The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash [ Audio Book ]

By admin • Feb 22nd, 2009 • Category: Economics

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash [ Audio Book ]
by: Charles R. Morris

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash
By Charles R. Morris

Publisher: Phoenix Audio
Number Of Pages:
Publication Date: 2008-07-01
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1597772143
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781597772143

Product Description:

Awarded by Library Journal as one of the Ten Best Nonfiction Audio Books of 2008.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis is only the beginning; a more profound economic and political restructuring is on its way. According to Charles R. Morris, the astronomical leverage at investment banks with their hedge fund and private equity clients virtually guarantees massive disruption in global markets. 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.

Summary: Finally someone has explained the bank disaster!
Rating: 5

If you’ve wondered how some bad mortgages could bring down the international banking system, read this book. It explained it in language even I could understand.
Now I can comprehend those rare intelligent TV interviews where people throw around words like “Credit Default Swap” and “Collaterelized Debt Obligation”. In addition it’s now a lot clearer how so much money could circulate outside the regulated financial system.
I’ve read quite a few books on this topic. This is my favorite!

Summary: A Coherent Rant
Rating: 2

Morris spins readers up with a well presented analysis of the credit crisis and its origins. His understanding and conclusions on the issues are well founded.

My issue with the book is that he repetetively tells the reader about all of the problems that we face and about all the irresponsible parties that caused them…OK I get it.

But when it comes time to tell me, the reader (the one who actually gets it enough to read the book and the one who actually wants to take care of themselves and those around them) how to benefit or even protect themselves from these issues and problems the only thing he can offer is some sort of misaligned disertation about health care???

There are better choices when seeking to educate yourself on the economic world we now live in, I’d try something else first.

Summary: The Trillion Dollar Meltdown
Rating: 5

Charles R. Morris has written an excellent book. It takes the reader from the 1970s through 2008 with a narrative of the ways in which the US went from cautious credit, reasonable lending and usually honorable lenders to the fall of 2008 when it became obvious the banking system was becoming way out of control. His detailed rendering of the new financial instruments that few people understood outside of inner banking circles and the ways these have lead to a system that has become a shadow banking system is unnerving but instructive. This book provides a very good overview for those interested in understanding the credit crash the country is experiencing now.

Summary: The Nuts and Bolts of Financial Crisis
Rating: 5

This book explains the events caused the financial crisis. I attended a Harvard Business School session recently and clearly my understanding of the crisis – thanks to this book – was much better than the professor doing the session. Given the fact that the book was first published in early 2008, it was right on dot with its predictions – though somewhat on the lower side. The author is writing a newer edition – the Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown.
The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash. If you haven’t purchased this book then it may be worthwhile to wait for another 5 days for the new book with its new post-crisis insights.

Summary: Simple. lucid explanation of how things got so bad
Rating: 5

In this short, lucid book, Morris explains just exactly what wrong with Wall Street in recent years. He makes an extraordinarily complex story very easy to understand. The basic story is that we just went through a massive credit bubble, in which Wall Street created vastly more credit than the world has ever seen before. The detailed story are all of the different ways which Wall Street achieved this feat. Basically, Wall Street was very creative in using new mathematics and computer models to create extremely complex financial instruments. They were so complex, that people believed them to be basically different than earlier financial instruments. Wall Street said, and people believed, that we had abolished risk.

You can not abolish risk, any more than you can abolish gravity. The whole thing was a giant scam, conducted for the benefit of those on top, who made out like bandits. That the whole thing was going to come crashing down was pre-ordained, because, beneath all of the mathematical mumbo-jumbo, what held up the whole financial structure was sub-prime mortgages.

The situation was, and is, much worse than most of us realize. Read this indispensable book to find out the details.

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