After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead

Abstract

Most of these were originated, he says, by mortgage brokers "beyond the purview of the federal regulatory system," since the brokerage houses weren't banks. * He directs our attention to the fact that Congress explicitly mandated the non-regulation of derivatives in 2000, leaving a gaping hole in the regulatory system that, in various other connections also, proved a failure. * "Credit default swaps" (actually, insurance against the default of bonds or other securities) grew in volume from less than $1 trillion in 2001 to $62 trillion in 2007. * He devotes a chapter to the American national debt, speaking of the debt as "unspeakable" and "untenable," but this doesn't prompt him to discuss the tremendous inefficiencies of, and leakages from, the income tax system, and whether the substitution of a Value Added Tax (VAT), as advocated by a number of economists, would provide a vastly improved source of revenue. [...]we end our review as we have with so many others relating to the financial crisis, by pointing to the book's weaknesses and omissions and then reminding readers of all the good things we have said about the book earlier in the review