Lending To The Borrower From Hell

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Lending to the Borrower from Hell

Author : Mauricio Drelichman
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 069117377X
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Lending to the Borrower from Hell by : Mauricio Drelichman

Download or read book Lending to the Borrower from Hell written by Mauricio Drelichman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What the loans and defaults of a sixteenth-century Spanish king can tell us about sovereign debt today Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt? When can this type of lending work? As the United States and many European nations struggle with mountains of debt, historical precedents can offer valuable insights. Lending to the Borrower from Hell looks at one famous case—the debts and defaults of Philip II of Spain. Ruling over one of the largest and most powerful empires in history, King Philip defaulted four times. Yet he never lost access to capital markets and could borrow again within a year or two of each default. Exploring the shrewd reasoning of the lenders who continued to offer money, Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth analyze the lessons from this important historical example. Using detailed new evidence collected from sixteenth-century archives, Drelichman and Voth examine the incentives and returns of lenders. They provide powerful evidence that in the right situations, lenders not only survive despite defaults—they thrive. Drelichman and Voth also demonstrate that debt markets cope well, despite massive fluctuations in expenditure and revenue, when lending functions like insurance. The authors unearth unique sixteenth-century loan contracts that offered highly effective risk sharing between the king and his lenders, with payment obligations reduced in bad times. A fascinating story of finance and empire, Lending to the Borrower from Hell offers an intelligent model for keeping economies safe in times of sovereign debt crises and defaults.

Lending to the Borrower from Hell

Author : Mauricio Drelichman
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (374 download)

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Book Synopsis Lending to the Borrower from Hell by : Mauricio Drelichman

Download or read book Lending to the Borrower from Hell written by Mauricio Drelichman and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Beggar Thy Neighbor

Author : Charles R. Geisst
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812207505
Total Pages : 396 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Beggar Thy Neighbor by : Charles R. Geisst

Download or read book Beggar Thy Neighbor written by Charles R. Geisst and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The practice of charging interest on loans has been controversial since it was first mentioned in early recorded history. Lending is a powerful economic tool, vital to the development of society but it can also lead to disaster if left unregulated. Prohibitions against excessive interest, or usury, have been found in almost all societies since antiquity. Whether loans were made in kind or in cash, creditors often were accused of beggar-thy-neighbor exploitation when their lending terms put borrowers at risk of ruin. While the concept of usury reflects transcendent notions of fairness, its definition has varied over time and place: Roman law distinguished between simple and compound interest, the medieval church banned interest altogether, and even Adam Smith favored a ceiling on interest. But in spite of these limits, the advantages and temptations of lending prompted financial innovations from margin investing and adjustable-rate mortgages to credit cards and microlending. In Beggar Thy Neighbor, financial historian Charles R. Geisst tracks the changing perceptions of usury and debt from the time of Cicero to the most recent financial crises. This comprehensive economic history looks at humanity's attempts to curb the abuse of debt while reaping the benefits of credit. Beggar Thy Neighbor examines the major debt revolutions of the past, demonstrating that extensive leverage and debt were behind most financial market crashes from the Renaissance to the present day. Geisst argues that usury prohibitions, as part of the natural law tradition in Western and Islamic societies, continue to play a key role in banking regulation despite modern advances in finance. From the Roman Empire to the recent Dodd-Frank financial reforms, usury ceilings still occupy a central place in notions of free markets and economic justice.

Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown

Author : Edmund L. Andrews
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393071286
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown by : Edmund L. Andrews

