University of Florida : Business Library 2.0 - Financial Crisis Books

Financial Crises Books: A - Z

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“Much has been written about panics and manias, much more than with the most outstretched intellect we are able to follow or conceive; but one thing is certain, that at particular times a great deal of stupid people have a great deal of stupid money…At intervals,…the money of these people—the blind capital, as we call it, of the country—is particularly large and craving; it seeks for someone to devour it, and there is a “plethora’: it finds someone, and there is ‘speculation’: it is devoured and there is ‘panic’”.

— Walter Bagehot [Quoted in Fixing Global Finance by Martin Wolf, 2008]

A | B | C | D | F | G | H | I | L | M | P | R | S | T | U | W

Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism - By George A. Akerloff and Robert Shiller
Call Number: HB74.P8 A494 2009
ISBN/ISSN: 9780691142333. Princeton University Press, 2009. 230 p. $24.95
The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide. In this book, acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and put forward a bold new vision that will transform economics and restore prosperity.Akerlof and Shiller reassert the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking by recovering the idea of animal spirits, a term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom and despondence that led to the Great Depression and the changing psychology that accompanied recovery. Like Keynes, Akerlof and Shiller know that managing these animal spirits requires the steady hand of government--simply allowing markets to work won't do it. In rebuilding the case for a more robust, behaviorally informed Keynesianism, they detail the most pervasive effects of animal spirits in contemporary economic life--such as confidence and fear, bad faith, corruption, a concern for fairness, and the stories we tell ourselves about our economic fortunes--and show how Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and the rational expectations revolution failed to account for them.Animal Spiritsoffers a road map for reversing the financial misfortunes besetting us today. Read it and learn how leaders can channel animal spirits--the powerful forces of human psychology that are afoot in the world economy today.
Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy - By Barry Ritholx
Call Number: (Library West, Pending Order)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780470520383. John Wiley, 2009. $24.95
A riveting indictment of those responsible for our current financial mess. Bailout Nation offers one of the clearest looks at the financial lenders, regulators, and politicians responsible for the financial crisis of 2008. Written by Barry Ritholtz, one of today's most popular economic bloggers and a well-established industry pundit, this book skillfully explores how the United States evolved from a rugged independent nation to a soft Bailout Nation-where financial firms are allowed to self-regulate in good times, but are bailed out by taxpayers in bad times. Entertaining and informative, this book clearly shows you how years of trying to control the economy with easy money has finally caught up with the federal government and how its practice of repeatedly rescuing Wall Street has come back to bite them. The definitive book on the financial crisis of 2008: names the villains responsible for this tragedy-from financial regulators to politicians; shows how each bailout throughout modern history has impacted what happened in the future; examines why the consumer/taxpayer is left suffering in an economy of bubbles, bailouts, and possible inflation. Scathing, but fair, Bailout Nation is a voice of reason in these uncertain economic times.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Call Number: Q375 .T35 2007 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9781400063512. Random House, 2007. 366 p. $26.95
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don't know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the "impossible." For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don't know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them. Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications "The Black Swan" will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probabilitytheory. "The Black Swan" is a landmark book-itself a black swan.
Booms and Busts: An Encyclopedia of Economic History from the First Stock Market Crash of 1792 to the Current Global Economic Crisis - Edited by Mehmet Odekon
ISBN/ISSN: 9780765682246. M. E. Sharpe, 2009. 3 vols. $339.00 (Forthcoming)
Chasing Alpha: How Reckless Growth and Unchecked Ambition Ruined the City's Golden Decade - By Philip Augar
Call Number: HC256.7.A94 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9781847920362. Bodley Head, 2009. 259 p.
In 1997 it seemed that things in the City could only get better. The incoming Labour government gave the Bank of England independence, it introduced a state of the art system of light-touch regulation; and it signalled that it was happy to see finance let rip. For ten years everything went according to plan. Buoyed by a strong pound and cheered on by an excitable media, the bankers became the heroes of the age. The City embarked on a giddy programme of innovation, asset prices boomed and Britain seemed at last to have shaken off its post-war malaise. Politicians took to lecturing their European counterparts on the need to deregulate, to focus on shareholder value and to dispense with an outdated and discredited social market model. And then in the summer of 2007 everything began to collapse. One household name after another - Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, HBOS - failed or was forcibly merged. Barely a year later the government took controlling stakes in the banking sector and the reputation of the City was in tatters. In "Chasing Alpha" Philip Augar tells the extraordinary story of how a major economy tried to reinvent itself as a hedge fund crossed with an offshore tax haven. It is all here: the greed, the guile, the excess. Anyone who worked in finance, and anyone who watched the disaster unfold, will be riveted by this, the first sober history of an intoxicated decade.
The Chastening: Inside the Crisis that Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF - By Paul Blustein
Call Number: HB3808 .B58 2001 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 1891620819. Public Affairs, 2001. 431 p.
