The author, Blinder, is an insider who has the background to describe the events accurately and assess the causes properly. I have read several books on the crisis and found this one to be the most complete and believable. It is 440 pages, but not a difficult read. Blinder makes the events understandable and places blame for the debacle, in my opinion, fairly. There is plenty of blame to be assigned, to the many regulating agencies, the many investment banks all around the world, AIG, the mortgage lenders of all stripes, the politicians, and the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, FNMA and Freddie Mac, and the rating agencies. The public grabbing loans they knew they could not afford were also a big contributor. Greed, fraud, and short term, wishful thinking led to gambling with other peoples money to make short term killings. The system was a mess. Top management had little appreciation for their risk management systems. They were making too much money to care.
The Dodd-Frank law, an attempt to prevent this happening again, was passed shortly after the crisis cooled down, but regulations actually implementing the law have not been completed, largely through fierce lobbying by the villains of this piece.
I am still amazed that more arrests were not made.
