Busted and other new books on Maryland
The latest roundup of books with a regional interest, by Towson University English professor Diane Scharper, covers the housing crisis, Chesapeake Bay ferries and assisted living. Here are her capsule reviews for The Baltimore Sun:
Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown by Edmund L. Andrews (W.W. Norton, $25.95). New York Times business reporter Andrews tells the inside story of the collapse of the housing market and the resulting loss of $12 trillion from the U.S. economy. Part chronicle of economic history and part memoir of his own financial collapse, Busted is a riveting account of greed, irresponsibility, and “don’t ask, don’t tell” economics. The book begins in 2004 when Andrews and his fiancee, Patricia Barreiro, borrowed more than $400,000 for a $460,000 house in Silver Spring. It ends with the unhappy couple on the verge of separating as they face the loss of their home to foreclosure. But Andrews and Barriero were not alone. Millions of home-buyers shared their plight, causing what Andrews calls the great mortgage meltdown. Andrews discusses exotic mortgages, liars’ loans, dishonest brokers, money lenders, and high-profile financial institutions intent on making a fast buck while those in charge — from Alan Greenspan on down — looked the other way.
Chesapeake Ferries: A Waterborne Tradition, 1636-2000 by Clara Ann Simmons (Maryland Historical Society, $34). George Washington may have slept here, but he had second thoughts about ferrying across the Chesapeake Bay. A diary entry for March 1791 describes an especially uncomfortable trip via Rock Hall, Md., as Washington fumed
at "the unskillfulness of hands" that caused the ferry to run aground several times. Washington is one of many luminaries mentioned in Chesapeake Ferries. With black and white illustrations, the book offers a nostalgic account of ferries, ferrymen, ordinaries (inns connected to ferries) and the ways they affected roads, towns (including town names like Harper’s Ferry), and history. According to Simmons, taking a ferry was as commonplace for a 17th or 18th century traveler as driving across a bridge is for a 21st century commuter. Yet, aside from occasional road markers, little evidence survives of the hundreds of ferries that carried people, wagons, animals, automobiles, and even trains across the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac and Susquehanna Rivers from 1636 to 2000. With oral histories, photographs, and written records--diaries, letters, and newspaper archives--Simmons recreates a bygone era.
Inside Assisted Living: The Search for Home by J. Kevin Eckert, Paula C. Carder, Leslie A. Morgan, Ann Christine Frankowski and Erin G. Roth (The Johns Hopkins University Press, $16.95). A happy old age depends on one’s surroundings. That’s the bottom line of Inside Assisted Living. Combining personal narrative and social history, the book is a collaborative effort by Eckert and others affiliated with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at UMBC. As horror stories about conditions in nursing homes became widespread, Eckert explains, older adults looked to assisted living — a concept that refers to social care rather than just the medical care associated with nursing homes. Focusing on the residents at six Maryland group homes, the authors ask several questions: Are the caregivers professional, pleasant, courteous, and caring? Is the setting welcoming, clean, and well-equipped? Are the residents satisfied? Answers: generally yes. Insightful and well-written, the book covers everything from playing games to dealing with emergencies. Unfortunately, to protect privacy, the authors do not reveal the names of the assisted living facilities involved. While understandable from an academic point of view, this omission limits the book’s appeal.
Comments
The article: Ben "Systemic Risk" Bernanke proves that Bernanke knowingly maintained a strict monetary policy long after he knew of the sub prime problem as he knew it would cause of the "Depression".
It shows that he probably engineered it on purpose!
If you want to sleep tonight, Don't Read It!
"In contradiction to the prevalent view of the time, that money and monetary policy played at most a purely passive role in the Depression, Friedman and Schwartz argued that "the [economic] contraction is in fact a tragic testimonial to the importance of monetary forces" (Friedman and Schwartz, 1963, p. 300).
.....
The slowdown in economic activity, together with high interest rates, was in all likelihood the most important source of the stock market crash that followed in October.
In other words, the market crash, rather than being the cause of the Depression, as popular legend has it, was in fact largely the result of an economic slowdown and the inappropriate monetary policies that preceded it.
Of course, the stock market crash only worsened the economic situation, hurting consumer and business confidence and contributing to a still deeper downturn in 1930."
Governor Ben S. Bernanke
Money, Gold, and the Great Depression.
At the H. Parker Willis Lecture in Economic Policy, Washington and Lee University,
Lexington, Virginia.
March 2nd, 2004
You can read also: Preparing for the Crash, The Age of Turbulence Update: 27/07/09., which tries to accomplish Greenspan Mission Impossible:
"That is mission impossible. Indeed, the international financial community has made numerous efforts in recent years to establish such oversight, but none prevented or ameliorated the crisis that began last summer.
Much as we might wish otherwise, policy makers cannot reliably anticipate financial or economic shocks or the consequences of economic imbalances.
Financial crises are characterised by discontinuous breaks in market pricing the timing of which by definition must be unanticipated - if people see them coming, then the markets arbitrage them away.
...
The clear evidence of underpricing of risk did not prod private sector risk management to tighten the reins.
In retrospect, it appears that the most market-savvy managers, although conscious that they were taking extraordinary risks, succumbed to the concern that unless they continued to "get up and dance", as ex-Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince memorably put it, they would irretrievably lose market share.
Instead, they gambled that they could keep adding to their risky positions and still sell them out before the deluge. Most were wrong."
Alan Greenspan
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World [Economic Order?].
The Age of Turbulence: Plea for a New World Economic Order. explains the nature and causes of economic depressions and proposes a plausible alternative solution.
Posted by: Anonymous | July 27, 2009 4:44 AM
Edmund Andrews, the author of "Busted," has been thoroughly discredited by Megan McArdle of The Atlantic. An overview of the controversy is also available here:
http://edmundandrewsaffair.blogspot.com/
An alternative, excellent book (and also a first-hand account by a journalist) on the housing crisis is "Gimme Shelter," by Mary Elizabeth Williams.
Posted by: gg | July 27, 2009 1:21 PM
When reading about Chesapeake Ferries: A Waterborne Tradition, 1636-2000, the following George Washington Correspondence will take you to George Washington's Letters, which are posted as a FREE COLLECTION. Type in Chesapeake and you will get his feelings on the area 1st hand!
Posted by: Charles Bell | July 28, 2009 11:40 AM