The behind-the-scenes story of the nearly disastrous global financial crisis of the late 1990s and how the International Monetary Fund tried - and failed - to stop it. Based on interviews with more than 200 officials at the IMF, the World Bank, the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the White House and many foreign governments, "The Chastening" recounts the struggle to stem the financial crisis that flared in Thailand in mid-1997 and spread to three continents. Its disquieting conclusion: at a time when massive flows of money traverse borders and oceans, the IMF is often woefully ill-equipped to safeguard the global economy or to combat virulent new strains of investor panics. The IMF and its overseers have cultivated the image of masterminds coolly dispensing effective economic remedies. But the reality, as Washington Post economics correspondent Paul Blustein shows, is that as markets were sinking and defaults looming, the guardians of global financial stability were often scrambling, floundering, improvising, feuding among themselves and striking messy compromises.
Collateral Damaged: The Making of Consumer Debt to America - By Charles R. Geisst
Call Number: HG3756.U54 G45 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9781576603253. Bloomberg Press, 276 p. $27.05
During the 1970s and 1980s, the use of credit cards, which had begun as a convenience, grew into an addiction. Collateral Damaged: The Marketing of Consumer Debt to America explains how a nation of savers became a nation of consumers and how Wall Street used consumers' addiction to spending to create the "toxic securities" that have wreaked havoc with the global economy. American consumers are in debt over their heads - and it was no accident. It was orchestrated by Wall Street. Collateral Damaged is the first book to connect the dots from consumer spending to credit cards to home equity loans and back to credit cards.
A Colossul Failue of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers - By Lawrence G. McDonald with Patrick Robinson
Call Number: HB3722 .M34 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780307588333. Crown, 2009. 384 p. $27.00
One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been answered until now. 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. In A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, Larry McDonald, a Wall Street insider, reveals the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has ever done. The book is couched in the very human story of Larry McDonald's Horatio Alger-like rise from a Massachusetts "gateway to nowhere" housing project to the New York headquarters of Lehman Brothers, home of one of the world's toughest trading floors.
The Crash of 2008 and What It Means: The New Paradigm for Financial Markets - By George Soros
Call Number: HB3722 .S673 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9781586486990. Rev. ed. Public Affairs, 2009. 258 p. $14.95
In the midst of one of the most serious financial upheavals since the Great Depression, George Soros, the legendary financier and philanthropist, writes about the origins of the crisis and proposes a set of policies that should be adopted to confront it. Soros, whose breadth of experience in financial markets is unrivaled, places the crisis in the context of his decades of study of how individuals and institutions handle the boom and bust cycles that now dominate global economic activity. In a concise essay that combines practical insight with philosophical depth, Soros makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the great credit crisis and its implications for our nation and the world.
Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation - By Edward Chancellor
Call Number: HG6005 .C48 1999 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 0374138583. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999. 386p. $17.00
This is a history of financial speculation. From the 17th-century the beginning of the 21st century, Edward Chancellor takes the reader through accounts of the tulipomania of Holland - when tulip bulbs changed hands for the price of houses - through well-known British speculative manias, such as the South Sea Bubble and Railway Mania of Victorian times, and concludes that contemporary speculative mania is remarkably similar. This is a comprehensive book on the subject which should be of interest to investors, economists and anyone who wishes to acquire an understanding of the modern economic system, as well as mainstream historians.
A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression - By Richard A. Posner
Call Number: HB3722 .P67 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780674035140. Harvard University Press, 2009. 346 p. $23.95
The financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 is the most alarming of our lifetime because of the warp-speed at which it is occurring. How could it have happened, especially after all that we’ve learned from the Great Depression? Why wasn’t it anticipated so that remedial steps could be taken to avoid or mitigate it? What can be done to reverse a slide into a full-blown depression? Why have the responses to date of the government and the economics profession been so lackluster? Richard Posner presents a concise and non-technical examination of this mother of all financial disasters and of the, as yet, stumbling efforts to cope with it. No previous acquaintance on the part of the reader with macroeconomics or the theory of finance is presupposed. This is a book for intelligent generalists that will interest specialists as well.
The Fall of the House of Credit: What Went Wrong in Banking and What Can Be Done About It - By Alistair Milne
Call Number: HG1573 .M55 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780521762144. Cambridge University Press, 2009. 366 p. $36.00
"The Fall of the House of Credit is a horror story, worthy of Poe, about the origins and impact of our ongoing financial and economic nightmare. A very easy and highly insightful read, for both layman and professional, the House of Credit offers a way out of our deep financial pit that's novel and that may actually work!" Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Boston University
Financial Crises: And What to Do about Them - By Barry Eichengreen
Call Number: HB3722 .E53x 2002 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 0199257442. Oxford University Press, 2002. 194 p.
In this book, a leading observer of the international financial system assesses official efforts to address the problem of financial crises in emerging markets. Professor Eichengreen describes the progress that has been made in limiting the frequency of crises and strengthening the international financial system. He also shows that initiatives in this area have unintentionally made life more difficult for the poorest countries. He therefore argues that efforts to limit the threat to the international financial system need to be linked to an increase in development assistance. Another place where official efforts have fallen short, the author argues is in creating new ways of resolving crises. He shows that official financing through the International Monetary Fund is part of the problem. The IMF's financial rescues allow investors to escape without losses, in turn encouraging them to lend without due regard to the risks. This only makes the international system more crises prone. That the IMF has repeatedly come under pressure to bail out crisis countries reflects the absence of other acceptable ways of resolving the financial difficulties of emerging markets. Not lending threatens to expose the international financial system to a disorderly and disruptive crisis. At the same time, radical new alternatives like an international bankruptcy court or international lender of last resort would create more problems than they solved-even if there was the political appetite for such ambitious schemes, which there is not. The author concludes that the best way to enhance the efficiency and stability of international financial markets is by pushing for changes to the provisions of loan agreements that will enhance the capacity of creditors and debtors to resolve financial problems on their own.
