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Fixers
For anyone who’s wondered why the money men who caused the 2008 banking crisis ended up running U.S. economic policy, a novel that seems too true to be fiction…
On a winter’s night in 2007, a well-heeled “cultural consultant” named Chauncey Suydam gets a call from the head of the world’s most powerful investment bank, who says a financial crisis is brewing, but he has a plan to insulate Wall Street from the fallout—and keep people such as himself out of jail.
His mission for Chauncey is simple: to help funnel millions of dollars to a certain presidential candidate preaching hope and change, in exchange for a few Wall Street-friendly names in the resultant administration.
Yet as Chauncey wends his way amongst the nation’s political elite, he sees with greater clarity than ever how decisions really get made—on Wall Street and in Washington. And as the magnitude of the fix he’s perpetrating begins to sink in, he starts to have second thoughts…But is it too late?
At once shocking and all too plausible, Fixers is a riveting political thriller by a master observer of finance and politics that—despite being fiction—offers a frighteningly reasonable explanation of what really might have happened in 2008.
On a winter’s night in 2007, a well-heeled “cultural consultant” named Chauncey Suydam gets a call from the head of the world’s most powerful investment bank, who says a financial crisis is brewing, but he has a plan to insulate Wall Street from the fallout—and keep people such as himself out of jail.
His mission for Chauncey is simple: to help funnel millions of dollars to a certain presidential candidate preaching hope and change, in exchange for a few Wall Street-friendly names in the resultant administration.
Yet as Chauncey wends his way amongst the nation’s political elite, he sees with greater clarity than ever how decisions really get made—on Wall Street and in Washington. And as the magnitude of the fix he’s perpetrating begins to sink in, he starts to have second thoughts…But is it too late?
At once shocking and all too plausible, Fixers is a riveting political thriller by a master observer of finance and politics that—despite being fiction—offers a frighteningly reasonable explanation of what really might have happened in 2008.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 26, 2016
20 people are currently reading
416 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 18 reviews
April 12, 2016
A possible and plausible explanation for why and how the American banksters and hedge fund managers responsible for the 2008 collapse are in fact richer than ever and spoiling for another crash and bailout. Nearly everyone who voted for him expected the Obama administration to get busy with prosecutions and send the marauding mortgage defrauders to the slammer. It still hasn't happened. Instead Obama made those consummate Wall Street insiders, Timothy Geitner and Larry Summers, Sec. of the Treasury and chief WH economic counsel. So now we have a boiling mad electorate backing Bernie and the Donald, and our two established political parties are gobsmacked and floundering. How we got here is what Fixers is about. It's a novel, but as the author, Michael M. Thomas, said elsewhere, “I read nonfiction for information, fiction for truth.”
It's written as a private diary by a fictional character supposedly in the thick of the financial / political shenanigans surrounding the collapse and the 2008 presidential campaign. We're right there through the daily, shocking, infuriating details of how they rigged the bailout.
Most of the real people who appear do so under their own names which makes the few pseudonyms obvious: the only bank not given its real name is Goldman Sachs, the only bank CEO with a pseudonym is its head, Lloyd Blankfein. Geitner, Summers, Obama's campaign chief, David Axelrod, and a few others at the center of the action are given fictional names. Obama himself is referred to throughout as OG for Our Guy. But their characters, backgrounds, and actions are all from real life.
The narrator has no time for either of the Clintons who appear as themselves. It's to keep Hillary out of the WH that the whole plot gets going, and of Bill the narrator says, “This country really doesn't need a First Lecher doing shady deals in the Rose Garden.”
Nor does he think much of the conservative side of the Supremes: 'Roberts and Alito are like the Pacino and Duvall characters in The Godfather, capo and consigliere; Scalia is clearly certifiable; and the less said about Clarence Thomas the better.”
And some of the others are fictionalized for fun as Merlin Gerrett, the billionaire Sage of Shawnee, Kansas, and “a couple of upmarket thugs from the Midwest named Donald and Douglass Dreck who have been pouring a ton of right-wing money into politics.”
