Why the Global Economy Is Tanking
Last Sunday, legislators and the president, convinced that the United States was facing an imminent risk of default and their sound decisions were needed to wrest global well-being from the jaws of collapse, purportedly scrambled to announce a deal on the debt ceiling hours before the Asian markets opened. Instead of cheering the deal, however, global markets thumbed their nose and turned down within hours of the announcement.
Way Too Big To Fail
There were many factors that led us to the financial crisis of 2008—dangerous derivatives, irresponsible ratings agencies, negligent regulators—but one was more important than the rest. We now know it as the “too big to fail” problem. What brought the economy to the edge of disaster wasn’t only that financial institutions had made rash bets on lousy investments, but that those institutions were so massive that when their bets went bad, they threatened to take the rest of the economy down with them.
Shooting Banks
Simon Johnson and Peter Boone: Obama's impotent assault on Wall Street.