Financial Shock: A 360 look at the Subprime Mortgage Implosion, and How to Avaoid the Next Financial Crisis - By Mark Zandi
Call Number: HG2040.5.U5 Z36 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780137142903. Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2009. 270 p. $24.99
The subprime crisis and the global financial panic it triggered will impact every one of us profoundly, for years, and perhaps even decades. What happened? And how can we prevent it from happening again? InFinancial Shock, Revised and Expanded Edition,Dr. Mark Zandi answers these questions: thoroughly, carefully, and in plain English. This new edition has been systematically updated for the latest events, with insights into the dynamics of the worldwide Fall 2008 financial collapse, the freezing of credit markets, the extraordinary actions governments have taken in response, and the massive economic fallout. Zandi begins with a fast-paced "history" of the crisis: where it started, how it spread, and the damage it has caused. Next, he illuminates its deepest causes, ranging from the psychology of homeownership to Alan Greenspan's missteps, Internet technology to state-of-the-art financial engineering. After surveying the wreckage, Zandi previews the radically different financial system that is likely to emerge next, and offers more detailed and specific recommendations for policymakers and regulators. Along the way, readers will gain indispensable insights for protecting their own futures, managing their own investments, and navigating their organizations to safety.
The First Crash: Lessons from the South Sea Bubble - By Richard Dale
Call Number: HG6008 .D35 2004 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 0691119716. Princeton University Press, 2004. 198 p. $37.50
For nearly three centuries the spectacular rise and fall of the South Sea Company has gripped the public imagination as the most graphic warning to investors of the dangers of unbridled speculation. Yet history repeats itself and the same elemental forces that drove up the price of South Sea shares to dizzying heights in 1720 have in recent years produced the global crash of 1987, the Japanese stock market bubble of the 1980s/90s, and the international dot.com boom of the 1990s. The First Crash throws light on the current debate about investor rationality by re-examining the story of the South Sea Bubble from the standpoint of investors and commentators during and preceding the fateful Bubble year. In absorbing prose, Richard Dale describes the trading techniques of London's Exchange Alley (which included 'modern' transactions such as derivatives) and uses new data, as well as the hitherto neglected writings of a brilliant contemporary financial analyst, to show how investors lost their bearings during the Bubble period in much the same way as during the dot.com boom. The events of 1720, as presented here, offer insights into the nature of financial markets that, being independent of place and time, deserve to be considered by today's investors everywhere. This book is therefore aimed at all those with an interest in the behavior of stock markets.
Fixing Global Finance - By Martin Wolf
Call Number: HG3881.W65 2008 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780801890482. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. 248 p. $24.95
The latest book from Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf explains why global imbalances cause financial crises—including the one ravaging the United States right now—and outlines the steps for ending this destructive cycle. Reviewing global financial crises since 1980, Wolf lays bare the links between the microeconomics of finance and the macroeconomics of the balance of payments, demonstrating how the subprime lending crisis in the United States fits into a pattern that includes the economic shocks of 1997, 1998, and early 1999 in Latin America, Russia, and Asia. He explains why the United States is now the “borrower and spender of last resort,” makes the case that this is an untenable arrangement, and argues that global economic security depends on the ability of emerging economies to develop robust financial systems based on domestic currencies. Sharply and clearly argued, Wolf’s prescription for fixing global finance illustrates why he has been described as "the world's preeminent financial journalist."
Fool's Gold: How Unrstrained Greed corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe - By Gillian Tett
Call Number: HB3722.T42 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9781408701645
In the mid 1990s, at a vast hotel complex on a private Florida beach, dozens of bankers from JP Morgan gathered for what was to become a legendary off-site meeting. It was a wild weekend. But among the drinking, nightclubbing and fist-fights lay a more serious purpose - to assess the possibility of building a business around the new-fangled concepts of credit derivatives. The group at the heart of this revolution was an intense team, made up of individuals with a supreme sense of loyalty to each other and to the bank - for years, nothing could break them apart. But when, finally, the team dispersed, the innovations spread far beyond their original intentions, producing perversions in the mortgage market that ultimately culminated in disaster. Part real-life thriller, part investigation and expose, this searing narrative takes us deep inside the shadowy world of complex finance - a perfect storm for the credit crunch.