In addition to the history of the collapse and bailout, we learn details about the scams known as the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, the Dodd-Frank bill, Treasury's Quantitative Easing project, the Greek financial crisis (yes, a scam), and the “flash crash” thousand point drop in the Dow in May 2010 due solely to High Frequency Trading, untouched by human hands or brains.
Fixers is so up to the minute that headlines about issues mentioned there are still coming out. A result I imagine of the urgency to publish is a noticeable number of typos throughout, not the fault of the author but his publishing house, and some errors, as when the vernal equinox is referred to as the solstice, Memorial Day and Labor Day are said to be 20 odd weeks apart, and the sentence “It tacitly endorses class welfare” appears when obviously “class warfare” is meant.
But those don't really detract. And Fixers isn't dry, it isn't dull. It's clever, lively, shocking, illuminating, and riveting. Read it along with Hellhound of Wall Street, the biography of Ferdinand Pecora, FDR's prosecuting investigator and the hero along with Senator Carter Glass of Virginia of the aftermath of the '29 crash. Pecora's mentioned in Fixers where it's noted that, to the banksters' relief, the Obama administration didn't assign anyone like him to investigate this disaster.
It's written as a private diary by a fictional character supposedly in the thick of the financial / political shenanigans surrounding the collapse and the 2008 presidential campaign. We're right there through the daily, shocking, infuriating details of how they rigged the bailout.
Most of the real people who appear do so under their own names which makes the few pseudonyms obvious: the only bank not given its real name is Goldman Sachs, the only bank CEO with a pseudonym is its head, Lloyd Blankfein. Geitner, Summers, Obama's campaign chief, David Axelrod, and a few others at the center of the action are given fictional names. Obama himself is referred to throughout as OG for Our Guy. But their characters, backgrounds, and actions are all from real life.
The narrator has no time for either of the Clintons who appear as themselves. It's to keep Hillary out of the WH that the whole plot gets going, and of Bill the narrator says, “This country really doesn't need a First Lecher doing shady deals in the Rose Garden.”
Nor does he think much of the conservative side of the Supremes: 'Roberts and Alito are like the Pacino and Duvall characters in The Godfather, capo and consigliere; Scalia is clearly certifiable; and the less said about Clarence Thomas the better.”
And some of the others are fictionalized for fun as Merlin Gerrett, the billionaire Sage of Shawnee, Kansas, and “a couple of upmarket thugs from the Midwest named Donald and Douglass Dreck who have been pouring a ton of right-wing money into politics.”
In addition to the history of the collapse and bailout, we learn details about the scams known as the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, the Dodd-Frank bill, Treasury's Quantitative Easing project, the Greek financial crisis (yes, a scam), and the “flash crash” thousand point drop in the Dow in May 2010 due solely to High Frequency Trading, untouched by human hands or brains.
Fixers is so up to the minute that headlines about issues mentioned there are still coming out. A result I imagine of the urgency to publish is a noticeable number of typos throughout, not the fault of the author but his publishing house, and some errors, as when the vernal equinox is referred to as the solstice, Memorial Day and Labor Day are said to be 20 odd weeks apart, and the sentence “It tacitly endorses class welfare” appears when obviously “class warfare” is meant.
But those don't really detract. And Fixers isn't dry, it isn't dull. It's clever, lively, shocking, illuminating, and riveting. Read it along with Hellhound of Wall Street, the biography of Ferdinand Pecora, FDR's prosecuting investigator and the hero along with Senator Carter Glass of Virginia of the aftermath of the '29 crash. Pecora's mentioned in Fixers where it's noted that, to the banksters' relief, the Obama administration didn't assign anyone like him to investigate this disaster.
February 21, 2017
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. This imagined political retelling of the financial crisis deserves more stars than it has on Amazon for sure. Some Wall Street people who read it didn't like it, likely because it hit too close to home. Some general readers found it confusing, I suppose, and long. But if you are -- as I am -- someone with a fascination for the time but no personal guilt, this is an excellent read.
