- Hardcover: 208 pages
- Publisher: Wiley (Jun 3 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0470474238
- ISBN-13: 978-0470474235
- Product Dimensions: 23.3 x 16 x 2.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 340 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #302,010 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"David Faber is known as one of the cooler heads on financial news channel CNBC… True to his reputation, calm prevails through most of the book... Faber explains rather than rants about these mortgages, as well as securitizations and bogus credit ratings, making the case that greed and stupidity caused the financial crisis…"
—Lisa Von Ahn, Reuters
—Lisa Von Ahn, Reuters
a" fantastic book on the housing meltdown . . .
—The Motley Fool
“CNBC’s David Faber delivers a clear-eyed look at the origins of the crisis. . . As an anchor of the Faber Report, the author was on the front lines of the financial crisis and spoke with many of its key players.
—Fortune magazine
"A slim yet substantial book based on Faber's riveting (and horrifying) CNBC special "House of Cards" that takes readers from the mosquito-ridden swimming pools of option-ARM ghost towns to a Norwegian town bankrupted by ill-advised investments in "synthetic" bonds on the mortgages left behind."
—NY Mag, Daily Intel
"…we wound up liking Faber’s book. He writes simply and well. He also uses real people to demonstrate the insanity of the housing boom. While this may not be the deepest book about the crash, it could be the most accessible."
—MoneySense magazine
Product Description
CNBC's David Faber takes an in-depth look at the causes and consequences of the recent financial collapse
And Then the Roof Caved In lays bare the truth of the credit crisis, whose defining emotion at every turn has been greed, and whose defining failure is the complicity of the U.S. government in letting that greed rule the day. Written by CNBC's David Faber, this book painstakingly details the truth of what really happened with compelling characters who offer their first-hand accounts of what they did and why they did it.
Page by page, Faber explains the events of the previous seven years that planted the seeds for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He begins in 2001, when the Federal Reserve embarked on an unprecedented effort to help the economy recover from the attacks of 9/11 by sending interest rates to all time lows. Faber also gives you an up-close look at where the crisis was incubated and unleashed upon the world-Wall Street-and introduces you to insiders from investment banks and mortgage lenders to ratings agencies, that unwittingly conspired to insure lending standards were abandoned in the head long rush for profits.
- Based on two years of research, this book provides deep background into the current credit crisis
- Offers the insights of experienced professionals-from Alan Greenspan to prominent bankers and regulators-who were on the front lines
- Created by David Faber, the face of morning business news on CNBC, and host of the network's award winning documentaries
From regulators who tried to stop this problem before it swung out of control to hedge fund managers who correctly foresaw the coming housing crash and profited from it, And Then the Roof Caved In shows you how the crisis we currently face came to be.
Inside This Book
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
`No-one seemed to ask what would happen if housing prices started to fall.',
By J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected" (ACT, Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street's Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees (Hardcover)
This book, by CNBC's David Faber, provides an analysis of the global financial crisis that commenced in 2007. The cause of this crisis, as written by Mr Faber, is a combination of greed and regulatory failure.David Faber traces the lineage of the subprime mortgage industry, and tracks it back to the aftermath of the September 11 2001 attacks when interest rates were lowered to try to help the American economy to recover. The lowering of the interest rate apparently enabled a drop in lending standards which allowed people to take on mortgages they couldn't afford. The causes and consequences of this collapse are covered in this book. While reading ex post analysis may be cold comfort to many, seeking to understand the various factors involved is important in order to try to prevent such an occurrence in future. I think that this book provides a good starting point for those of us who seek to better understand what went wrong, and why. The subprime mortgage industry failure may have originated in the USA, but its impacts are global. Jennifer Cameron-Smith
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reads like a horror novel...a real page-turner,
By Elisabeth Bucci (Montreal, QC, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street's Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees (Hardcover)