Foreclosed: High-Risk Lending, Deregulation, and the Undermining of America's Mortgage Market - By Daniel Immergluck
Call Number: HG5095 .I45 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780801447723. Cornell University Press, 2009. 272 p. $29.95
Over the last two years, the United States has observed, with some horror, the explosion and collapse of entire segments of the housing market, especially those driven by subprime and alternative or “exotic” home mortgage lending. The unfortunately timely Foreclosed explains the rise of high-risk lending and why these newer types of loans—and their associated regulatory infrastructure—failed in substantial ways. Dan Immergluck narrates the boom in subprime and exotic loans, recounting how financial innovations and deregulation facilitated excessive risk-taking, and how these loans have harmed different populations and communities. Immergluck, who has been working, researching, and writing on issues tied to housing finance and neighborhood change for almost twenty years, has an intimate knowledge of the promotion of homeownership and the history of mortgages in the United States. The changes to the mortgage market over the past fifteen years—including the securitization of mortgages and the failure of regulators to maintain control over a much riskier array of mortgage products—led, he finds, inexorably to the current crisis. After describing the development of generally stable and risk-limiting mortgage markets throughout much of the twentieth century, Foreclosed details how federal policy-makers failed to regulate the new high-risk lending markets that arose in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The book also examines federal, state, and local efforts to deal with the mortgage and foreclosure crisis of 2007 and 2008. Immergluck draws upon his wealth of experience to provide an overarching set of principles and a detailed set of policy recommendations for “righting the ship” of U.S. housing finance in ways that will promote affordable yet sustainable homeownership as an option for a broad set of households and communities.
Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis - By John Taylor
Call Number: HB3722 .T39 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780817949716. Hoover Institution Press, 2009.
Throughout history, financial crises have always been caused by excesses—frequently monetary excesses—which lead to a boom and an inevitable bust. In our current crisis it was a housing boom and bust that in turn led to financial turmoil in the United States and other countries. How did everything deteriorate so suddenly and dramatically? In Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis, Hoover fellow and Stanford economist John B. Taylor offers empirical research to explain what caused the current financial crisis, what prolonged it, and what worsened it dramatically more than a year after it began. The author tells how unusually easy monetary policy helped set the crisis in motion, as interest rates at the Federal Reserve and several other central banks deviated from historical regularities. He explains monetary interaction with the subprime mortgage problem, showing how the use of these mortgages, especially the adjustable-rate variety, led to excessive risk taking. In the United States this was encouraged by government programs designed to promote home ownership, a worthwhile goal but overdone in retrospect. Looking ahead, the author suggests a set of principles to follow to prevent misguided actions and interventions in the future
The Great Crash - By John Kenneth Galbraith
Call Number: HB3717 1929 .G32 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 212 p.
This work examines the 'gold-rush fantasy' in American psychology and describes its dire consequences. The Florida land boom, the operations of Insull, Kreuger and Hatry, and the Shandoah Corporation all come together in Galbraith's study of concerted human greed and folly. Reviewing Galbraith's classic examination of the 1929 financial collapse, The Atlantic Monthly said, "Economic writings are seldom notable for their entertainment value, but this book is. Galbraith's prose has grace and wit, and he distills a good deal of sardonic fun from the whopping errors of the nation's oracles and the wondrous antics of the financial community."

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Financial Crises Books: H - W

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street - By William D. Cohan
Call Number: HG4930.5 .C64 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780385528269. Doubleday, 2009. 468 p. $27.95
On March 5, 2008, at 10:15 A.M., a hedge fund manager in Florida wrote a post on his investing advice Web site that included a startling statement about Bear Stearns & Co., the nation’s fifth-largest investment bank: “In my book, they are insolvent.” This seemed a bold and risky statement. Bear Stearns was about to announce profits of $115 million for the first quarter of 2008, had $17.3 billion in cash on hand, and, as the company incessantly boasted, had been a colossally profitable enterprise in the eighty-five years since its founding. Ten days later, Bear Stearns no longer existed, and the calamitous financial meltdown of 2008 had begun. How this happened – and why – is the subject of William D. Cohan’s superb and shocking narrative that chronicles the fall of Bear Stearns and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street. Bear Stearns serves as the Rosetta Stone to explain how a combination of risky bets, corporate political infighting, lax government regulations and truly bad decision-making wrought havoc on the world financial system. Cohan’s minute-by-minute account of those ten days in March makes for breathless reading, as the bankers at Bear Stearns struggled to contain the cascading series of events that would doom the firm, and as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, New York Federal Reserve Bank President Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke began to realize the dire consequences for the world economy should the company go bankrupt.
In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic - By David Wessel
Call Number: HG2565.W47 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780307459688. Crown, 2009. $26.99
Explaining both what happened and why it happened during the great panic of 2008, David Wessel provides new insight into how the Fed really works—and the fears Bernanke and other key players dealt with as the economic car was about to go off the cliff. "What if we get it wrong, as we did in the Depression? Then what?" Wessel shows the lightbulbs illuminating as they realized how much worse things were as each day passed. In FED We Trust is a breathtaking and singularly perceptive look at a historic episode in American and global economic history. David Wessel is economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, deputy bureau chief of the paper’s Washington bureau, and a regular on NPR and Washington Week in Review.
Irrational Exuberance - By Robert Shiller
Call Number: HG4910.S457 2005 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 0691123357. 2nd ed. Princeton University Press, 2005. 304 p. $15.95
In this timely and prescient update of his celebrated 2000 bestseller, Robert Shiller returns to the topic that gained him international fame: market volatility. Having predicted the stock market collapse that began just one month after the first edition was published, he now expands the book to cover other markets that have become volatile, particularly the recently red-hot housing market. He includes a full chapter on domestic and international housing prices in historical perspective. Shiller amasses impressive evidence to support his argument that the recent housing market boom bears many similarities to the stock market bubble of the late 1990s, and may eventually be followed by declining home prices for years to come. After stocks plummeted when the bubble burst in 2000, investors moved their money into housing. This precipitated the inflated real estate prices not only in America but around the world, Shiller maintains. Hence, irrational exuberance did not disappear—it merely reappeared in other settings. Building on the original edition, Shiller draws out the psychological origins of volatility in financial markets, this time folding real estate into his analysis. He broadens the evidence that investing in capital markets of all kinds in the modern free-market economy is inherently unstable—subject to the profoundly human influences captured in Alan Greenspan’s now-famous phrase, “irrational exuberance.” As was true of its predecessor, the second edition of Irrational Exuberance is destined to be widely read, discussed, and debated.
Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market - By Walter Bagehot
Call Number: HG4910.S457 2005 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 0883556774. Hyperion Press, 1979. OriginallyPublished in 1873. 176 p.
Much of what we consider modern economics is the work of British journalist and economist Walter Bagehot, one of the first editors of the influential newspaper The Economist and an early proponent of business cycles. Here, he develops his theory of central banking, much of which continues to impact financial thinking today. First published in 1873, Lombard Street explores the history of London's Lombard Street, from how it came to be the traditional home of banks and moneylenders to how the value of money was determined by the institutions there. Joint stocks, private banking, and the regulation of the banking reserve: Bagehot's discussion of these fundamental economic issues makes this a vital resource for anyone wishing to understand financial history. WALTER BAGEHOT (1826-1877) also wrote The English Constitution (1867), Physics and Politics (1872), and The Postulates of English Political Economy (1885), among other works.
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World - By Liaquat Ahamed
Call Number: HG172.A2 A43 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9781594201820. Penguin Press, 2009. 564 p. $32.95
Many of us take it as a given that the Great Depression - the consequences of which reverberated for decades, crippling the future of an entire generation and setting the stage for WWII - resulted from a confluence of inexorable forces beyond any one person or government's control. In fact, as erudite economist Liaquat Ahamed explains, it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown. "In Lords of Finance", we meet the neurotic and enigmatic Montagu Norman of the Bank of England; the xenophobic and suspicious Emile Moreau of the Banque de France; the arrogant yet brilliant Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank; and the dynamic Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. These four men were as prominent in their time as Alan Greenspan, Hank Paulson and Mervyn King are today, but their names were lost to history, their story untold, until now.Harnessing a keen sense of history and the narrative skills of the novelist, Liaquat Ahamed tells their story in vivid and gripping detail. As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, the Great Depression and the year 1929 remain the benchmark for true financial mayhem. Offering a new understanding of the origins and global nature of financial crises, "Lords of Finance" a timely and arresting reminder that individuals - their ambitions, limitations and human nature - lie at the very heart of global catastrophe.
Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises - By Charles Kindleberger and Rober Aliber
Call Number: HB3722 .K56 2005 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 0471467146. 5th Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2005. 309 p. $19.95 pbk.
Manias, Panics and Crashes, fifth edition, is a scholarly and entertaining account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries. Covering such topics as the history and anatomy of crises, speculative manias, and the lender of last resort, this book has been hailed as 'a true classic...both timely and timeless.' In this new, updated Fifth Edition, Kindleberger and Aliber expand upon the ideas presented in the previous edition, and include two new chapters on the real estate price bubble that ocurred in Norway, Sweden and Finland at the end of the 1980s, and the three asset price bubbles that occurred between 1985 and 2000 in Japan and other Asian countries. Selected as one of the best investment books of all time by the Financial Times, Manias, Panics and Crashes puts the turbulence of the financial world in perspective.
The Myth of the Raional Market: Wall Street's Impossible Quest for Predictable Markets - By Justin Fox
Call Number: HB3731.F69 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780060598990. Collins Business, 2009. $25.95
Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox's The Myth of the Rational Market is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk. The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through the Great Depression and into the financial calamity of today. It's a tale that features professors who made and lost fortunes, battled fiercely over ideas, beat the house in blackjack, wrote bestselling books, and played major roles on the world stage. It's also a tale of Wall Street's evolution, the power of the market to generate wealth and wreak havoc, and free market capitalism's war with itself.
The Panic of 1907: Lesson's Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm - By Robert F. Bruner and Sean D. Carr
Call Number: HB3717 1907 .B78 2007 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780470152638. John Wiley, 2007. 258 p. $29.95
'Before reading "The Panic of 1907", the year 1907 seemed like a long time ago and a different world. The authors, however, bring this story alive in a fast-moving book, and the reader sees how events of that time are very relevant for today's financial world. In spite of all of our advances, including a stronger monetary system and modern tools for managing risk, Bruner and Carr help us understand that we are not immune to a future crisis' - Dwight B. Crane, Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School. 'Bruner and Carr provide a thorough, masterly, and highly readable account of the 1907 crisis and its management by the great private banker J. P. Morgan. Congress heeded the lessons of 1907, launching the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to prevent banking panics and foster financial stability. We still have financial problems. But because of 1907 and Morgan, a century later we have a respected central bank as well as greater confidence in our money and our banks than our great-grandparents had in theirs' -Richard Sylla, Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets, and Professor of Economics, Stern School of Business, New York University.
Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity - Edited by Michael Lewis
Call Number: HB3722 .P36 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780141042312. Penguin Books, 2008. 391p. $27.95
A masterful account of today's money culture, showing how the underpricing of risk leads to catastrophe.When it comes to markets, the first deadly sin is greed. Michael Lewis is our jungle guide through five of the most violent and costly upheavals in recent financial history: the crash of '87, the Russian default (and the subsequent collapse of Long-Term Capital Management), the Asian currency crisis of 1999, the Internet bubble, and the current sub-prime mortgage disaster. With his trademark humor and brilliant anecdotes, Lewis paints the mood and market factors leading up to each event, weaves contemporary accounts to show what people thought was happening at the time, and then, with the luxury of hindsight, analyzes what actually happened and what we should have learned from experience.As he proved in Liar's Poker , The New New Thing , and Moneyball , Lewis is without peer in his understanding of market forces and human foibles. He is also, arguably, the funniest serious writer in America.
Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy - By Peter S. Goodman
Call Number: HC106.83 .G66 2009 (Library West, On Order)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780805089806. Henry Holt, 2009. 336 p. $25.00
When the financial crisis struck in 2008, Main Street felt the blow just as hard as Wall Street. The New York Times national economics correspondent Peter S. Goodman takes us behind the headlines and exposes how the flow of capital from Asia and Silicon Valley to the suburbs of the housing bubble perverted America’s economy. He follows a real estate entrepreneur who sees endless opportunity in the underdeveloped lots of Florida—until the mortgages for them collapse. And he watches as an Oakland, California-based deliveryman, unable to land a job in the biotech industry, slides into unemployment and a homeless shelter. As Goodman shows, for two decades Americans binged on imports and easy credit, a spending spree abetted by ever-increasing home values—and then the bill came due.
Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy - By Dean Baker
Call Number: (Library West, On Order)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780981576992. Polipoint Press, 2009. 170 p. $15.95
For the second time this decade, the US economy is sinking into a recession due to the collapse of a financial bubble. The most recent calamity is likely to produce a downturn deeper and longer than the stock market crash of 2001. Dean Baker argues not only that competent economists should have recognized the developing housing bubble, but also that policy makers and the media cheerfully neglected those economists who did predict danger. Baker doesnt engage in 20-20 hindsight, but documents the fundamental policy changes since 1980 that destabilized the economy and eroded the broad prosperity of the post-war period. His expert analysis explains the outcomes clearly so we can prevent similar financial disasters in the future.
The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 - By Paul Krugman
Call Number: HB3716 .K77 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780393071016. Rev ed. W.W. Norton, 2009. 191 p. $24.95
In 1999, in The Return of Depression Economics , Paul Krugman surveyed the economic crises that had swept across Asia and Latin America, and pointed out that those crises were a warning for all of us: like diseases that have become resistant to antibiotics, the economic maladies that caused the Great Depression were making a comeback. In the years that followed, as Wall Street boomed and financial wheeler-dealers made vast profits, the international crises of the 1990s faded from memory. But now depression economics has come to America: when the great housing bubble of the mid-2000s burst, the U.S. financial system proved as vulnerable as those of developing countries caught up in earlier crisesa-and a replay of the 1930s seems all too possible.In this new, greatly updated edition of The Return of Depression Economics , Krugman shows how the failure of regulation to keep pace with an increasingly out-of-control financial system set the United States, and the world as a whole, up for the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s. He also lays out the steps that must be taken to contain the crisis, and turn around a world economy sliding into a deep recession. Brilliantly crafted in Krugmana-s trademark stylea-lucid, lively, and supremely informeda-this new edition of The Return of Depression Economics will become an instant cornerstone of the debate over how to respond to the crisis.
