Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves
- ISBN13: 9780670021253
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America’s financial history by an acclaimed New York Times Reporter
Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the d… More >>
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Mark S. Owens said :
February 9, 2010 at 11:31 pm
I too was ready to purchase Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book. However, I will not pay Amazon, Viking, or Sorkin a premium price for an ebook.
Please reconsider the pricing for this book. The Kindle community is watching and is not amused.
Rating: 1 / 5
C. MARTIN said :
February 10, 2010 at 12:58 am
The Kindle version is far too expensive–how can you justify it costing MORE to get an electronic version of a book?
Rating: 1 / 5
Corvus Corax said :
February 10, 2010 at 2:02 am
A disturbing trend, confirmed again with Sorkin’s book, which is priced as an ebook more expensively than the hardcover. This is insanity. Not why I bought a Kindle, and with
Barnes and Noble, among others, entering the fray, Amazon needs to get a stiff dose of reality.
And for those who say that this is not a relevant review, I strongly disagree. If price prevents people from reading it, it’s very appropriate to comment on it. Obviously, we think that WHATEVER Sorkin has to say, it isn’t worth the price. That’s an important message.
Rating: 1 / 5
Robert R. Woodruff said :
February 10, 2010 at 3:23 am
I ordered this book back in mid-October. I have yet to receive it or receive an explanation.
Robert Woodruff
Rating: 1 / 5
Robert P. Vandehey said :
February 10, 2010 at 4:45 am
This is one of the worst books ever written, despite being well-written. The NY Times is a bastion of liberalism and would rather see the falsehoods they believe in propagated through eternity than to actually get down to the nitty-gritty truth. The real causes of the sub-prime mortgage debacle that was the root cause of all the messes that came later is never seriously discussed.
Because the problems that created the mess (“mess” is a technical management term within the Kepner-Tregoe System to describe just such a debacle) are not addressed, it comes off sounding like some sort of nifty disaster story and putting the blame on, at various times: 1. the free market 2. not enough regulation of the market 3. the Bush administration 4. Conservatives in general 5. Generalized greed and bad decision making. Only item #5 has some credence, the rest is blatantly false since it was interference with the free market by liberals that created this monstrous problem . . . .
The United States had a 62-65% home ownership rate, the envy of the world for over 50 years. Liberals thought “everybody deserves to own their own home” without really thinking what that means. To think that way without thinking deeper is to literally attack the American Dream. One of the key ways for individuals to get wealthy in our society is by ownership of rental property, to become a landlord. Another is by securing the benefits of higher education; another is by owning your own business; investing wisely; etc. etc. Deciding that everyone deserves to own their own home regardless of their ability to pay their mortgage (aka “social engineering”)was at the root of the mess. The CRA and the ’98 Clinton mortgage-guarantee act that followed were thinly-disguised attacks on the landlord class which not coincidentally consists mostly of conservatives and many more Republicans than Democrats). It was also a terrible attack on the banks and financial systems. Forcing lenders to abandon years of successful practice to grant loans they know are bad is a recipe for disaster . . . .
The original Jimmy Carter’s CRA (community reinvestment act) was thankfully poorly crafted. Yes, it did help drive interest rates up to 19% by late 1980, but the nation survived it, because most lending institutions were able to ignore it. In the mid-90′s however, Barak Obama and other ACORN lawyers of the ilk, took up a new tactic, snowing banks and other home lending institutions beneath a blizzard of paperwork and using protests to give banks bad PR. The typical result was the bank caving in, agreeing to make a certain number of bad loans to ACORN nominated buyers every year and most importantly, making a contribution to ACORN itself. The banks caved just to get them out of their offices and from in front of their buildings so that they could conduct some semblance of normal business.
Clinton’s ’98 mortgage-guarantee law put the whole process on steroids and mandated with teeth, the bad loans that were merely extorted previously. As early as late November, 2003, James Stack of [...] was tracking a “housing industry bubble” and warning of the coming collapse of the markets based upon the sub-prime loan crisis. By January, 2005, Bush and the Republicans saw the danger and tried to stem the tide by repealing the most objectionable and dangerous aspects of the two mortgage-guarantee laws. The Democrats defeated them handily. In July, 2007, a very weak bi-partisan bill addressed the problem but it was too little, way too late and the fact is that the twin evil mortgage-guarantee laws are still on the books, mostly intact waiting to take us down again.
If the history is told correctly, Barak Obama and Bill Clinton each in their own way were almost as guilty as Barney Frank and the most liberal of the Democrats in creating this mess. So when Obama and Frank say, “I don’t want to hear from the people who created the mess . . .” or “The markets went poof AGAIN and the congress had to clean up the mess AGAIN” those are blatant lies covering up their own culpability.
It took me a few words to explain it. In a book from the mighty NY Times I would have expected them to dedicate a page and a half to three pages to get down to the real truth. That’s why I call it “NY Times: all the liberal lies unfit to print” . . . .
Rating: 1 / 5