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The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash | 
| Author: Charles R. Morris
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $10.95
You Save: $12.00 (52%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  73 reviews
Sales Rank: 572
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 1586485636
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.04150973
EAN: 9781586485634
ASIN: 1586485636
Publication Date: March 3, 2008
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Product Description
We are living in the most reckless financial environment in recent history. Arcane credit derivative bets are now well into the tens of trillions. According to Charles R. Morris, the astronomical leverage at investment banks and their hedge fund and private equity clients virtually guarantees massive disruption in global markets. The crash, when it comes, will have no firebreaks. A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy will come crashing down with it. The Trillion Dollar Meltdown explains how we got here, and what is about to happen. After the crash our priorities will be quite different. But things are likely to get worse before they better. Whether you are an active investor, a homeowner, or a contributor to your 401(k) plan, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown will be indispensable to understanding the gross excess that has put the world economy on the brink—and what the new landscape will look like.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 68 more reviews...
 Superficial November 21, 2008
I don't know why I expected a better book to be written about the crisis we are still in, but I did.
I found this book to be superficial. It is a small book and it spread itself too thin and tried to comment on too much without any depth.
 Best synthesis I have seen yet November 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Friends and colleagues have been asking me repeatedly what is going on. This book helped me give reasonable answers, and I have recommended it to everyone who has asked. Mr. Morris speaks with the authority of an insider and conveys his knowledge in clear, direct language. Don't expect the juicy gossip and anecdotes that some other recent books on this topic have used to entice readers. This book is hard-nosed and business-like. And yet, still eminently readable.
I was trained as an economist and have sustained a reverence (religious tone intended) for free markets and deregulation for most of my professional career. As a professional economist, I have some quibbles with some of Mr. Morris's explanations. They feel oversimplified and supported more by conviction than by a subtle analysis of the facts at hand. That said, taken as a whole, his analysis is much more sophisticated than that which any economist could offer if he stayed within his own discipline's boundaries. Mr. Morris points out things that I would not even think to look for. And at the end of the day, common sense favors most of his broader explanations. He brings us the kind of book you always hope to write, in which the reader reacts in an a-ha! moment: of course he's right--how else could it be?! But few readers will have grasped how obvious the answers are before reading Mr. Morris's book. With great disappointment, I bow to his verdict that free markets have not policed themselves as I would have expected and that, as a result, increased regulatory oversight will be required, despite the risks it brings.
I am not saying that I endorse all his explanations. And the book sort of comes apart at the end, in a series of asides that have little to do with his core messages and his core concerns. But this book has helped me understand today's financial crisis far better than anything else I have encountered. As I read it a second time, I am getting still more. Each of us has to build his own understanding; Mr. Morris has made that immeasurably easier for me.
Don't leave home without it!
A Guided Tour Through Disaster October 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful book for organizing the unfolding train wreck that is the world economy in late 2008. The author explains what forces led to the situation, how financiers and mathematicians used computer modeling to create complex, world-spanning organizations that led to quick, juicy profits, and how the assumptions upon which these structures were based denied the liklihood of sufficient risk to destroy the whole structure. It is a quick read but heavy on acronyms. I found a second reading helped after I had gotten used to the language and jargon. I thought the book was exceptionally helpful for fleshing out the nightly news sound bites and clearly explaining what the bankers have really been up to.
Fantastic Primer for Beginners October 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If terms like CDOs, tranches, CDS, LIMBOR, and SIVs throw you for a loop, this is a great book to get up to speed. Charles R. Morris puts the credit crunch in its context in 169 succinct pages. He's a former banker and he doesn't waste your time. Sure, it could have been longer, but then it wouldn't be as easy to read. The scariest thing about this book is it was written BEFORE the panic we are witnessing, but it accurately predicted it. It took the rest of us a lot longer to see the impossible hole we had dug ourselves into. I'm sorry to say that by then, it was already too late.
A Page Turner October 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I just happened to pick up this book at the library, and now I can't put it down. It describes, in a succint and clear manner, exactly how we got into the current financial crisis. I'm recommending it to everyone I know.
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