What happened at Lehman Brothers and why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Lehman Brothers Vice President gives us the straight answers--right from the belly of the beast--arguing that this collapse need not have happened

"Steven A. Cohen is a Wall Street legend. Born into a middle class family in a decidedly upper class suburb on Long Island, he was unpopular in high school and unlucky with girls. Then he went off to Wharton, and in 1992 launched the hedge fund SAC Capital, which grew into a $15 billion empire. He cultivated an air of mystery and reclusiveness -- at one point, owned the copyright to almost every picture taken of him -- and also of extreme excess,...

This surprising narrative goes back more than twenty years to reveal, in rich, anecdotal detail, how Wall Street, the mortgage industry, and the government conspired to change the way Americans bought their homes, creating a perfect storm. The authors take us inside elusive institutions such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, and Fannie Mae, to reveal who changed the game and why

The author of the signature bestseller Liar's Poker explains how the event we were told was impossible--the free fall of the American economy--finally occurred; how the things that we wanted, like ridiculously easy money and greatly expanded home ownership, were vehicles for that crash; and how shareholder demand for profit forced investment executives to eat the forbidden fruit of toxic derivatives

Provided is an analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, which at a cost over $20 trillion, caused millions of people to lose their jobs and homes in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and nearly resulted in a global financial collapse. Through exhaustive research, and extensive interviews with key financial insiders, politicians, journalists, and academics, traces the rise of a rogue industry which has corrupted politics, regulation,...

A reevaluation of economics as a practical art form distills economics into ten succinct rules while discussing how to recognize political, economic, and social changes that affect everyday life.

Former British Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown believes the international financial crisis can be reversed, but that the world's leaders must work together if we are to avoid a decade of lost jobs and low growth. Brown speaks both as someone who was in the room driving discussions that led to some crucial decisions, and as an expert renowned for his financial acumen. No one who had Brown's access has written about the crisis...

The financial meltdown from the perspective of a number of players: Michael Burry, a bizarre autistic-like stock-picking genius, and the first to realize that the market's housing boom is based on a "house of cards" sham; Mark Baum, self-loathing fictional character whose firm picks up insider trading information from a wrong number phone call; Jared Vennet, a smart-aleck broker who confirms the ominous suspicion; and Charlie Gellar and Jamie Shipley,...

Raghuram Rajan was one of the few economists who warned of the global financial crisis before it hit. Rajan shows how the individual choices that collectively brought about the economic meltdown--made by bankers, government officials, and ordinary homeowners--were rational responses to a flawed global financial order in which the incentives to take on risk are incredibly out of step with the dangers those risks pose. He traces the deepening fault...

In this forthright and incisive book, Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz explains how America exported bad economics, bad policies, and bad behavior to the rest of the world, only to cobble together a haphazard and ineffective response when the markets finally seized up. Stiglitz then outlines a way to restore the balance between markets and government, address the inequalities of the global financial system, and demand more good ideas (and less ideology)...