We are living in the most reckless financial environment in recent history. Arcane credit derivative bets are now well into the tens of trillions...
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reviews
Aug 08, 2011
Shin
rated it: 
I enjoyed a lot. It is a dense and informative book.
Apart from relatively good and detailed analysis of some of the major factors/incidents of recent/ongoing subprime and credit crisis with historical context, it is interesting to see the fact that some of mainstream financial writers such as him started to question the current dominant and deeply embedded paradigm of '(regulation-) free market economy' or past decades of overtly simplified 'government evil versus market/private good' thinking m More...
Apart from relatively good and detailed analysis of some of the major factors/incidents of recent/ongoing subprime and credit crisis with historical context, it is interesting to see the fact that some of mainstream financial writers such as him started to question the current dominant and deeply embedded paradigm of '(regulation-) free market economy' or past decades of overtly simplified 'government evil versus market/private good' thinking m More...
May 09, 2009
Frank
rated it: 
Behind the alphabet soup of Wall Street acronyms (CDO, SIV, RMBS), what is it that our great financial engineers actually do? Charles R. Morris understands the process from the inside, brilliantly summarizing the mathed-up hocus-pocus that got us into the current mess. I found this vignette particularly compelling:
"Consider the tale of Travelport, a Web-based reservations company. The Blackstone private equity firm and a smaller partner bought Travelport in August 2006. They More...
"Consider the tale of Travelport, a Web-based reservations company. The Blackstone private equity firm and a smaller partner bought Travelport in August 2006. They More...
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Jan 11, 2009
Andrew
rated it: 
*Personal review*
With a release at the beginning of 2008, Morris reviews the current financial crisis and touches on everything from massive inflation, to the proliferation of CDOs (squared and cubed), to the massive leveraging of hedge funds, the reign of investment banks and SIVs and the free-wheeling broker dealers, and the cheating of Americans through horrible mortgage schemes and securitization. Morris also draws parallels to Bretton-Woods (I & the coined II) and shows how thi More...
With a release at the beginning of 2008, Morris reviews the current financial crisis and touches on everything from massive inflation, to the proliferation of CDOs (squared and cubed), to the massive leveraging of hedge funds, the reign of investment banks and SIVs and the free-wheeling broker dealers, and the cheating of Americans through horrible mortgage schemes and securitization. Morris also draws parallels to Bretton-Woods (I & the coined II) and shows how thi More...
Feb 22, 2009
Kathleen
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Another quick listen on audible. If you would really like to understand how the credit bubble was formed and why it is now melting down, this is a must-read. Morris simply and clearly explicates the instruments and causes underlying the crisis. Sub-prime mortgages were securitized and then rolled up into bonds where the underlying risk was masked. Greenspan (probably the biggest culprit in all) would pump cash into the economy at the hint of market downturns so that no one believed that thin
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May 01, 2011
Brian
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This book, published in roughly February 208, is a fascinatingly prescient look at the state of American financial markets. Morris provides a clear understanding of the momentous issues facing the investment community, the problems associated with it, and makes a bold prediction - which history proves to have been very conservative - about the collapse of the financial economy. While it is an interesting read to see again how these problems were not unforeseen but simply unaddressed, the fina
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Feb 23, 2009
Vicki
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I loaned this book out already, so I can't quote it at length. The fact that I want to quote it at length should tell you all you need to know. This was a really great, accessible explanation of what the fuck just happened / is happening to the global economy. Morris is smart, pissed, and just the kind of crochety old "In my day..." guy I would want to be in charge of my money, if I had any. I surely wish he'd been in charge of our collective money for the last 20 years.
