In the early 1990s, the First National Bank of Keystone in West Virginia began buying and securitizing subprime mortgages from all over the country, and quickly grew from a tiny bank with just $100 million in assets to over $1.1 billion. For three years, it was listed as the most profitable large community bank in the country. It was all a fraud. All of the securitization deals the bank entered into lost money. To hide that fact, bank insiders started cooking the books, and concealing that...

The era-defining international bestseller - the definitive account of the global financial crash'Has all the drama of a Hollywood movie' Daily Telegraph'The definitive account' Sunday Times, Books of the YearThey were masters of the financial universe, flying in private jets and raking in billions. They thought they were too big to fail. Yet they would bring the world to its knees.Andrew Ros...

According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, no-one has put all the pieces of the financial crisis together. The finger was pointed at greedy traders, cowardly legislators and clueless home buyers, but many devils helped bring hell to the economy.All The Devils Are Here goes back several decades to explore the motivations of everyone from CEOs and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers and Wall Street traders. It ex...

This economic and cultural history reveals how five significant stock market crashes in the past century define the modern United States.The Panic of 1907 1929: Black Tuesday 1987: Black Monday 2008: The Great Recession 2010: The Flash CrashEach of these financial implosions that caused a catastrophic drop in the American stock market is a remarkable story in its own right filled with drama, human foibles, and heroic rescues. Taken together they tell the la...

A unique and riveting exploration of one of America's largest and fastest-growing industries—the business of poverty."[A] thorough and thoughtful piece of reporting. . . . It should be required reading for legislators and lenders across the land." — Bloomberg NewsFor most people, the Great Crash of 2008 has meant troubling times. Not so for those in the flourishing poverty industry. These mercenary entrepreneurs ha...

Watch a VideoWatch a videoDownload the cheat sheet for Roger Lowenstein's The End of Wall Street »The roots of the mortgage bubble and the story of the Wall Street collapse-and the government's unprecedented response-from our most trusted business journalist.The End of Wall Street is a blow-by-blow account of America's biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. Drawing on 180 interviews, including s...

William D. Cohan's Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World is a chronicle of the most successful, iconic bank on Wall Street, from the firm's founding in 1869 to the present day.Goldman Sachs are the investment bank all other banks - and most businesses - want to emulate; the firm with the best talent, the best clients, the best strategy. But is their success just down to the gilded magic of the 'Goldman way'?William D. Cohan has ...

The definitive report on what caused America's economic meltdown and who was responsible. The financial and economic crisis has touched the lives of millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and their homes, but many have little understanding of how it happened. Now, in this very accessible report, readers can get the facts. Formed in May 2009, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) is a panel of 10 commissioners with experience in business, regulations, economics, and housing...

The international bestseller from the winner of the Financial Times**/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award,** House of Cards dissects the collapse of Bear Stearns and the beginning of the financial crisisIt was Wall Street's toughest investment bank, taking risks where others feared to tread, run by testosterone-fuelled gamblers who hung a sign saying 'let's make nothing but money' over the trading floor.Yet in Ma...

New York Times Bestseller: A history of the S&L scandal that caused a financial disaster for American taxpayers: "Hard to put down" ( Library Journal).For most of the 20th century, savings and loans were an invaluable thread of the American economy. But in the 1970s, Congress passed sweeping financial deregulation at the insistence of industry insiders that allowed these once quaint and useful institutions to spread their taxpayer-insured assets in...

Beneath the neon glow of 1980s Wall Street, a cadre of ruthless financiers—dubbed the "junk bond riders"—rode a wave of greed, leveraging debt and daring to reshape industries with little regard for consequence. But when one man stood against them, the stage was set for a high-stakes showdown that would shake the foundations of American finance.The Predators' Ball is the electrifying true story of the rise and fall of the junk bond titans, from the boardrooms of Dr...

“Whatever it takes”That was Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s vow as the worst financial panic in more than fifty years gripped the world and he struggled to avoid the once unthinkable: a repeat of the Great Depression. Brilliant but temperamentally cautious, Bernanke researched and wrote about the causes of the Depression during his career as an academic. Then when thrust into a role as one of the most important people in the world, he was compelled to boldn...