Furiously Fascinating Financial Fiasco
If you’re an old economics major like me or have a general interest in how stuff works you probably have a general understanding of how a Market with a big “M” functions. That doesn’t mean you understood a single thing about the Subprime collapse or why printing money is bad, why people sometimes choose to default on their mortgage or why banks took such amazing risks.
All those tedious little questions most people toss aside when they decide to rant with one another about those evil Wall Street people and those silly homeowners who didn’t think twice about buying a house they couldn’t possibly afford.
If you only read one book about this whole ordeal, it should be Johan Norberg’s. Let me warn you from the start, Norberg is — like me — a libertarian. One of those insane people who like to step back from the rhetoric and actually look at the impact that both the Left and the Right had on the things they so nobly tried to “Change” with “Hope” or “God”.
Despite his clear point of view on the matter, Norberg spends half of his book without even bothering to give his opinion. A rare fact, that when telling a story so enraging as this one, feels like a breath of fresh air. The main timeframe of the book from the 1980’s to 2008, without any clear linear storytelling. We jump back and forth following the cause and the effect of one inane underthought policy after another. It’s frustrating, it’s annoying, it’s exactly what we usually don’t see about political interventionism: the results.
You can find it on Amazon for around $15.