Peter Schiff accurately predicted the 2008 meltdown of the mortgage market and financial sector. Before it all hit the fan, though, he was called a doomsayer and was frequently laughed at on the mainstream financial talk shows. But he turned out to be right. The real problem, Schiff argues in this book, is that what happened in 2008 was not actually “The Crash,” but was simply the prelude to it. The dot-com bubble popped at the turn of the century; the housing bubble popped in 2008; Schiff shows persuasively that we are now in what he calls the government bubble. The “recoveries” from each of the first two bubbles were not actually true, healthy corrections in the market; instead, the Federal Reserve used easy money policies to paper over the real issues and delay (and ultimately prolong) the inevitable pain.
All Old Users
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
This book, along with The Fault In Our Stars (which I recently finished), is a great representation of the way a young adult book should be. The book is not about vampires or teenagers fighting for their lives or the lives of their districts. The book is about teenagers as they navigate through life.
The reason, I feel, the book appeals to young adults and adults alike is because the characters described in the book and the events and emotions that they experience are familiar to young adults and adults alike as well. Who doesn’t know what it feels like to go to a party and feel unnoticed? There is one really well written scene where the main character, Charlie, exclaims that he feels “infinite” at that very moment and that, essentially, everything feels right.
The Mortgage Wars: Inside Fannie Mae, Big-Money Politics, and the Collapse of the American Dream
Timothy Howard was an executive at Fannie Mae through the 90s and into the 2000s, leaving just a few years before the big crash of 2008 when the government bailed out the Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE). This book is an incredibly detailed inside-view of the secondary mortgage market and the rise and fall of the GSEs in the modern economy.
Most people know Fannie Mae from the 2008 mortgage crisis where the government stepped in and bailed them out, but it’s been around in various forms since the New Deal. Fannie Mae does not issue loans to consumers directly; rather, they are (still) a major player in the “œsecondary mortgage market”””that is, they purchase existing loans from the banks that originally lend the money out. This is fantastic for the banks: when they sell their loan on the secondary market, they immediately earn their profit (interest), their risk disappears (since they are no longer servicing the loan and thus aren’t on the hook in case of a default), and they have their capital back to loan out again.
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King is the sequel to his second novel, The Shining. This novel, which comes 36 years after the release of The Shining, shows what life is like for Danny Torrence shortly after he and his mom leave the Overlook and then fast forwards about 20 years and shows how history can repeat itself. Danny begins drinking heavily in spite of the problems his father had with alcohol, he makes some poor decisions that end up haunting him and after hopping from town to town he settles down in a New Hampshire town for the next 15 or more years. Still possessing the powers he had as a child, Dan connects with another talented and much younger girl, Abra, who he helps fight the forces of evil plaguing them in the 21st Century.
The author of this novel, Stephen King, is more than just a write of horror/psychological thrillers. He is a master at his craft. I was shocked to see how many novel and short stories Stephen King has written and even more surprised to see what percentage of those have been turned into either film or made suitable for television. There are movies that I had no idea were from a Stephen King novel, such as Children of the Corn, Firestarter, Shawshank Redemption and The Running Man (originally published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman). Stephen King’s first novel was Carrie, which was just remade into a movie, his second novel was Salem’s Lot and his third was The Shining. To have such success in the beginning must have been a huge boost for the writer who stated later that he writes because he was born to do so and takes the career very seriously.
Christians In An Age of Wealth by Craig Blomberg
Christians In An Age of Wealth is a survey of all the passages in the Bible that address (however tangentially) issues of wealth, poverty, economics, money, stewardship, and giving. Blomberg plods methodically through the Pentateuch, major and minor prophets, wisdom literature and Old Testament history, followed by the gospels and the epistles. In the process he … Read more
Columbine by Dave Cullen
The Columbine High School massacre took place on April 20, 1999 in Columbine, Colorado. It has been almost 15 years since the lives of 12 students and 1 teacher were taken, yet what this book shows is that there are still many misconceptions about what happened leading up to the massacre, what happened at the school that day, and what has happened since then. Even though Dave Cullen, a respected journalist, is a part of the world of media, he makes it very clear that the media is, in part, very much to blame for these misconceptions.
