A clear, concise account illustrating why financial fires must be anticipated if they’re to be controlled.
Three principal policymakers and “firefighters” during the 2008 financial crash describe the crisis and suggest policies to prepare for an inevitable return.
The fire metaphors flare brightly in the first half of this brief, cogent account of the near collapse of the American economy near the end of the presidency of George W. Bush and the beginning of Barack Obama’s. Bernanke (The Courage to Act, 2015, etc.), Geithner (Stress Test, 2014), and Paulson Jr. (Dealing with China, 2015, etc.) mention themselves by first name throughout (Ben, Tim, Hank) and are occasionally heavy on self-congratulation, but they also express humility. For example, they note how a Geithner speech, intended to calm markets and investors, had the opposite effect. The authors are also generally nonpartisan, though several times they allude to the dangers of today’s “bitterly polarized politics,” and they praise Obama more than those on the right will probably enjoy. They also respond several times to critics from a decade ago who assailed them for saving Wall Street and largely ignoring Main Street. The authors’ approach is straightforward and easy to digest: Describe what caused the collapse; tell about the measures the government took to contain it; comment on what worked and what didn’t; discuss the fallout; speculate about what needs to be done now. They take care to clarify such terms as “derivatives” and “leverage” so that readers unclear about them (and numerous others) can easily follow the text. They are admonitory toward the end, reminding us of a truth that applies not just in the financial-crisis world: “The enemy is forgetting.” The authors—each of whom has published a memoir about the crisis—are not especially memorable stylists, too often relying on clichés—e.g., “fallen through the cracks,” “get ahead of the curve.”
A clear, concise account illustrating why financial fires must be anticipated if they’re to be controlled.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-14-313448-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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