The Housing Boom and Bust

Sowell, Thomas

ISBN 10: 0465018807 / ISBN 13: 9780465018802

Published by Basic Books, 2009

Item in very good condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00096523859

Synopsis:

The inimitable Thomas Sowell casts a critical eye at the bubble that shattered the world economy - a cautionary tale that will be sure to spark controversy. Scary headlines and scarier statistics tell the story of a financial crisis on a scale not seen in decades. Moreover, this is a worldwide financial crisis. Financial institutions on both sides of the Atlantic have either collapsed or have been saved from collapse by government bailouts, as a result of buying securities based on housing values that eroded or evaporated. This financial tsunami has been followed by a political flood of rhetoric, accompanied by finger-pointing in all directions. Who was really responsible? What set this off? There was no single, dramatic event that set this off, the way the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand set off the chain of events that led to the First World War or the way the arrest of political operatives committing burglary at the Watergate Hotel led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. A whole series of very questionable decisions by many people, in many places, over a period of years, built up the pressures that led to a sudden collapse of the housing market and of financial institutions that began to fall like dominoes as a result of investing in securities based on housing prices. "The Housing Boom and Bust" is designed to unravel the tangled threads of that story. It also attempts to determine whether what is being done to deal with the problem is more likely to make things better or worse.

About the Author: Thomas Sowell has taught economics at Cornell, UCLA, Amherst and other academic institutions, and his Basic Economics has been translated into six languages. He is currently a scholar in residence at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has published in both academic journals in such popular media as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes magazine and Fortune, and writes a syndicated column that appears in newspapers across the US.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Housing Boom and Bust
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication Date: 2009
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good