Complicit

The credit crunch is affecting every investor and every consumer,every industry and every government program, yet few people trulyunderstand how it happened. Subprime mortgages have been centerstage, but behind the scenes a conspiracy of greed among bankers,investors, rating agencies and regulators has imperiled everyone'sfinancial future. We need to know what went wrong and how to changethe practices that led to this calamity. Bloomberg columnist Mark Gilbert shows how Wall Street'stolerance for extremes made the global credit crunch bothforeseeable and inevitable. He offers a blow-by-blow account ofwhat went wrong and what lessons need to be learned from thecrisis. * Gilbert's argument--that everyone with skin in the moneygame had a vested interest in pretending that nothing could goawry--is a well-defended, compelling indictment of thefinancial community. * Gilbert is able to make complex financial events easy tounderstand. * His outlook is truly global: this financial crisis respects nogeographical boundaries, and Gilbert draws on anecdotes andexamples from around the world to make his case.