I think I have officially fallen out of love with Ben Mezrich. I was a huge fan of Bringing Down the House, his book about students at MIT who figure out a scheme to win millions in Vegas. (It's being made into a movie now.) However, I was disappointed with both Ugly Americans and Busting Vegas, the two books that followed. I had no particular criticism of either one, other than that neither was the fun ride that Bringing Down the House was.
When I heard Mezrich interviewed on NPR recently, I thought his new book, Rigged, sounded interesting. It was about David Russo, a recent Harvard MBA graduate who goes to work at the New York Mercentile Exchange. The "Merc" is an exchange that is otherwise filled with Brooklyn-born Jews and Italians who were traders because their fathers had been traders. Originally for potatoes, then butter and eggs, today the Merc is where oil futures are traded. Russo quickly becomes central to the management of the Merc, then attempts the impossible - to bring a sister trading floor to Dubai.
I expected this book to explain the technical details of how an exchange works, how oil prices are negotiated, and what it means to have two exchanges for the same commodity on opposite sides of the world. Instead, Mezrich spends the pages detailing Russo's encounters with alcohol, women, and ego-driven traders. Some of the book's most dramatic moments are when Russo cheats on his girlfriend and when he is forced to jump out a hotel window. While some of this detail is necessary to describe both the traders in New York and the different but equally-raucous environment in Dubai, Mezrich robs us of the actual financial details of the story. He trivializes some of the most interesting issues in favor of the glamorous, glitzy details that sell books. Ugh.
Now I have to go find another book on the New York Mercantile Exchange just to understand what the heck David Russo did, how, and why. And I'm annoyed with Mezrich because he obviously knows all these things and just left it out of the final published product.
1 comment:
I agree totally regarding Rigged - and a little bit the same way about "Ugly Americans", although at least that one had some details on the technical mechanics behind the story.
Back when oil spiked last a few years ago I found one blog post that argued that NYME oil prices were volatile because mid-east oil, being high in sulfur content, can't be substituted for the West Texas Intermediate traded on the NYME. So a good chunk of the world's oil production can't affect NYME spot prices. That might put into context Russo's comments at the end about creating pricing transparency for mid-east oil.
If you find a more detailed book on the Merc I'd love to hear about it!
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