The End of Wall StreetWatch a Video
Download 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 sit-downs with top government officials and Wall Street CEOs, Lowenstein tells, with grace, wit, and razor-sharp understanding, the full story of the end of Wall Street as we knew it. Displaying the qualities that made When Genius Failed a timeless classic of Wall Street-his sixth sense for narrative drama and his unmatched ability to tell complicated financial stories in ways that resonate with the ordinary reader-Roger Lowenstein weaves a financial, economic, and sociological thriller that indicts America for succumbing to the siren song of easy debt and speculative mortgages. The End of Wall Street is rife with historical lessons and bursting with fast-paced action. Lowenstein introduces his story with precisely etched, laserlike profiles of Angelo Mozilo, the Johnny Appleseed of subprime mortgages who spreads toxic loans across the landscape like wild crabapples, and moves to a damning explication of how rating agencies helped gift wrap faulty loans in the guise of triple-A paper and a takedown of the academic formulas that-once again- proved the ruin of investors and banks. Lowenstein excels with a series of searing profiles of banking CEOs, such as the ferretlike Dick Fuld of Lehman and the bloodless Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, and of government officials from the restless, deal-obsessed Hank Paulson and the overmatched Tim Geithner to the cerebral academic Ben Bernanke, who sought to avoid a repeat of the one crisis he spent a lifetime trying to understand-the Great Depression. Finally, we come to understand the majesty of Lowenstein's theme of liquidity and capital, which explains the origins of the crisis and that positions the collapse of 2008 as the greatest ever of Wall Street's unlearned lessons. The End of Wall Street will be essential reading as we work to identify the lessons of the market failure and start to reb... |
From inside the book
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... Loan, highly regarded lender until it went overboard on option ARMs BRIAN SCHREIBER, AIG's head of planning, frantically looked for credit as Wall Street backed away CHARLES E. SCHUMER, Democratic senator from New York, rejected the ...
... Loan, highly regarded lender until it went overboard on option ARMs BRIAN SCHREIBER, AIG's head of planning, frantically looked for credit as Wall Street backed away CHARLES E. SCHUMER, Democratic senator from New York, rejected the ...
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Roger Lowenstein. mortgage delinquencies over the preceding three years had trebled. In August, the month before ... securities, which had been stored on the books of the leading Wall Street banks, not to mention in investment portfolios ...
Roger Lowenstein. mortgage delinquencies over the preceding three years had trebled. In August, the month before ... securities, which had been stored on the books of the leading Wall Street banks, not to mention in investment portfolios ...
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... mortgage-backed CMOs.” CMOs are bonds that are supported by pools of mortgages. The two dubbed suspicious by Rodriguez were backed by so-called Alternative A mortgages, which differed from conventional loans in that the prospective ...
... mortgage-backed CMOs.” CMOs are bonds that are supported by pools of mortgages. The two dubbed suspicious by Rodriguez were backed by so-called Alternative A mortgages, which differed from conventional loans in that the prospective ...
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... mortgage-backed security was a useful innovation; by pooling a group of mortgages it achieved the benefit of collective security. Duly marketed to investors, such first-order securities channeled public capital into a socially useful ...
... mortgage-backed security was a useful innovation; by pooling a group of mortgages it achieved the benefit of collective security. Duly marketed to investors, such first-order securities channeled public capital into a socially useful ...
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... mortgages of one type or another—loans that, a short while ago, had been either ... mortgage bonds, and the investment firms who structured the securities ... backed securities, was a green light from some recognized expert: a seal or ...
... mortgages of one type or another—loans that, a short while ago, had been either ... mortgage bonds, and the investment firms who structured the securities ... backed securities, was a green light from some recognized expert: a seal or ...
Contents
LEHMAN | |
DESPERATE SURGE | |
ABSENCE OF FEAR | |
THE FORCES OF EVIL | |
AFTERSHOCKS | |
THE HEDGE FUND | |
THE TARP | |
STEELS TURN | |
RELUCTANT SOCIALIST | |
GREAT RECESSION | |
THE END OF WALL STREET | |
CITISTURN Chapter 9 RUBICON | |
TOTTERING | |
FANNIESTURN Chapter 12 SLEEPLESS | |
Acknowledgements NOTES | |
INDEX | |
ABOUT THE AUTHOR | |
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Common terms and phrases
agencies AIG’s American assets bailout bankers bankruptcy banks Bear began Bernanke billion bonds borrowers bubble called capital CDOs chief Citi Citigroup close Congress considered continued corporate Countrywide crisis deal debt default derivatives early economy effect equity executive failed fall Fannie fear Federal Reserve firm forced Freddie Fuld funds Geithner Goldman guarantee hedge funds housing industry institutions interest interview investment investment banks investors issue John JPMorgan Lehman lenders lending less leverage liquidity loans losses Merrill models months Morgan Stanley mortgage October Paulson percent president problem raise rates regulators risk Robert Rodriguez savings securities seemed sell September share short subprime Thain told trading Treasury turned twins United Wachovia Wall Street wanted Washington Willumstad worried York