The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
The Road to Serfdom’s status as a classic of economic and political philosophy is well-deserved. Hayek makes political theory compelling as he describes the dire consequences of the schemes of central planners. An Austrian, he wrote from a unique vantage point, having spent his early life in eastern European nations that were far down the socialist rabbit hole and his later life in England when it was still committed to individual liberty and political freedom. He experienced the consequences of socialism and fascism as they matured in his country of birth, and realized while in England that the West was in the early stages of accepting the same premises and committing the same mistakes that so devastated eastern Europe.
While the writing is mostly theoretical and occasionally dry, the benefit is that it does not come across as polemical or ideological in any negative sense. If anything, Hayek is ideological in that he is driven by ideas–ideas that have had direct and disastrous consequences in front of his very eyes, and vice versa. Central planning is the height of political, intellectual and moral arrogance: The very idea that so-called experts can adequately plan an economy at a national level is patently absurd, not to mention immoral, and Hayek patiently and deliberately walks the reader through all the implications, assumptions and consequences involved. Anyone interested in true equality under the law, in freedom to organize one’s life according to one’s own principles, in genuine justice, cannot but oppose the vision of the central planners. Individual liberty, Hayek shows, must be the foundation of a free and just society.
Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick (Book and Movie Review)
The Silver Linings Playbook is a novel that was written in 2008. Recognizing a winner, the Harvey Weinstein production company snatched up the movie rights to the novel even before it was published. The novel is about Pat, a man who had been institutionalized due to a traumatic event that is revealed towards the end of the novel. After he is released from the institution he goes back home to live with his parents and attempts to become re-acclimated to the normalcies of life outside of an institution. Through his best friend, he meets Tiffany, a woman who had dealt with as much trauma and mental illness as Pat. The two make an interesting couple as they navigate through life trying to cope with their past, present, and future.
The Silver Linings Playbook is a debut novel for Matthew Quick. Before becoming a writer, Quick taught high school literature and film in southern New Jersey. It seems that he was very involved in the community where he coached sports, led trips to South American countries and even has counseled troubled teens. Apparently, this background was what prepared him to write such an emotionally layered film about mental illness, forgiveness, love for sports and how to move forward in life. Since 2008, Quick has had three more novels published with two more on the way and all of them have also been optioned for film.
Pirates of Manhattan by Barry James Dyke
The modern finance industry, what Dyke calls “The Casino Age,” is focused on rapid wealth using risky investment vehicles and screwing the little guy. Banks have been fined millions of dollars over the years in penalties for fraud and unethical activities, but the fines pale in comparison to the profits they earned by those actions, and almost nobody ever goes to prison, and so the abuses continue. Banks and other financial corporations have lobbied successfully to centralize most regulations at the federal level–laws that ultimately protect their rapacious, economically destructive activity and protect them from the losses that arise from speculative investments made with other people’s money.
The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort
The Wolf of Wall Street is a memoir written by the wolf, himself, Jordan Belfort. The book is about how Jordan got his start in the stockbroker business, how he made as much as 23 million dollars in one day, how he got wrapped-up into drugs and sex, and how it all came crashing down. A movie with the same title was released in December of 2013 and has garnished some major notoriety, good and bad.
Belfort writes in his introduction that his memoir is “œa true story based on his best recollection of events” that happened in his life and that he used the real names of people in the book, unless indicated otherwise. He also states that some of the events have been compressed for the sake of the narrative and that some dialogue was recreated to best match the exchanges between people in the book. In the prologue, after relaying his meeting with Mark Hanna, the man said to be his mentor, he states that this memoir is a “œsatirical reconstruction of the insanity” that took place. He explains that he primarily hopes that his story will serve as a cautionary tale to the rich and the poor, “œto anyone living with a silver spoon on their nose and a bunch of pills in their stomach sack and to any person who is considering taking a God given gift and misusing it.” Having said all that and knowing that he spent much of his time being high, I have some major doubts about what actually did happen (although I am not sure how relevant that is). Essentially, here is an expert snake oil salesman selling his own story. You do the math.