Octopus

Octopus tells the weird, wacky and true story of Sam Israel III, a member of a very rich American family, who had been making money the old fashioned way - via trading and the market - for decades, heck since the mid 1800s. Sam III decided he wanted to make his own mark, so off he went to trade on the market, this time as a day trader, working on minor fluctuations of the market.

He learned how to turn inside information into cash and then decided to go one better and start his own hedge fund. Now, I am still not sure what a "hedge fund" does, but in this case, it basically masked a big fraud, as soon after starting the Bayou Funds, it started losing money due to bad trades. But they came upon a brilliant strategy for cooking the books and they kept things rolling.

As it got deeper into debt, while showing a brilliant bottom line, Sam started going crazy looking for a killing somewhere. Thinking back to his days illegally trading on inside knowledge, he kept looking for that big score, no matter how illegal or far fetched it may sound.

Thus he became the perfect target for a "long con". And about halfway through the book, this true story becomes a story of truly bizarre happenings, as Sam gets carefully reeled in by a big group of sharks. He keeps thinking the big score is right around the corner, when him and his partners would be able to right the books and everything would come out okay.

But of course it doesn't and finally it all comes crashing down on him, in a myriad of ways. He even goes on the lam in a camper but ends up in jail, still believing his own tall tales. Very odd.

This wasn't really the book I was thinking it was going to be. I thought it would tell the tale of a nefarious hedge fund and how it broke the market. Instead, it told the tale of a seriously deluded rich playboy, who thought he had the golden touch, when really he was crazy. But we're not sure if he was singularly crazy or just crazy enough to get caught.

The greed rampant in the book is perhaps the most sickening. Sam tells tales of his father regaling the family with talk of how the family money was earned, by crass market manipulation. They would buy futures in a good, then surreptitiously buy all the goods and hide them until the prices went up, sell their futures and then dump the goods on the market. Ha ha, isn't that fun.

No really it is just sad and infuriating. At no point in the story does anyone show the slightest bit of remorse, like the markets are just sheep for the plucking. Everything goes and nothing seems to get checked, as long as the fake money makes the cycles around. Nothing gets added to society, nothing gets produced, just money sucked off the top, and you can do whatever it takes to get it. Just sickening really.

And when he falls into the clutches of the outrageous scam artists? Wow, does the book take a turn into the surreal. But the long con went out way too long. I am not sure why it went on for so long. But it sure played out over about a third of the book, as they would bring Sam ever so close to the mysterious "bond market", where billions could be made. Frankly, I got bored after a while, as only a deluded idiot would believe what was going on.

So, in the end, only three stars I think. It didn't really tell all that interesting a story, just one that gets you mad. And despite the claims made that Sam was gregarious and likable, he sure didn't come across like that in the book. Just a rich pampered fool who never needed a reality check. I wish they would all just take a boat out of town and never come back.