Review Of Two Books On Mortgage Crisis

Economicprincipals.com has an interesting review of two books about the mortgage crisis that turned into our financial crisis. One book is "Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown," by Edmund L. Andrews. The other book is "Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis," by John B. Taylor.

"We are a very long way from having a broadly agreed-upon story of the crisis that quietly commenced on the afternoon of June 20, 2007. That was when two Bear Stearns real estate hedge funds began to come apart, ushering in a long period of nervous waiting for fear eventually to subside (it didn’t) or panic to break out (it did). Nevertheless, a couple of unusually interesting accounts have appeared recently, one by the New York Times reporter who was covering the Federal Reserve Board, the other by a Bush appointee who, conceivably, might have defused the crisis altogether had he been heeded."

The complete review is at http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/2009.05.10/404.html