Books on the Economic Meltdown

The list of books related to the economy have been flying off the presses in the last two years. The list is so long that it can't fit on this blog, but there are longer lists available lists in the library. Here is a snapshot of four titles from the 2009-10 list:

House of Cards by William D Cohen. c2009 332.66 COH
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. Cohan's minute-by-minute account of those ten days in March makes for breathless reading. -Publisher

In Fed we trust : Ben Bernanke's war on the great panic by David Wessel c2009 332.1109 WES
"Whatever it takes" --That was Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's vow as the worst financial panic in more than fifty years gripped the world and he struggled to avoid the once unthinkable: a repeat of the Great Depression. Brilliant but temperamentally cautious, Bernanke researched and wrote about the causes of the Depression during his career as an academic. Then when thrust into a role as one of the most important people in the world, he was compelled to boldness by circumstances he never anticipated. (Award winning author.) –Publisher

The Match King by Frank Partnoy c2009 364.168 PAR
Ivar Kreuger, the best-liked crook that ever lived, was a Swede who operated on Wall Street during the 1920s, and his apparent suicide in 1932 coincided with the collapse of his businesses, bankrupting millions of investors. Partnoy’s research on Kreuger reveals how he cornered global markets in safety matches by raising money in the U.S. and loaning it to European governments in return for monopoly control of production and sales; he devised and sold complicated financial products, and with questionable accounting methods structured a long list of murky deals. Partnoy explains that Kreuger, while a crook, was an attractive one who created substantial wealth, revived much of post World War I Europe, and generated real profits for investors before his empire collapsed. With the current arrest of Bernard Madoff for stealing more than $60 billion from investors, we are reminded that history repeats itself. This is a timely and excellent book. -Booklist

Tyranny of dead ideas: letting go of the old ways of thinking to unleash a new prosperity by Matthew Miller c2009 330.973 MIL
If "Fortune" columnist Miller's eerily prophetic book had come out earlier, it could have served as a wakeup call for Wall Street and Washington, D.C. before the failure of several venerable financial institutions required government bailouts. The author's prescient observations make a case for how an American attitude of entitlement and outdated beliefs about government, education, taxes, corporate excess and health care threaten our national well-being and our position as a world leader. Beliefs such as Your Company Should Take Care of You, and The Kids Will Earn More than We Do are traced to their origins in the past, and are now strategies that strangle the same corporations at the expense of global competitiveness. This book offers a fair-handed critique.-Publishers Weekly

Look for forthcoming titles soon:

Comeback America by David Walker c2010

Freefall: America, Free Markets by Joseph Stiglitz c2010

Good Value by Stephen Green c2010