The Road to Financial Reformation: Warnings, Consequences, Reforms - By Henry Kaufman
Call Number: HG173 .K3644 2009 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780470532126. Wiley, 2009. 260 p. $29.95
'Henry Kaufman, over more than a half century, has seen it all: the risks, the rewards, the foibles of financial markets, and now the mother of all financial crises. His prolific writings have long commanded attention on Wall Street - but not enough. Too often his warnings, his prognoses, his recommendations have been unheeded. Now - drawing in part on earlier writings - he lays out what has gone wrong and why. Dr. Kaufman, in "The Road to Financial Reformation", does not shrink from setting guidelines for rebuilding a stronger, safer, and more productive global financial marketplace. They need careful thought by practitioners and officials alike' - Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board and former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street - By Kate Kelly
Call Number: (Library West, On Order)
ISBN/ISSN: 9781591842736. Portfolio, 2009. 247 p. $25.95
The shocking fall of Bear Stearns in March 2008 set off a wave of global financial turmoil that continues to ripple. How could one of the oldest, most resilient firms on Wall Street go so far astray that it had to be sold at a fire sale price? How could the guys who ran Bear so aggressively miscalculate so completely? In this vivid and dramatic narrative, Kate Kelly takes us inside Bear’s walls during its final, frenzied 72 hours as an independent firm. Expanding with fresh detail from her acclaimed front- page series in The Wall Street Journal, she captures every sight, sound, and smell of those three unbelievable days. For decades, Bear had proudly recruited “P.S.Ds”— employees who were poor, smart, and had a deep desire to become rich. An elite family or Ivy League diploma didn’t matter. Were you willing to do almost anything to make money for the firm? Were you tough enough to be a street fighter? Bear’s leaders were arrogant and didn’t play nice. But their style had made them a fortune, and had helped Bear survive every crisis from the Great Depression to the dotcom bubble. Yet as the subprime mortgage crisis began to brew, the firm’s key executives descended into civil war. Kelly reveals fresh, never-before-told details about the moves that led to that brutal final weekend. With a style as riveting as it is enlightening, Street Fighters is the definitive account of a once-great firm’s demise, and the human folly that led to the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.
The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened and What to Do About It - By Robert J. Shiller
Call Number: HG2040.15 .S45 2008 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780691139296. Princeton University Press, 2008. 196 p. $16.95
The subprime mortgage crisis has already wreaked havoc on the lives of millions of people and now it threatens to derail the U.S. economy and economies around the world. In this trenchant book, best-selling economist Robert Shiller reveals the origins of this crisis and puts forward bold measures to solve it. He calls for an aggressive response--a restructuring of the institutional foundations of the financial system that will not only allow people once again to buy and sell homes with confidence, but will create the conditions for greater prosperity in America and throughout the deeply interconnected world economy. Shiller blames the subprime crisis on the irrational exuberance that drove the economy's two most recent bubbles--in stocks in the 1990s and in housing between 2000 and 2007. He shows how these bubbles led to the dangerous overextension of credit now resulting in foreclosures, bankruptcies, and write-offs, as well as a global credit crunch. To restore confidence in the markets, Shiller argues, bailouts are needed in the short run. But he insists that these bailouts must be targeted at low-income victims of subprime deals. In the longer term, the subprime solution will require leaders to revamp the financial framework by deploying an ambitious package of initiatives to inhibit the formation of bubbles and limit risks, including better financial information; simplified legal contracts and regulations; expanded markets for managing risks; home equity insurance policies; income-linked home loans; and new measures to protect consumers against hidden inflationary effects. This powerful book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got into the subprime mess--and how we can get out.
This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly - By Carmen M. Reinhardt and Kenneth Rogoff
Call Number: (Library West, On Order)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780691142166. Princeton University Press, 2009.
Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. This book proves that premise wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes--from medieval currency debasements to today's subprime catastrophe. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, leading economists whose work has been influential in the policy debate concerning the current financial crisis, provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations. The authors draw important lessons from history to show us how much--or how little--we have learned. Using clear, sharp analysis and comprehensive data, Reinhart and Rogoff document that financial fallouts occur in clusters and strike with surprisingly consistent frequency, duration, and ferocity. They examine the patterns of currency crashes, high and hyperinflation, and government defaults on international and domestic debts--as well as the cycles in housing and equity prices, capital flows, unemployment, and government revenues around these crises. While countries do weather their financial storms, Reinhart and Rogoff prove that short memories make it all too easy for crises to recur. An important book that will affect policy discussions for a long time to come, This Time Is Different exposes centuries of financial missteps.
Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System - and Themselves - By Andrew Ross Sorkin
Call Number: (Library West, On Order)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780670021253. Viking, 2009. 357 p. $32.95
A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times Reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, Russia, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world's economy. Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing neverdisclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were "too big to fail," it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail.
Too Big to Save: How to Fix the U.S. Financial System - By Robert C. Pozen
Call Number: HG181 .P67 2010 (Library West, On Order)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780470499054 . Wiley, 2010. $29.95
Industry luminary Robert Pozen offers his insights on the future of U.S. finance. The recent credit crisis and the resulting bailout program are unprecedented events in the financial industry. While it's important to understand what got us here, it's even more important to consider how we should get out. While there is little question that immediate action was required to stabilize the situation, it is now time to look for a long-term plan to reform the United States financial industry. That is where Bob Pozen comes in. Perhaps more than anyone in the industry, Pozen commands the respect and attention of the public and private sector. In this timely guide, he outlines his vision for the new financial future and provides actionable advice along the way. To Pozen, there are four high-priority problems that must be addressed, and this book puts them in perspective. This book analyzes alternative models for government stakes in banks. It recommends a new board structure for large financial institutions. It examines the importance of broader Fed jurisdiction over systemic risks. It proposes a way to revive the securitization of loans. With "Too Big to Save", you'll learn the likely future of the finance industry and understand why changes have to be made.
The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash - By Charles R. Morris
Call Number: HG4910 .M667 2008b (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9781586486914. Public Affairs, 2009. 208 p. $13.95
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 misjudgments, 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 of1979-1983. 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.