Download or read book Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown written by Edmund L. Andrews and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-05-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fiasco that sank millions of Americans, including one journalist, who thought he knew better. A veteran New York Times economics reporter, Ed Andrews was intimately aware of the dangers posed by easy mortgages from fast-buck lenders. Yet, at the promise of a second chance at love, he succumbed to the temptation of subprime lending and became part of the economic catastrophe he was covering. In surprisingly short order, he amassed a staggering amount of debt and reached the edge of bankruptcy. In Busted, Andrew bluntly recounts his misadventures in mortgages and goes one step further to describe the brokers, lenders, Wall Street players, and Washington policymakers who helped bring that money to his door. The result is a penetrating and often acerbic look at the binge and bust that nearly bankrupted the United States. Enabled by know-nothing complacency in Washington, Wall Street wizards used "collateralized debt obligations," "conduits," and other inscrutable financial "innovations" to put American home financing into hyperdrive. Millions of Americans abandoned the safety of thirty-year, fixed-rate mortgages and loaded up on debt. While regulators insisted that the markets knew best, Wall Street firms fragmented and repackaged unsound loans into securities that the rating agencies stamped with triple-A seals of approval. Andrews describes a remarkably democratic debacle that made fools out of people up and down the financial food chain. From a confessional meeting with Alan Greenspan to a trek through the McMansion bubble of the OC, he maps the arc of the Frankenstein loans that brought the American economy to the brink. With on-the-ground reporting from the frothiest quarters of the crisis, Andrews locates what is likely to be the high-water mark in America's long-term embrace of higher borrowing, higher risk-taking, and the fervent belief in the possibility of easy profits.

Banker To The Poor

Author : Muhammad Yunus
Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1586485466
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (864 download)

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Book Synopsis Banker To The Poor by : Muhammad Yunus

Download or read book Banker To The Poor written by Muhammad Yunus and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2007-03-31 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspirational story of how Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus invented microcredit, founded the Grameen Bank, and transformed the fortunes of millions of poor people around the world. Muhammad Yunus was a professor of economics in Bangladesh, who realized that the most impoverished members of his community were systematically neglected by the banking system -- no one would loan them any money. Yunus conceived of a new form of banking -- microcredit -- that would offer very small loans to the poorest people without collateral, and teach them how to manage and use their loans to create successful small businesses. He founded Grameen Bank based on the belief that credit is a basic human right, not the privilege of a fortunate few, and it now provides $24 billion of micro-loans to more than nine million families. Ninety-seven percent of its clients are women, and repayment rates are over 90 percent. Outside of Bangladesh, micro-lending programs inspired by Grameen have blossomed, and serve hundreds of millions of people around the world. The definitive history of micro-credit direct from the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is the moving story of someone who dreamed of changing the world -- and did.

Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe

Author : Sheri Berman
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199373191
Total Pages : 561 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe by : Sheri Berman

Download or read book Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe written by Sheri Berman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe examines the development of various political regimes in Europe from the ancien regime up through the present day. It analyzes why democracy flourishes at some times and in some places but not others and draws lessons from European history that can help us better understand the political situation the world finds itself in today.

Popes and Bankers

Author : Jack Cashill
Publisher : Thomas Nelson
ISBN 13 : 1418555304
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (185 download)

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Book Synopsis Popes and Bankers by : Jack Cashill

Download or read book Popes and Bankers written by Jack Cashill and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AMIDST THE WRECKAGE OF FINANCIAL RUIN, PEOPLE ARE LEFT PUZZLING ABOUT HOW IT HAPPENED. WHERE DID ALL THE PROBLEMS BEGIN? For the answer, Jack Cashill, a journalist as shrewd as he is seasoned, looks past the headlines and deep into pages of history and comes back with the goods. From Plato to payday loans, from Aristotle to AIG, from Shakespeare to the Salomon Brothers, from the Medici to Bernie Madoff—in Popes and Bankers Jack Cashill unfurls a fascinating story of credit and debt, usury and “the sordid love of gain.” With a dizzying cast of characters, including church officials, gutter loan sharks, and even the Knights Templar, Cashill traces the creative tension between “pious restraint” and “economic ambition” through the annals of human history and illuminates both the dark corners of our past and the dusty corners of our billfolds.

