Description: Offering insight into how the financial system works and how the credit crisis arose, this book provides a comprehensive account of the credit crunch that is easily understandable to non-specialists. It explains how the financial system was drawn into the crunch and the issues that need to be addressed to prevent further disasters.
Review Quotes:
"The crisis is a bafflingly complex phenomenon. This complexity is considerably amplified by the incomprehensible jargon that most experts use to discuss it. This book is the first that I have seen to explain the many different aspects of the crisis in terms that everybody can understand. The coverage is excellent starting with why the crisis started in the housing sector, the role of the Federal Reserve, and so forth. The book also explains securitization, tranching, and many other technical aspects the reader needs to understand what happened. It provides historical context by discussing what happened in the 1930s and the 1990s in Japan. While the U.S. is naturally central, the effect of the crisis on other countries is also discussed. I highly recommend this book to everybody."
--Franklin Allen, Nippon Life Professor of Finance and Economics, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA