Friday, July 12, 2013
After the Music StoppedAuthor: Alan S. Blinder
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About This Book
Alan S. Blinder, esteemed Princeton professor, Wall Street Journal columnist, and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board offers a comprehensive narrative of how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the government did to fight it, and what we can do from here.
Blinder shows us how the U.S. financial system, which had grown far too complex for its own good—and too unregulated for the public good—experienced a perfect storm beginning in 2007. Things started unraveling when the much-chronicled housing bubble burst, but the ensuing implosion of what Blinder calls the “bond bubble” was larger and more devastating. Blinder argues that the problem started in the U.S. and was pushed abroad, as complex, opaque and overrated investment products were exported to a hungry world, which was nearly poisoned by them.
The second part of the story explains how American and international government intervention kept us from a total meltdown.
About the author
Alan S. Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the vice chairman of the Promontory Interfinancial Network, a financial services firm based in Arlington, Virginia. He served as the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors from 1994 to 1996 and was a member of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. He writes a regular monthly op-ed column for The Wall Street Journal and appears frequently on PBS, CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg TV, and elsewhere.