host of memorable characters whom he depicts with a candor that ranges from the loving to the vicious.

The Deal

09/30/2019

Former Citigroup executive Varelas debuts with a discursive insider account of the financial industry and the fiscal perils facing America today. Varelas joined Bank of America in 1985 as a corporate loan officer servicing L.A.’s diamond and gold wholesalers. One of his clients would later be convicted of laundering money for Colombian cartel boss Pablo Escobar, a lesson that Varelas says helped to prepare him for the “rationalized immoral behavior” of Wall Street. Tracing his rise to head of Citigroup’s technology, media, and telecom investment banking division, Varelas chronicles such high-stakes deals as Northrop Aircraft’s 1994 acquisition of Grumman Aerospace, and laments the technological (computer-based analytics) and structural (private Wall Street partnerships going public) changes that he believes have made the finance industry more complex and less humane over the past 30 years. Colorful anecdotes, such as the time an executive delivered an entire presentation based on a fortune cookie or the private jet ride Varelas shared with social media influencer Logan Paul, brush up against somber reflections on the bankruptcies of Orange County and Stockton, Calif. The result is an entertaining memoir that doesn’t quite live up to its inflammatory title. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

A cynical if often hilarious view of finance. . . In his time as a banker, Varelas met a host of memorable characters whom he depicts with a candor that ranges from the loving to the vicious.

The Deal

People have come to believe the financial industry is not their ally, that it’s pitted against them and most of society.  In this engaging and important book, Chris Varelas shows how the world of money became so complicated and risky—and why it’s vital we understand how to fix it.

Walter Isaacson

The best books about the world of money have less to do with finance and more to do with fascinating people and Varelas delivers.  We meet porn stars, internet influencers, and Pablo Escobar’s money launderer, as he recounts his experiences in the industry, revealing important insights about ourselves and the vagaries of Wall Street.  Even those who don’t care much for stories of the financial world will enjoy this book immensely.

Scott Nations

This book bites the hand that feeds it.

CNBC’s Squawk Box

2019-09-11
An insider's view of how an increasingly abstract financial system fails to align with human needs.

Investment banker and fund manager—and, as is often mentioned, former Disneyland employee—Varelas begins with a poignant lesson. As an elementary school student, he was impressed by a classroom visit from a banker who revealed that saving a dime each week would yield the fortune of $3 by the end of the remaining school year. He worked through high school, amassing even more money in a savings account, only to discover that it had zeroed out when the bank introduced a service fee without telling him. Therein was the end of his "naive trust that the system cared, somehow, about my well-being." It doesn't. What it cares about is how the numbers look at the end of the year so that the person manipulating them qualifies for promotions, bonuses, and all the "perverse incentives" of consumer society. Gone are the days, writes the author, when a person like his first major client, a diamond vendor, could borrow money on a handshake—and gone are the days when character mattered as much as collateral and capacity (i.e., "a borrower's ability to handle debt and expenses"). Varelas charts the evolution—or, more, accurately, devolution—of the modern financial sector, noting that when banking firms went public there was no longer a personal stake in the game but instead only "employees looking to maximize annual compensation" without sufficient concern for risk, one of what Walt Disney called "the hard facts that have created America." Other negatives in the system, writes the author, are time-sensitive algorithms whose speed divorces prices from "reality" and a corporate culture that turns the financial-sector worker into "merely a cog in a global delivery mechanism." The author's exercise in forensic accounting as he examines a case of government bankruptcy is particularly fascinating.

Alarming at moments and a welcome user's manual for anyone with investments, large or small, in the current market.

Kirkus Reviews

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