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Feb 19, 2009
Todd
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This book more than any other has ruined my "faith" in the infallibility of Capitalism. Morris does fine job of pulling away the curtain and showing the pitfalls of high finance and how those at the top of our financial institutions used this system to transfer its wealth to themselves. He is able to explain esoteric concepts like derivatives in a way that is accessible to laymen and then go on to show how the unrestrained leverage used to invest in them has brought ruin to the syste
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Dec 02, 2010
Nathan
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You really cannot judge a book by its cover. . . The first couple of chapters start out with an reasoned, well toned analysis of the sub-prime mortgage collapse and the history that led up to it. The it takes a sharp turn left and becomes the soapbox for the authors agenda. I could almost swallow it except for the sarcastic, condescending and arrogant position from which the author gives his point of view. Apparently, he had no substance to back up his view because his only devise was to say th
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Feb 02, 2009
Connie
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What an amazing analysis of how the USA got its IOU! Although it was hard for me to remember all the acronyms, I felt inspired and informed as I read this book. It covers the pros and cons of Keynesian liberalism, Reagonomics (the birth of the free market) and government control and offered a lot of detail about how hedge funds work, student loans and the sub prime mortgage situation. I am no expert on economics and I never will be, but books like this help me feel like I have a little more c
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Jul 16, 2011
Kristi
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The best thing about this book was the author's ability to describe complicated financial instruments and strategies in an accessible manner. Morris takes you through the maze of mortgage-backed securities in a fairly straightforward way, making sure to define terms and to periodically remind the readers of concepts he's covered so that they don't become lost in a sea of acronyms. He draws out the underlying causes of the financial crisis and presents them in a useful historical and global conte
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Apr 19, 2010
Aron
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This is a fantastic resource for understanding why the economy is melting away before our eyes. And while that alone makes it worthwhile reading in my opinion, what makes this book unique is that the author doesn't seem to be biased.
No, really.
I get sick of reading the opinions of people so far on either end of the spectrum that they seem blind to even the possibility that the other 'school' of economics could have some merit. While they could be making a perfectly inte More...
No, really.
I get sick of reading the opinions of people so far on either end of the spectrum that they seem blind to even the possibility that the other 'school' of economics could have some merit. While they could be making a perfectly inte More...
Nov 10, 2008
Bart
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This book is an excellent and sophisticated treatment of how we came to the temporary end of the free market on 9/18/08. Charles R. Morris does a fine job of explaining impenetrably difficult derivative vehicles fairly well – or at least as well as can be hoped. Though the writer’s political leanings are pretty obviously to the left of center, they serve to underscore an important truth.
Every American is a free-market capitalist, however much he may have loved the Che Guevara poste More...
Every American is a free-market capitalist, however much he may have loved the Che Guevara poste More...
Jul 23, 2008
Nina
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This was a great explanation of how we got ourselves into this credit crisis. It was very thorough and really put our current financial mess into context, coming from someone who had very little idea of what was going on in the banking world. I like his overall premise of a swinging pendulum: the lefty Keynesians got us into our financial crisis of the 70s (embodied by price controls on oil) and since then the Chicago School free market right-wingers got us into the financial crisis we're in n
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Feb 20, 2009
Wayne
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The author spends a lot of time discussing CDOs in great detail and I definitely haven't read another book that did such a good job of explaining them. However although the subject matter is interesting, I had a hard time getting through this one. I didn't gel so well with hi writing style and it felt a little too much a chore picking it up the last few times.
It's a good book to read, but you probably need to have an appetite for learning about the 2008 crisis in depth if you More...
It's a good book to read, but you probably need to have an appetite for learning about the 2008 crisis in depth if you More...
Sep 13, 2008
Desiree
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I had a hard time getting through this one. I do know quite a bit about the financial markets, but this is some strange stuff that the banks, hedge funds, etc, have been doing to totally mess up our economy!
"The question is whether the Countrywides of the world are risk-taking enterprises or public utilities. You can't be both. If the government is going to be on the hook, by means of deposit insurance, the various federal borrowing windows, or implicit federal insurance for " More...
"The question is whether the Countrywides of the world are risk-taking enterprises or public utilities. You can't be both. If the government is going to be on the hook, by means of deposit insurance, the various federal borrowing windows, or implicit federal insurance for " More...
Jan 31, 2009
Simon
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Written in the fall of 2007, the intended-to-be shock-inducing title echoes of Dr. Evil's paltry ransom demand of "ONE MILLION DOLLARS!". Book does a reasonably good job of going into some of the details of the 3-letter demons(CDO, CLO, CDS, etc) that have brought ruin upon everyone's lives, although if you aren't familiar with some of the terminology, it might feel a bit dense to read. If you work in the industry, it will feel like a good, well-written, but long Bloomberg magazine ar
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Nov 19, 2011
Mike
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This book is deceivingly short. It is dense, like...a black hole or something. A black hole about the mortgage crisis.