Undue Influence: How the Wall Street Elite Put the Financial System at Risk - By Charles R. Geisst
Call Number: HG4910 .G449 2005 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 0471656631. John Wiley & Sons, 2005. 314 p. $34.95
A critical look at over 80 years of conflict, collusion, and corruption between financiers and politicians. Undue Influence paints a vivid portrait of the dealings between "the few", in this case members of Congress, the banking community, and the Fed, and sheds light on how radical new deregulatory measures could be introduced by unelected officials and then foisted upon Congress in the name of progress. In the process, the background of the new financial elite is examined-because they are markedly different than their predecessors of the 1920s and 1930s. Undue Influence also brings readers up to speed on other important issues, including how the financial elite has been able to perpetuate itself, how the markets lend themselves to these special interest groups, and how it is possible that after 80 years of financial regulation and regulatory bodies the same problems of financial malfeasance and fraud still plague the markets. Charles R. Geisst (Oradell, NJ) is the author of 15 books, including Wheels of Fortune, Deals of the Century and the bestsellers Wall Street: A History and 100 Years of Wall Street. Geisst has taught both political science and finance, worked in banking and finance on Wall Street and in London, as well as consulted. His articles have been published in the International Herald Tribune, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Newsday, Wall Street Journal, and Euromoney.
Wall Street: A History: From Its Beginnings to the Fall of Enron - By Cahrles R. Geisst
Call Number: HG4572 .G4 2004 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 0195170601. Oxford University Press, 2004. 438 p. $18.95.
In the seven years since the publication of the first edition of Wall Street, America's financial industry has undergone a series of wrenching events that have dramatically changed the nation's economic landscape. The bull market of the 1990s came to a close, ushering in the end of the dot-com boom, a record number of mergers occurred, and accounting scandals in companies like Enron and WorldCom shook the financial industry to its core." "In this wide-ranging volume, financial historian Charles R. Geisst provides the first history of Wall Street, explaining how a small, concentrated pocket of lower Manhattan came to have such enormous influence in national and world affairs. In this updated edition, Geisst sums up the recent turbulence that has threatened America's financial industry. He shows how in 1997 thirty NASDAQ market-makers paid a record $1.3 billion fine for price irregularities in stocks. He makes sense of the closing of the bull market, and explains a major change in the accounting rules for mergers that caused monumental losses for companies like AOL Time Warner. He recounts how in the aftermath of the speculative fever that swept Wall Street in the 1990s, the scandals at Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, and Conseco represent a last gasp of mergermania and a fallout from a bubble-like market.
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term capital Management - By Roger Lowenstein
Call Number: HG4930 .L69 2000 (Library West & Legal Information Center)
ISBN/ISSN: 037550317X. Random House, 2000. 288 p. $14.95
Founded by John Meriweather, a notoriously confident bond dealer, along with two Nobel prize winners and a floor of Wall Street's brightest and best, long-term capital management was from the beginning hailed as a new gold standard in investing. It was to be the hedge fund to end all other hedge funds: a discreet private investment club limited to those rich enough to pony up millions. It became the banks' own favourite fund and from its inception achieved a run of dizzyingly spectacular returns. New investors barged each other aside to get their investment money into LTCM's hands. But as competitors began to mimic Meriweather's fund, he altered strategy to maintain the fund's performance, leveraging capital with credit on a scale not fully understood and never seen before. When the markets in Indonesia, South America and Russia crashed in 1998 LCTM's investments crashed with them and mountainous debts accumulated. The fund was in melt-down, and threatening to bring down into its trillion-dollar black hole a host of financial institutions from New York to Switzerland. It is a tale of vivid characters, overwheening ambition and perilous drama told, in Roger Lowenstein's hands, with style and panache.
When Washington Shut Down Wall Street: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 and the Origins of America's Monetary Supremacy - By William L. Siber
Call Number: HG3903.S54 2007 (Library West)
ISBN/ISSN: 9780691127477. Princeton University Press, 2007. 217 p. $27.95
When Washington Shut Down Wall Streetunfolds like a mystery story. It traces Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo's triumph over a monetary crisis at the outbreak of World War I that threatened the United States with financial disaster. The biggest gold outflow in a generation imperiled America's ability to repay its debts abroad. Fear that the United States would abandon the gold standard sent the dollar plummeting on world markets. Without a central bank in the summer of 1914, the United States resembled a headless financial giant. William McAdoo stepped in with courageous action, we read in Silber's gripping account. He shut the New York Stock Exchange for more than four months to prevent Europeans from selling their American securities and demanding gold in return. He smothered the country with emergency currency to prevent a replay of the bank runs that swept America in 1907. And he launched the United States as a world monetary power by honoring America's commitment to the gold standard. His actions provide a blueprint for crisis control that merits attention today. McAdoo's recipe emphasizes an exit strategy that allows policymakers to throttle a crisis while minimizing collateral damage. When Washington Shut Down Wall Streetrecreates the drama of America's battle for financial credibility. McAdoo's accomplishments place him alongside Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan as great American financial leaders. McAdoo, in fact, nursed the Federal Reserve into existence as the 1914 crisis waned and served as the first Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.