I have a confession to make. I really can't seem to finish reading business books. I find them boring. I can plough through a 700-page novel in one day. But I will put down most business books, after reading the first chapter.Until now, that is. I found this book in my public library and started reading it right there at a table. After I checked it out, I went for a quick lunch, still reading it. I read it on the metro going home. I would have read it while walking home except that the sidewalks are still full of snow and I might have hurt myself. I read it instead of watching TV. I read it instead of going on-line. I think I will have to buy it. Yes, this book is that good. Based on the CNBC documentary "A House of Cards", it reads like a horror novel, except that it starts at the end. Because, really, everyone knows how this story ended: with Lehman Bros bankrupt, Merrill Lynch barely escaping and AIG being purchased by the American taxpayer in the biggest bailout in history. But how many of us know how this story really started? How many of us know that the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression was caused by Collaterized Debt Obligations structured from Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBS), which were repackaged stated-income ARM mortgages provided to sub-500 FICO borrowers, with the CDOs still rated as investment grade by complicit regulators? Who knew I could write a sentence like that and even kind-of sort-of understand what it means? Thanks to this book, I am miles ahead in piecing together how a completely unregulated Wall Street nearly brought the global economy to its knees. At only 180 pages, with short chapters of 15 - 20 pages titled "The Securitization from Hell" and "Narvik and Me", this book is a quick and engrossing read, getting into enough technical details to explain negative amortization ARM and stated-income mortgages, RMBS, synthetic and mezzanine CDOs, and credit default swaps, without forgetting every human role in the chain of disaster: the CEO of Merril Lynch, the Wall St. mortgage bankers, the seasoned sub-prime mortgage brokers and the homeowners who lost everything. And plenty of facts and figures to back everything up. By the end of the book, you may not be any closer to understanding a synthetic or mezzanine CDO. Apparently, as described in the book, Alan Greenspan, a smart guy who has studied a lot of mathematics in his life, doesn't understand them either. So don't feel so bad. But you will seriously question the free-market paradigms that we have always held so dear. I know I am.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.6 out of 5 stars (69 customer reviews) 36 of 39 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Watch The TV Program Instead,
By Stanley Collender - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street's Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees (Hardcover)
David Faber's new book, "And The The Roof Caved In," hit The New York Times best seller list for the first time this week. It debuted at an impressive #10.I enjoyed the book. It's an easy read which, given the subject -- the credit and financial crises -- is not an easy thing to do. Given that his day job is a reporter for CNBC, Faber gets credit for not pulling too many punches when it comes to Wall Street. My guess is that the book's subtitle, How Wall Street's Greed And Stupidity Brought Capitalism To Its Knees, gave some of Faber's CNBC colleagues and the people he reports on a serious case of heartburn. But saying I enjoyed Faber's book and recommending it to others are two different things. The book is based on a 90 minute program -- "House of Cards" -- CNBC first aired in February. The book reads like a TV script (try to imagine Faber doing the voice over with the text of his book) with short chapters that appear to mimic the segments in the show. The still pictures in the book are from the program. And while the book does goes into more detail on some subjects than the program (after all, it doesn't have moving pictures to tell stories), it's still largely at TV-audience depth, that is to say at or just slightly below the surface. I watched "House of Cards" again after reading the book and reconfirmed my initial thought that, instead of buying the book, you'd learn just about as much by watching it for free on Hulu or paying $4.99 to download it on iTunes. It's good TV and well worth the 90 minutes it will take to watch in it's entirety. If you prefer reading to watching, try William Cohan's "House of Cards" --same title as the CNBC program but much richer content. 23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clear insightful and accurate,
By Jaybey - Published on Amazon.com
As someone who experienced the mortgage securitization mania, and the rise of credit default swaps while at Lehman Brothers during the first half of the decade, I found this book to be an excellent post mortem on the "what and why" of the housing debacle and recession. It is not intended to be a scholarly tome, but instead a straightforward explanation of the easy money and loose lending times, including what broke down, how all of the parties (including home buyers, mortgage brokers, Wall St, the rating agencies, and the Government) acted in their own self interest to create the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand exactly how we got into the mess we're currently in, and how disingenuous our lawmakers are when they point fingers at everyone involved except themselves.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty good explanation of what happened,
By Mariusz Skonieczny "Author" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street's Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees (Hardcover)
There are other books on the market that explain the series of events that led our country into the mess that we are in. I found this book to be a very accurate representation of what really happened. Wall Street had an unbelievable appetite for mortgage-backed securities. As a result, banks and mortgage companies did what Wall Street wanted - they delivered it to them even if it meant making loans to people who could not repay. But what did they care, they were just passing the problem to someone else. This economic crisis was fueled by greed and stupidity.This is a great book for those who are looking for answers about how we found ourselves in the economic crisis. - Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market |
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