San Antonio College Library

Who should bear more of the blame for the financial collapse: Washington or Wall Street? Some say corporate fraud, runaway derivatives markets, and human greed are responsible. Others argue that Congress failed to uphold its public duty of financial regulation. Six expert panelists compete for the audience's vote in this Intelligence Squared U.S. Debate. (102 minutes.).

You know what happened during the financial crisis--now it is time to understand why the financial system came so close to falling over the edge of the abyss and why it could happen again. Journalist Suzanne McGee examines the forces that transformed Wall Street from its traditional role as a capital-generating and economy-boosting engine into a behemoth operating with only its own short-term interests in mind and with reckless disregard for the broader...

"In 2008, America went through a terrible financial crisis, and we are still suffering the consequences. Families lost their homes, had to give up their pets, and struggled to pay for food and medicine. Businesses didn't have money to buy equipment or hire and pay workers. Millions of people lost their jobs and their life savings. More than 100,000 businesses went bankrupt ... [Former FDIC chairman Bair] describes the many ways in which a broken system...

This surprising narrative goes back more than twenty years to reveal, in rich, anecdotal detail, how Wall Street, the mortgage industry, and the government conspired to change the way Americans bought their homes, creating a perfect storm. The authors take us inside elusive institutions such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, and Fannie Mae, to reveal who changed the game and why.

As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." In this book the author offers a scathing assessment of fiscal blunders in foreign lands, and details how economic repercussions are sure to be felt on American soil. Financial bubbles grew and burst, not only in the U.S. but in countries as diverse as Iceland, Germany, and Greece. Mixing humor with prescient insight, he depicts a precarious situation that demands attention. The tsunami of cheap...

The Great Recession that began in 2007 is now more than 4 years old, and counting. Some 24 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, and at recent rates of job creation we won't be back to normal levels of production until late this decade. Here the author pursues the questions of how bad the "Great Recession" really is, how we got stuck in what can now be called a depression and, above all, how we can free ourselves. He explains the financial...

"In ECONned, Yves Smith draws a direct connection between fundamentally flawed financial theories and a series of crises that culminated in the global meltdown of 2007 and 2008. This devastating critique shows that the pursuit of unenlightened self interest has produced a financial services industry that is a doomsday machine, systematically predatory, and now hugely powerful thanks to its control of vital financial infrastructure." "This is the first...

In one of the most gripping financial narratives in decades, Andrew Ross Sorkin-a New York Times columnist and one of the country's most respected financial reporters-delivers the first definitive blow- by-blow account of the epochal economic crisis that brought the world to the brink. Through unprecedented access to the players involved, he re-creates all the drama and turmoil of these turbulent days, revealing never-before-disclosed details and...