The End of Wall Street
Roger Lowenstein
‘Lowenstein offers an overview of the causes and consequences of the financial crisis that rises above the glut of similarly themed books with its juicy behind-the-scenes detail and thoughtful analysis … Lowenstein’s strong knowledge of the source material and flair for the dramatic — and doomsday title — should draw readers who still wonder what went wrong and how.’
Publishers Weekly
The story of the Wall Street collapse — from the roots of the mortgage bubble to the US government’s unprecedented response — as told by America’s most trusted business journalist.
The End of Wall Street is a blow-by-blow account of America’s biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. With grace, wit, and razor-sharp understanding, Roger Lowenstein tells the full story of the end of Wall Street as we knew it.
Drawing on 180 interviews, including sit-downs with top government officials and Wall Street CEOs, Lowenstein weaves a financial, economic, and sociological thriller that indicts America for succumbing to the siren song of easy debt and speculative mortgages. He etches laser-like profiles of all the key players, provides a damning explication of how rating agencies helped giftwrap faulty loans in the guise of triple-A paper, and dismantles the academic formulas that — once again — proved the ruin of investors and banks.
The End of Wall Street is rife with historical lessons and bursting with fast-paced action. Displaying Lowenstein’s unmatched ability to make complicated financial stories resonate with the ordinary reader, it is essential reading as we work to identify the lessons of the market failure and start to rebuild.
Reviews
‘The End of Wall Street is a good book: witty, well-written, heavily researched and often dramatic.’
Carl Hartman, Huffington Post
‘The End of Wall Street offers one expert reporter’s domino theory about Wall Street’s collapse. It is a complex but imaginative book, an especially useful piece of the jigsaw puzzle that current Wall Street books are busy creating … it is a coherently issue-oriented book that frames each stage of the crisis in terms of the real world’s ability to confound theorists, number-crunching quants, economic historians and other putative experts, many of whom have seen their most cherished ideas destroyed by the events of the last few years.’
Janet Maslin, The New York Times
