…the third and, hopefully, last of the summer's book about where all the money went is Joseph Stiblitz's "Freefall : America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy" The other two books: Michael Lewis's "The Big Short" and Andrew Sorkin's "Too Big to Fail". All three are currently on the list (see sidebar, right). Taken together, the three books tempt one to argue the American financial industries, all dumped into a big box called Wall Street, have done more harm to more people than the boogeymen of international terrorism ever dreamed of - and instead of getting bombed, got bailed out.
"Freefall," the most scholarly of the three books, is not an easy read. It summarizes (all of this stuff was duly reported in by the news media over time, but in case you weren't paying attention then) the causes of the financial melt-down that took place in 2008 and the remedy of making Wall Street whole - or at least as close to whole as possible - and screw the little guy pursued by both the Dubya and Obama administrations. All of which makes this book a seriously depressing - nay, angry-making - read.
Lewis's "The Big Short" describes the role mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps played in the whole debacle (and is the most readable of the three); Sorkin's "Too Big to Fail" is about the behind-closed-door dealmaking that resulted in Lehman Brothers' demise and Goldman Sachs's entirely un-miraculous survival, the bailout of AIG, and other horror stories. Oh yeah, and did we mention screwing the little guys?
For a little leavening, we recommend "The Jungle," also currently on our reading list (and free from gutenberg.org), Upton Sinclair's seminal 1907 novel about the Chicago stockyards and the exploitation of immigrant labor, political corruption, and - of most concern to the reading public - the goodness of meat.
No comments:
Post a Comment