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AudibleInk - The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash
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List Price: $22.95
Our Price: $15.61
Your Save: $ 7.34 ( 32% )
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Manufacturer: PublicAffairs
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FREE SHIPPING on Orders over $25!
Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.04150973
EAN: 9781586485634
ISBN: 1586485636
Label: PublicAffairs
Manufacturer: PublicAffairs
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2008-03-03
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Studio: PublicAffairs
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Editorial Reviews:
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We are living in the most reckless financial environment in recent history. Arcane credit derivative bets are now well into the tens of trillions. According to Charles R. Morris, the astronomical leverage at investment banks and their hedge fund and private equity clients virtually guarantees massive disruption in global markets. The crash, when it comes, will have no firebreaks. A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy will come crashing down with it. The Trillion Dollar Meltdown explains how we got here, and what is about to happen. After the crash our priorities will be quite different. But things are likely to get worse before they better. Whether you are an active investor, a homeowner, or a contributor to your 401(k) plan, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown will be indispensable to understanding the gross excess that has put the world economy on the brink—and what the new landscape will look like.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Best synthesis I have seen yet
Comment: Friends and colleagues have been asking me repeatedly what is going on. This book helped me give reasonable answers, and I have recommended it to everyone who has asked. Mr. Morris speaks with the authority of an insider and conveys his knowledge in clear, direct language. Don't expect the juicy gossip and anecdotes that some other recent books on this topic have used to entice readers. This book is hard-nosed and business-like. And yet, still eminently readable.
I was trained as an economist and have sustained a reverence (religious tone intended) for free markets and deregulation for most of my professional career. As a professional economist, I have some quibbles with some of Mr. Morris's explanations. They feel oversimplified and supported more by conviction than by a subtle analysis of the facts at hand. That said, taken as a whole, his analysis is much more sophisticated than that which any economist could offer if he stayed within his own discipline's boundaries. Mr. Morris points out things that I would not even think to look for. And at the end of the day, common sense favors most of his broader explanations. He brings us the kind of book you always hope to write, in which the reader reacts in an a-ha! moment: of course he's right--how else could it be?! But few readers will have grasped how obvious the answers are before reading Mr. Morris's book. With great disappointment, I bow to his verdict that free markets have not policed themselves as I would have expected and that, as a result, increased regulatory oversight will be required, despite the risks it brings.
I am not saying that I endorse all his explanations. And the book sort of comes apart at the end, in a series of asides that have little to do with his core messages and his core concerns. But this book has helped me understand today's financial crisis far better than anything else I have encountered. As I read it a second time, I am getting still more. Each of us has to build his own understanding; Mr. Morris has made that immeasurably easier for me.
Don't leave home without it!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Guided Tour Through Disaster
Comment: This is a wonderful book for organizing the unfolding train wreck that is the world economy in late 2008. The author explains what forces led to the situation, how financiers and mathematicians used computer modeling to create complex, world-spanning organizations that led to quick, juicy profits, and how the assumptions upon which these structures were based denied the liklihood of sufficient risk to destroy the whole structure. It is a quick read but heavy on acronyms. I found a second reading helped after I had gotten used to the language and jargon. I thought the book was exceptionally helpful for fleshing out the nightly news sound bites and clearly explaining what the bankers have really been up to.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Primer for Beginners
Comment: If terms like CDOs, tranches, CDS, LIMBOR, and SIVs throw you for a loop, this is a great book to get up to speed. Charles R. Morris puts the credit crunch in its context in 169 succinct pages. He's a former banker and he doesn't waste your time. Sure, it could have been longer, but then it wouldn't be as easy to read. The scariest thing about this book is it was written BEFORE the panic we are witnessing, but it accurately predicted it. It took the rest of us a lot longer to see the impossible hole we had dug ourselves into. I'm sorry to say that by then, it was already too late.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Page Turner
Comment: I just happened to pick up this book at the library, and now I can't put it down. It describes, in a succint and clear manner, exactly how we got into the current financial crisis. I'm recommending it to everyone I know.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Easy to read and understand
Comment: I have a business degree, but even I get lost in a sea of economic theories and '50-cent words' when reading about the crisis. This book is in plain english and doesnt try to impress the reader with vocabulary. Easy to understand and a good read.
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