The Recessionistas

The Recessionistas was pure entertainment. If you like "The Devil Wears Prada", "Something Borrowed", "Something Blue", and "Bergdorf Blonde", then this book is for you. The author nicely weaves fact with fiction. The story is current and you will laugh out loud with some of the absurd, narcissistic behavior of the characters. Ms. Lebenthal tells an entertaining storing using New York as a backdrop on how the city's elite deals with the recession, fashion, money, and relationships. A fun read to satisfy one's guilty pleasure. Enjoy!

The Recessionistas can safely be characterized as chicklit set in the middle of the financial meltdown in New York City. While Lebenthal liberally creates unsympathetic characters like the wives of investment bankers, unscrupulous money managers, and backstabbing bosses, we meet: * Grigsby Somerset- an Alpha for as long as she can remember. Surrounded by people who want to be like her, she her occupation is centered towards the right charities, clothes, and getting her daughter into the correct schools. Her staff includes her personal trainer, stylist, decorator, and she's angling for a personal assistant. * Blake Somerset - Grigsby's husband and a banker at Lehman Brothers. A former classmate of John Cutter from Harvard Business School. * Sasha Silver - CEO of SAMCO (Silver Asset Management Co) who is regretting having sold her company to the larger BridgeVest Financial. She's hardworking, glamorous, and savvy with the perfect husband. Sasha is having the most trouble dealing with Harry Mullaugh, BridgeVest's CEO and a showdown of sorts is inevitable. * John Cutter - heads Flying Point Capital, a "hot, new fund" with aggressive bets in the subprime mortgage market. John is a notoriously difficult boss but a top producer. * Mimi Cutter - married to John Cutter and recently a "Greenwich wife". She's has a art history degree from Harvard and has amassed an art collection that reflects her excellent taste and their unlmited funds. * Renee Parker - a Spence and Princeton graduate, John Cutter's personal assistant, and despite her working class roots (her mother works as Grigsby and Blake Somerset's maid), Renee regularly appears in the society pages and as an active member of several of the "right charities." * Amanda Belden - Renee Parker's nemesis at Spence and Director of Marketing at John Cutter's fund. The book's strength is in Lebenthal's coverage of the recession as it slowly unfolds. She breaks down the events that caused the sudden collapse of the banking system while simultaneously painting a picture of how these events impact the daily lives of her memorable cast of characters. ISBN-10: 0446563676 - Hardcover Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; 1 edition (August 9, 2010), 320 pages. Review copy provided by the publisher.

I finished this book in 3 days and could not wait to start reading it every morning. It was a, quick, fun read with an unexpected turn of events. Very New York. The female characters in the book were strong and knew how to get what they wanted. Some of them good , some of them nutty, but they were focused and committed to their goals. It was interesting to read about the inside of the Hedge Fund world and how nothing is how it really seems. As a fashion and restaurant enthusiast , I enjoyed reading about who was wearing what and eating where. On top of being an enjoyable read the author was able to simplify the intricacies of the financial world for anyone to understand which was a big plus. This book entertains while it educates.

This book was such a good beach read. I had never fully understood all of the financial things going on in our economy until i read this book. It was wonderfully written and I loved the society parts and, surprisingly, the financial parts. Again, wonderful book and kudos to Miss. Lebenthal

f you feel, as I do, that women are superior beings, it is painful to open a novel categorized as "chick lit." The authors generally write as badly as James Patterson. Their characters are shallow as glass --- given a choice between world peace and a new pair of Manolos, they'll take the shoes, every single time. And their conflicts make "The Real Housewives of Whoville" look like Ingmar Bergman. So I was delighted to read "The Recessionistas", a first novel by Alexandra Lebenthal. Her book is about a world I know well and she knows better: very rich people in Manhattan and the Hamptons. Standard chick lit setting. But the first thing that makes her novel more than chick lit is its time frame. It is set during those awful weeks in September, 2008, when Lehman Brothers melted down and billions of dollars in stock valuations were lost. To be factual about it, investors did most of the losing, but they're faceless, anonymous people who live on Main Street and have boring little lives, so there's no point caring about them. The second-generation Masters of the Universe who worked at Lehman or had big deals with Lehman --- that's another story. This story. Or, to be more precise, the story of the women married to those men. The second reason this isn't just chick lit is that Alexandra Lebenthal knows how Wall Street really works. She's of those Lebenthals --- her father is the guy in the old TV commercials who urged you to buy... bonds. (Back then, you snored. Now you wish you had a batch of munis.) Alexandra Lebenthal is President and CEO of Lebenthal & Co, and its wealth management division, Alexandra & James Inc. A woman running anything on Wall Street --- your first reaction is to wonder if that's a typo. The CEOs of only 15 Fortune 500 companies are female; compared to Wall Street, that's huge. Wall Street is a boys' club. Always has been. Probably always will be. Ms. Lebenthal had an edge --- her father --- but I'm sure she knows what it's like to have men at meetings look right though her. She'll never not be an outsider. That's how Sasha Silver feels in Lebenthal's novel. She's a Wall Street CEO. Or was. In 2005, she sold her company, Silver Asset Management, to BridgeVest Financial. It was a big deal, but it was the wrong deal. Her partners cashed out and retired, leaving her to be hassled and ignored by her owners. She has her satisfactions --- a loving if overly busy husband, good kids, big apartment and the aforementioned mountain of money. And she has something just as valuable: a good reputation. Not that a good name means much these days. In the fall of 2008, the game ended for most of the characters in this book. Lebenthal explains credit default swaps and tranches of mortgages so simply that her novel is a useful primer. Even better, she explains how it happens that men who earn as much as a million a year in salary live from bonus to bonus, financing this year's excesses with a loan against next year's spoils. Wh