The End of Wall Street
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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 rebuild. The New York Times Book Review - Daniel Gross Roger Lowenstein…is a connoisseur of investing intelligence and folly. In constructing a precise, condensed version of the origins, climax and fallout of the "dark and powerful storm front that had long been gathering at Wall Street's shores," he finds much more folly than intelligence…Careful and meticulous, The End of Wall Street covers a lot of well-trodden ground. Still, there's plenty of telling detail.
Prologue 11 To The Crossroads 72 Subprime 153 Lenders 284 Niagara 395 Lehman 486 Desperate Surge 657 Absence of Fear 818 Citi's Turn 999 Rubicon 12010 Tottering 13711 Fannie's Turn 15512 Sleepless 17113 The Forces of Evil 19214 Aftershocks 20215 The Hedge Fund War 21816 The TARP 23517 Steel's Turn 25018 Reluctant Socialist 25819 Great Recession 27320 The End of Wall Street 285Acknowledgments 299Notes 302Index 325
