Product Description

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 mis-judgments, 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48700 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
'He's been around the tills long enough to recall the "complacent incompetence" of US manufacturing in the 1960s near the end of the liberal consensus. Richard Nixon welshed on the Bretton Woods commitment to redeem dollars in gold at a fixed price, and Paul Volcker of the US Treasury vanquished the resultant inflation in the early 80s - the destruction of much of the west's blue-collar employment was just collateral damage. And he locates the initial puff in every subsequent bubble.'
--The Telegraph, March 7th, 2009

Sunday Times
...a comprehensive and jargon-free description of the hideously complex financial securities that have brought the credit system to collapse.

Review
'(Morris) explain(s) in clear prose, and in a book that is barely more than a monograph, the blow-up in the world's financial markets. Morris traces the origins of the credit bubble to the illusion that clever financial engineering was the same as efficiently managing risk. He is justifiably harsh on the regulatory failures that hastened the crisis, but he is no dogmatist. He acknowledges the merits of financial innovation, and his model for reform is the tough monetary policy that defeated inflation in the 1980s. A similarly painful reckoning now - a huge write-down of assets - is necessary to resuscitate the financial system."

Customer Reviews

Very good coverage of the basics.
If you are buying any other books, or reading any other articles on the recent "credit crunch", you should seriously consider getting this book too. The writer is a lawyer, and in very precise plain clear language, describes how each of the new types of financial instrument, from "put" to "synthetic collateralized debt obligation", works, covering why people originally developed them, and how people have gone on to use and enhance them. It then covers all the risks that have developed as a result of their use in practice, and briefly covers the overall financial consequences, as far as people understand them. This includes talking about various regulatory failures that have contributed to the crisis.

He then makes an overall estimate of the kinds of losses that are likely. Although the real losses are looking even more serious now, several months later, he gives figures and estimates in his reasoning that enable you to get some kind of overall picture of the problems. His focus is almost entirely on the United States, but the financial instruments used elsewhere are the same, and the regulatory failures similar.

If you are reading other accounts of the developing crisis, this is a very good place to get the basic technical information on what everyone is talking about. Some books leap into explanations, with only very brief, and sometimes misunderstood, accounts of the financial instruments involved. Even if you disagree with some of Morris's points of view or conclusions, his clear account of how each financial instrument works is still very helpful.

An excellent, readable account
I found this very short book (169 pages plus notes) very helpful in understanding what the "credit crunch" is about--what caused it, what the current imbalances in the financial system are, and how it may unravel. It starts further back in time than I would have expected (the 1950s to 1970s), but does this to explain the regulatory and financial stage on which the bubble of credit was born. Financial and economic terms are explained, without dumbing things down. Really excellent.

Prescient and a great read
I read this shortly after it was published before many of the events in the current financial & economic crisis unfolded. Over the past few months I have seen its reasoning and predictions born out many times. There are still other predictions which only the future will prove one way or the other but having seemed more fanciful at the time of writing to many mainstream analysts now seem anything but. This is the best book I have read on the credit crisis and, whilst I have some background in finance, unlike a previous viewer I didn't think that it overwhelmed with terminology - I thought it explained complex finance in a very readable manner. I was originally a bit suspicious about a finance book written by a lawyer but I have to concede that this is an impressive account.

Once you've read this, if you haven't read it already and are interested for more, JK Galbraith's account of the Wall Street Crash of the 1930's is great reading and very relevant today.