Anyway, the author goes into detail about the financial mess we're currently in and how we got there. He's a banker, so I trust he is qualified to discuss such things. He also used complicated terms that I can only pretend to understand. The gist is this: several factors, most notably the increased use of complex mathematical formulas to process loans resulted More...
Anyway, the author goes into detail about the financial mess we're currently in and how we got there. He's a banker, so I trust he is qualified to discuss such things. He also used complicated terms that I can only pretend to understand. The gist is this: several factors, most notably the increased use of complex mathematical formulas to process loans resulted More...
Jan 20, 2009
Andy
rated it:
If you've been dying to understand how a Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) works, this is the book for you. Otherwise, I can summarize the key points in this book as follows: if you invest billions of dollars in financial instruments you really don't understand, don't be suprised when you lose all of your money. Oh, and Alan Greenspan and adherents to the Chicago school of economics are all jerks (take that Steven Levitt!) I know, riveting stuff.
Nov 10, 2009
Marty
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Morris gets points for being the first out of the blocks, but therein lies the central weakness of his book: he's attempting to tell the story of the meltdown before the crisis has reached its apogee and long before the political actors have started reckoning with the scary realities presented by the near total collapse of the global financial system. My advice: wait for the second edition.
Oct 09, 2011
John
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The cost of public college has doubled since 1980 including inflation while wages have remained flat. Humans hate losing money more than they like making it. Humans are subject to fads. Even the most sophisticated traders exhibit herding behavior. American health care is extremely wasteful and is an operational mess; twice the per capita level of spending in other advanced countries, we are not getting a good deal.
Oct 16, 2008
Dan
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I stumbled on this when looking for titles to help me understand the current unraveling of the economy. Morris was prescient in not only having predicted the collapse, but at the right scale of impact.
That said, this didn't quite get me what I needed - which is more of a "financial services instruments for dummies." While parts of this relatively short book are very lucid for the economically illiterate, it didn't take long before my head was spinning in the "toxic was More...
That said, this didn't quite get me what I needed - which is more of a "financial services instruments for dummies." While parts of this relatively short book are very lucid for the economically illiterate, it didn't take long before my head was spinning in the "toxic was More...
Nov 23, 2008
Ron
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Essentially explains (and predicts, given it was written about a year ago) the current financial crash. Oddest fact from the book? US Economy is about $14 trillion. The world economy is about $54 trillion. Value of financial derivatives before this meltdown began? $500 trillion.
Jan 13, 2009
Ethan
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A first attempt to document the years of ignorance and greed that led to the current economic crisis. A lot went over my head, but what I understood was well thought out, and some of the explanations definitely helped in my understanding.
Aug 07, 2011
Alan
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pouah :( I suppose you should have a few notions of basic economics before you even try to read this book... I did learn a few interesting things even though I'm aware that I understood something like 10% of what it is all about...
Jun 07, 2009
Alex
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This is a great short book on some of the key causes of the meltdown. I had to read some chapters over to understand them but tha's me, not Morris. His writing is lucid and sharp. He's not afraid use his moral voice.
Jun 27, 2011
Peter
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Imagine Galbraith's "The Great Crash" written before the crash was done and you have this book. I read it in a day. You will thrill at the ways people have invented to screw each other over, and make lots of money for nothing.
Dec 20, 2008
Alex
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Excellent book about the current financial crisis. Well-written and very to the point. In parts, it can get a bit bogged down in a few confusing details about different financial transactions, etc. but not too bad.
Dec 02, 2008
Vince
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This book, published in late 2007, predicted every step of the credit crisis, and only missed the mark by underestimating the dollar cost of the meltdown. Very interesting read.
Nov 24, 2010
Ajsf
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great, short book. thank god it's short b/c you have re-read a lot of it in order to understand all the crazy sh-t the financial world has come up with.
Jan 06, 2009
John
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Here is a quite clear and very short explanation of the 2008 financial meltdown. Truly, the author does a fantastic job of explaining a number of very complex issues in a reasonably clean manner. He also estimates that the shakedown will probably be to the tune of at least twice the $800 billion dollar bail out, if not four times that amount.