Prometheus Shackled

Author : Peter Temin
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199311528
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis Prometheus Shackled by : Peter Temin

Download or read book Prometheus Shackled written by Peter Temin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After 1688, Britain underwent a revolution in public finance, and the cost of borrowing declined sharply. Leading scholars have argued that easier credit for the government, made possible by better property-rights protection, lead to a rapid expansion of private credit. The Industrial Revolution, according to this view, is the result of the preceding revolution in public finance. In Prometheus Shackled, prominent economic historians Peter Temin and Hans-Joachim Voth examine this hypothesis using new, detailed archival data from 18th century banks. They conclude the opposite: the financial revolution led to an explosion of public debt, but it stifled private credit. This led to markedly slower growth in the English economy. Temin and Voth collected detailed data from several goldsmith banks: Child's, Gosling's, Freame and Gould, Hoare's, and Duncombe and Kent. The excellent records from Hoare's, founded by Sir Richard Hoare in 1672, offer particular insight. Numerous entrants into the banking business tried their hand at deposit-taking and lending in the early 17th century; few survived and fewer thrived. Hoare's and a small group of competitors did both. Temin and Voth chart the growth of the successful banks in the face of frequent wars and heavy-handed regulations. Their new data allows insights into the interaction between financial and economic development. Government regulations such as (a sharply lower) maximum interest rate caused severe misallocation of credit, and a misguided attempt to lighten the nation's debt burden led directly to the South Sea Bubble in 1720. Frequent wars caused banks to call in loans, resulting in a sharply slower economic growth rate. Based on detailed micro-data, the authors present conclusive evidence that wartime borrowing crowded out investment. Far from fostering economic development, England's financial revolution after 1688 did much to stifle it -- the Hanoverian "warfare state" was a key reason for slow growth during Britain's Industrial Revolution. Prometheus Shackled is a revealing new take on one of the most important periods of economic and financial development.

Loan Sharks

Author : Charles R. Geisst
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780815734321
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (343 download)

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Book Synopsis Loan Sharks by : Charles R. Geisst

Download or read book Loan Sharks written by Charles R. Geisst and published by . This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Predatory lending: A problem rooted in the past that continues today. Looking for an investment return that could exceed 500 percent annually; maybe even twice that much? Private, unregulated lending to high-risk borrowers is the answer, or at least it was in the United States for much of the period from the Civil War to the onset of the early decades of the twentieth century. Newspapers called the practice "loan sharking" because lenders employed the same ruthlessness as the great predators in the ocean. Slowly state and federal governments adopted laws and regulations curtailing the practice, but organized crime continued to operate much of the business. In the end, lending to high-margin investors contributed directly to the Wall Street crash of 1929. Loan Sharks is the first history of predatory lending in the United States. It traces the origins of modern consumer lending to such older practices as salary buying and hidden interest charges. Yet, as Geisst shows, no-holds barred loan sharking is not a thing of the past. Many current lending practices employed today by credit card companies, payday lenders, and providers of consumer loans would have been easily recognizable at the end of the nineteenth century. Geisst demonstrates the still prevalent custom of lenders charging high interest rates, especially to risky borrowers, despite attempts to control the practice by individual states. Usury and loan sharking have not disappeared a century and a half after the predatory practices first raised public concern.

The Battle for Central Europe

Author : Pál Fodor
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004396233
Total Pages : 579 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis The Battle for Central Europe by : Pál Fodor

Download or read book The Battle for Central Europe written by Pál Fodor and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-01-28 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Battle for Central Europe specialists in sixteenth-century Ottoman, Habsburg and Hungarian history provide the most comprehensive picture possible of a battle that determined the fate of Central Europe for centuries. Not only the siege and the death of its main protagonists are discussed, but also the wider context of the imperial rivalry and the empire buildings of the competing great powers of that age. Contributors include Gábor Ágoston, János B. Szabó, Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik, Günhan Börekçi, Feridun M. Emecen, Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, István Fazekas, Pál Fodor, Klára Hegyi, Colin Imber, Damir Karbić, József Kelenik, Zoltán Korpás, Tijana Krstić, Nenad Moačanin, Gülru Neci̇poğlu, Erol Özvar, Géza Pálffy, Norbert Pap, Peter Rauscher, Claudia Römer, Arno Strohmeyer, Zeynep Tarım, James D. Tracy, Gábor Tüskés, Szabolcs Varga, Nicolas Vatin.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750: Cultures and power

