The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown
Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Previously published as The Trillion Dollar Meltdown
Now fully updated with the latest financial developments, this is the bestselling book that briefly and brilliantly explains how we got into the economic mess that is the Credit Crunch. With the housing markets unravelling daily and distress signals flying throughout the rest of the economy, there is little doubt that we are facing a fierce recession. In crisp, gripping prose, Charles R. Morris shows how got into this mess. He explains the arcane financial instruments, the chicanery, the policy misjudgments, the dogmas, and the delusions that created the greatest credit bubble in world history. Paul Volcker slew the inflation dragon in the early 1980s, and set the stage for the high performance economy of the 1980s and 1990s. But Wall Street's prosperity soon tilted into gross excess. The astronomical leverage at major banks and their hedge fund and private equity clients led to massive disruption in global markets. A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy will go down in flames with it. Continued denial and concealment could cause the crisis to stretch out for years, but financial and government leaders are still downplaying the problem. The required restructuring will be at least as painful as the very difficult period of 1979-1983. The Two Trillion-Dollar Meltdown, updated to include the latest financial developments, is indispensable to understanding how the world economy has been put on the brink.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Financial writer Morris explains the current sub-prime mortgage crisis that is affecting countless numbers of families in the United States and the economy as a whole. Morris details, in great length and description, where the market went wrong and the economic downfall that is soon to be ravaging the country and the global market. Nick Summers does his very best to make all of this sound as interesting as he can, but the material is overly depressing and incredibly monotonous. Summers spices things up a bit by offering a slight shift in tone and intention when reading quotes by the big business honchos responsible for the downfall, summoning a cutting sarcasm to portray them in a more comical and often realistic light. All in all, listeners will be hard-pressed to stay the course. A Public Affairs paperback.