Read
December 6, 2016so far so good...but then again, the Fireman was so bad, almost anything would be better.
A rather cynical/hopeless review of where we are as a nation but ultimately I can't argue with the sentiment.
An entertaining read for sure
A rather cynical/hopeless review of where we are as a nation but ultimately I can't argue with the sentiment.
An entertaining read for sure
May 16, 2018
This begins as if it’s going to be a quirky, fun read. Then in Chapter 2, it turns into a boring lecture on finance, derivatives, and other bank shenanigans. And then turns into a diatribe against liberals and bank regulation. No thanks. Stopped around page 100.
October 27, 2021
Interesting enough story the starts with the throwing of the 2008 election by Wall Street and goes on to glance through some other financial and national skullduggery up to 2015. Not very subtle. It's the last of Thomas' novels, and perhaps some of the earlier ones are better - I will investigate.
decided-not-to-read
August 18, 2021"Financial thriller."
March 2, 2017
The last section wasn't necessary. And there was a section that was just rampant with typos that was kind of grating. Overall, the story was interesting.
July 4, 2016
Fixers leaves a lot to be desired from a literary standpoint, but it's an ingenious fictional exercise that explains how and why the President decided to save Wall Street without putting any of the biggest culprits behind bars or extracting much of a penalty at all.
It's a roman a clef, but it's child's play to identify Summers and Geithner; I wondered at the time why someone as smart as Obama (referred to as OG) would put those particular foxes in charge of the chicken coop. Being bitterly disappointed in the Obama presidency, I kept on reading this "diary" by a man with very close connections to Wall Street who agrees in 2007 to help an old friend, who now heads a mammoth investment bank (STST) and wants to sidetrack Hillary Clinton's campaign. (One of the weaknesses of the plot is the premise that Wall Street was terrified that Hillary would be brutal on the banks--I'm not so sure about that. After all it was her husband who changed the law that opened the door to many of the worst abuses by investment banks.)
The author was once high up at Lehman Brothers so he knows whereof he speaks, which is probably the biggest asset of the novel. Another strong point is a sort of Greek chorus of four retired officers of the bank, who view the recent doings of Wall Stree with great disdain:
"Once upon a time...GM sold cars with loans attached; today they sell loans with a car attached."
"...back in their day the work was about building: raising money for new companies, new factories and stores, new processes. Today it's mainly about extracting--whether what's under the microscope is a company being hollowed out financially in a leveraged buyout, or practically everything in the magic slice-and-dice world of securitization."
The weakest point is the detachment of the narrator, Chauncey Suydam, who secretly funnels 75 million dollars to OG in the early days of his then-struggling campaign. Chauncey isn't getting paid to do this (he's independently wealthy), and his rationale is extremely self-serving: to see if he's still "got game"; reluctance to pass up a chance to remake history; and to keep Bill Clinton far away from the White House. His only strong allegiance is to the Skull & Bones Society at Yale and to his former CIA boss
BTW, the proofreading is the worst I've encountered in years (e.g., Souch Carolina for South Carolina), so if those things bother you, Fixers will drive you crazy.
It's a roman a clef, but it's child's play to identify Summers and Geithner; I wondered at the time why someone as smart as Obama (referred to as OG) would put those particular foxes in charge of the chicken coop. Being bitterly disappointed in the Obama presidency, I kept on reading this "diary" by a man with very close connections to Wall Street who agrees in 2007 to help an old friend, who now heads a mammoth investment bank (STST) and wants to sidetrack Hillary Clinton's campaign. (One of the weaknesses of the plot is the premise that Wall Street was terrified that Hillary would be brutal on the banks--I'm not so sure about that. After all it was her husband who changed the law that opened the door to many of the worst abuses by investment banks.)