Author : Hamish M. Scott
Publisher : Oxford Handbooks
ISBN 13 : 019959726X
Total Pages : 769 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750: Cultures and power by : Hamish M. Scott

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750: Cultures and power written by Hamish M. Scott and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2015 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook re-examines the concept of early modern history in a European and global context. Volume II engages with philosophy, science, art and architecture, music, and the Enlightenment, and examines the military and political developments within and beyond the boundaries of Europe.

How the World Became Rich

Author : Mark Koyama
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509540245
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

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Book Synopsis How the World Became Rich by : Mark Koyama

Download or read book How the World Became Rich written by Mark Koyama and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-03-14 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most humans are significantly richer than their ancestors. Humanity gained nearly all of its wealth in the last two centuries. How did this come to pass? How did the world become rich? Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin dive into the many theories of why modern economic growth happened when and where it did. They discuss recently advanced theories rooted in geography, politics, culture, demography, and colonialism. Pieces of each of these theories help explain key events on the path to modern riches. Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in 18th-century Britain? Why did some European countries, the US, and Japan catch up in the 19th century? Why did it take until the late 20th and 21st centuries for other countries? Why have some still not caught up? Koyama and Rubin show that the past can provide a guide for how countries can escape poverty. There are certain prerequisites that all successful economies seem to have. But there is also no panacea. A society’s past and its institutions and culture play a key role in shaping how it may – or may not – develop.

The Dawning of the Apocalypse

Author : Gerald Horne
Publisher : Monthly Review Press
ISBN 13 : 1583678735
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (836 download)

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Book Synopsis The Dawning of the Apocalypse by : Gerald Horne

Download or read book The Dawning of the Apocalypse written by Gerald Horne and published by Monthly Review Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: August 2019 saw numerous commemorations of the year 1619, when what was said to be the first arrival of enslaved Africans occurred in North America. Yet in the 1520s, the Spanish, from their imperial perch in Santo Domingo, had already brought enslaved Africans to what was to become South Carolina. The enslaved people here quickly defected to local Indigenous populations, and compelled their captors to flee. Deploying such illuminating research, The Dawning of the Apocalypse is a riveting revision of the “creation myth” of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed. Here, Gerald Horne argues forcefully that, in order to understand the arrival of colonists from the British Isles in the early seventeenth century, one must first understand the “long sixteenth century”– from 1492 until the arrival of settlers in Virginia in 1607. During this prolonged century, Horne contends, “whiteness” morphed into “white supremacy,” and allowed England to co-opt not only religious minorities but also various nationalities throughout Europe, thus forging a muscular bloc that was needed to confront rambunctious Indigenes and Africans. In retelling the bloodthirsty story of the invasion of the Americas, Horne recounts how the fierce resistance by Africans and their Indigenous allies weakened Spain and enabled London to dispatch settlers to Virginia in 1607. These settlers laid the groundwork for the British Empire and its revolting spawn that became the United States of America.

Debtors' Prison

Author : Robert Kuttner
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307959813
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (79 download)

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Book Synopsis Debtors' Prison by : Robert Kuttner

