A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation

More Praise for A Demon of Our Own Design

“Every so often [a book] pops out of the pile with something original to say, or an original way of saying it. Richard Bookstaber, in A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation, accomplishes both of these rare feats.”

—Fortune

“Like many pessimistic observers, Richard Bookstaber thinks financial derivatives, Wall Street innovation, and hedge funds will lead to a financial meltdown. What sets Mr. Bookstaber apart is that he has spent his career designing derivatives, working on Wall Street, and running a hedge fund.”

—Wall Street Journal

“Bookstaber is a former academic who went on to head risk management for Morgan Stanley and now runs a large hedge fund. He knows the subject and has written a lucid and readable book. To his aid he calls mathematics (from Bertrand Russell to Gödel’s theorem); physics (particularly Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle); and even—meteorology.”

—Financial Times

“Mr. Bookstaber is one of Wall Street’s ‘rocket scientists’—mathematicians lured from academia to help create both complex financial instruments and new computer models for making investing decisions. In the book, he makes a simple point: The turmoil in the financial markets today comes less from changes in the economy—economic growth, for example, is half as volatile as it was 50 years ago—and more from some of the financial instruments (derivatives) that were designed to control risk.”

—New York Times

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