The author was once high up at Lehman Brothers so he knows whereof he speaks, which is probably the biggest asset of the novel. Another strong point is a sort of Greek chorus of four retired officers of the bank, who view the recent doings of Wall Stree with great disdain:
"Once upon a time...GM sold cars with loans attached; today they sell loans with a car attached."
"...back in their day the work was about building: raising money for new companies, new factories and stores, new processes. Today it's mainly about extracting--whether what's under the microscope is a company being hollowed out financially in a leveraged buyout, or practically everything in the magic slice-and-dice world of securitization."
The weakest point is the detachment of the narrator, Chauncey Suydam, who secretly funnels 75 million dollars to OG in the early days of his then-struggling campaign. Chauncey isn't getting paid to do this (he's independently wealthy), and his rationale is extremely self-serving: to see if he's still "got game"; reluctance to pass up a chance to remake history; and to keep Bill Clinton far away from the White House. His only strong allegiance is to the Skull & Bones Society at Yale and to his former CIA boss
BTW, the proofreading is the worst I've encountered in years (e.g., Souch Carolina for South Carolina), so if those things bother you, Fixers will drive you crazy.
March 23, 2016
I really wanted to like this book because the premise looked promising. As someone who doesn't know much about the inner workings of economics and Wall Street, I had hoped to learn something about that particular area and the fact that this is thinly veiled as a fictional novel but based on real life people and events really caught my attention. Even some of the earlier reviews looked good.
The fact that this is described as a thriller mixed with real life politics and government corruption should've hooked the reader from page one but instead you're left with an extremely dry novel that really can't tell if its tell-all or satirical parody of the big wigs running our financial economy. I became so bored halfway through that I wanted to chuck this book into the Federal Reserve's shredder like they do with their cover-up documents.
Really dull and lacking any real direction or perspective. This would've been better off as a standardized nonfiction book with real names, places, and events.
The fact that this is described as a thriller mixed with real life politics and government corruption should've hooked the reader from page one but instead you're left with an extremely dry novel that really can't tell if its tell-all or satirical parody of the big wigs running our financial economy. I became so bored halfway through that I wanted to chuck this book into the Federal Reserve's shredder like they do with their cover-up documents.
Really dull and lacking any real direction or perspective. This would've been better off as a standardized nonfiction book with real names, places, and events.
February 10, 2016
Great first half. Then just sinks into boring irrelevancies, ending with a big, dull thud after getting incredibly preachy. The typos and misused words was also distracting, though I blame the publisher's proofreader for that.
January 3, 2017
Thinly veiled "novel" on the 2008 election and the machinations of Wall Street. The cynic in me was not surprised by most of the revelations surrrounding TARP, but the idealistic part of me was quite troubled. I recommend this to everyone.
February 28, 2016
A great read
At times hard to remember this is fiction. A very plausible alternative truth. Liked the first person narrative. Who does govern this country?
At times hard to remember this is fiction. A very plausible alternative truth. Liked the first person narrative. Who does govern this country?
June 3, 2016
Although it reads like a rough edit of a voice recorded narrative, the premise is pretty intriguing? Who does run the country and how did Geitner and Paulson ever get their jobs in the first place?
Read
August 22, 2016Just couldn't get into this one. Perhaps I'll revisit it in a few months.
September 2, 2016
Fixers - wall street and politics novel.
Great novel about the 2007 financial crisis and the election of Obama, it gripping and good paced. Fully recommended for all.
Great novel about the 2007 financial crisis and the election of Obama, it gripping and good paced. Fully recommended for all.
March 24, 2017
I enjoyed this book. It's a little business / finance-geeky, so if you are not into that sort of world you might not feel the same way I did about it. I thought it was an imaginative, and highly believable, story about the Great Recession. The diary motif worked very well. And, the departures from the business / finance angle were well done. I only have one negative. There were many typos in this book: misspelled words, words squished together... I read the hardcover version, from my local library, so it is quite possible that the paperback or Kindle version available on Amazon may be error-free. The magic of digital publishing enables mistakes like this to be fixed, once found.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 18 reviews