Download or read book Debtors' Prison written by Robert Kuttner and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our foremost economic thinkers challenges a cherished tenet of today’s financial orthodoxy: that spending less, refusing to forgive debt, and shrinking government—“austerity”—is the solution to a persisting economic crisis like ours or Europe’s, now in its fifth year. Since the collapse of September 2008, the conversation about economic recovery has centered on the question of debt: whether we have too much of it, whose debt to forgive, and how to cut the deficit. These questions dominated the sound bites of the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the fiscal-cliff debates, and the perverse policies of the European Union. Robert Kuttner makes the most powerful argument to date that these are the wrong questions and that austerity is the wrong answer. Blending economics with historical contrasts of effective debt relief and punitive debt enforcement, he makes clear that universal belt-tightening, as a prescription for recession, defies economic logic. And while the public debt gets most of the attention, it is private debts that crashed the economy and are sandbagging the recovery—mortgages, student loans, consumer borrowing to make up for lagging wages, speculative shortfalls incurred by banks. As Kuttner observes, corporations get to use bankruptcy to walk away from debts. Homeowners and small nations don’t. Thus, we need more public borrowing and investment to revive a depressed economy, and more forgiveness and reform of the overhang of past debts. In making his case, Kuttner uncovers the double standards in the politics of debt, from Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe’s campaign for debt forgiveness in the seventeenth century to the two world wars and Bretton Woods. Just as debtors’ prisons once prevented individuals from surmounting their debts and resuming productive life, austerity measures shackle, rather than restore, economic growth—as the weight of past debt crushes the economy’s future potential. Above all, Kuttner shows how austerity serves only the interest of creditors—the very bankers and financial elites whose actions precipitated the collapse. Lucid, authoritative, provocative—a book that will shape the economic conversation and the search for new solutions.

The Fateful History of Fannie Mae

Author : James R. Hagerty
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1614236992
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (142 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fateful History of Fannie Mae by : James R. Hagerty

Download or read book The Fateful History of Fannie Mae written by James R. Hagerty and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A lucid and meticulously reported book by one of the Wall Street Journal’s ace reporters” (George Anders, Forbes contributor and author of The Rare Find). In 1938, the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a small agency called Fannie Mae. Intended to make home loans more accessible, the agency was born of the Great Depression and a government desperate to revive housing construction. It was a minor detail of the New Deal, barely recorded by the newspapers of the day. Over the next seventy years, Fannie Mae evolved into one of the largest financial companies in the world, owned by private shareholders but with its nearly $1 trillion of debt effectively guaranteed by the government. Almost from the beginning, critics repeatedly warned that Fannie was an accident waiting to happen. Then, in 2008, the housing market collapsed. Amid a wave of foreclosures, the company’s capital began to run out, and the US Treasury seized control. From the New Deal to President Obama’s administration, James R. Hagerty explains this fascinating but little-understood saga. Based on the author’s reporting for the Wall Street Journal, personal research, and interviews with executives, regulators, and congressional leaders, The Fateful History of Fannie Mae, he explains the politics, economics, and human frailties behind seven decades of missed opportunities to prevent a financial disaster.

Debt, Updated and Expanded

Author : David Graeber
Publisher : Melville House
ISBN 13 : 1612194206
Total Pages : 566 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (121 download)

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Book Synopsis Debt, Updated and Expanded by : David Graeber

Download or read book Debt, Updated and Expanded written by David Graeber and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2014-12-09 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in paperback, the updated and expanded edition: David Graeber’s “fresh . . . fascinating . . . thought-provoking . . . and exceedingly timely” (Financial Times) history of debt Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

S & L Hell: The People and the Politics Behind the $1 Trillion Savings and Loan Scandal

Author : Kathleen Day
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393242498
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis S & L Hell: The People and the Politics Behind the $1 Trillion Savings and Loan Scandal by : Kathleen Day

Download or read book S & L Hell: The People and the Politics Behind the $1 Trillion Savings and Loan Scandal written by Kathleen Day and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1993-05-17 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The savings and loan debacle is the costliest scandal in the country's history. How could such a catastrophe have occurred? The most remarkable thing about the collapse of the savings and loan industry is that so many of the major participants--the regulators, politicians, and S&L operators themselves--chose to do nothing as they watched problems mount and taxpayer liabilities grow. That choice was dictated by a variety of motives: greed, political self-interest, and even (sometimes) misguided good intentions. Whatever the motives, this collective interest in hiding the debacle made it certain that the industry's final fall would come with an enormous bang, one that would force administrations that professed a free market philosophy essentially to nationalize a majority of the nation's thrifts. As a result, the industry in many respects became one of the best examples of socialism in the U.S. economy.