Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation

Overview

The financial crisis that has gripped this country since last September has had so many twists and turns, it would make for a great drama -- if it all were not so real and damaging. Companies are shutting down and laying off workers, 401ks are melting away, and the government is spending $700 billion dollars to bail out banks and financial institutions -- and that's only the beginning. The financial services industry, and the many industries that depend on it -- from housing to cars -- is in intensive care.

So what happened? How did we get to this point of financial disaster? Is the economy just a huge, Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme? It is a complicated and confusing story -- but Daniel Gross of Newsweek has a special gift for making complicated matters easy to understand and even entertaining. In Dumb Money, he offers a guide to the debacle and to what the future may hold. This is not so much a book about who did what, though that's part of the story. Rather, it pieces together the building blocks of the debt-fueled economy, and distills the theory and personalities behind our late, lamented easy money culture. Dumb Money is a book that finally lays it all out in an engaging way, and might just help people invest their money smartly until the gloom passes.

Author Q & A:
• Why did you decide to release this as an eBook exclusive?
Three reasons. Speed. Speed. And Speed. This story has moved so fast, and it's very difficult to get your hands around. Traditional publishing, with its long lead times, thus works against any author. Say you got a contract last May to write a book about the epic fall of Bear, Stearns. By August, nobody cared about Bear, Stearns because much larger firms were failing. And by 2010, when the book about Bear would finally come out, the audience would have moved on. I felt like I had something original, useful, and timely to say about what we had all just lived through. And I wanted to get it out as soon as possible.

• Where is the smartest place to have your money these days?
Aside from your mattress? High quality municipal bonds, especially for people in higher tax brackets. Corporate bonds seem to be attractive, although you have to be careful to select companies that will be able to survive even if the economy at larges struggles for another year or two.

• What do you think of the Sony Reader and the future of electronic reading devices?
I'm very high on the Sony Reader and electronic reading devices. I'm a big believer in efficiency, and that there will be greater focus by consumers on ease, and long-term cost savings. For people who like to buy and read books, the Reader makes life much easier - no lugging around heavy books with you. And the investment pays off relatively quickly in the form of lower prices.

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Author Information

Bio of Daniel Gross

Daniel Gross is a journalist, author, and editor who specializes in business history, political economy, and the money culture. He writes the "Moneybox" column for Slate.com and contributes to the "Economic View" column of the New York Times. He has worked as a reporter at The New Republic and has contributed to more than 60 publications. Since 1999, he has edited STERNbusiness, the semi-annual management journal published by New York University's Stern School of Business. Gross has appeared on CNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, C-SPAN, and on more than 35 radio programs, including NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross (no relation). In 2001, he was a fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the author of three books: Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Times, Bull Run: Wall Street, the Democrats, and the New Politics of Personal Finance, and Generations of Corning: 150 Years in the Life of a Global Corporation, 1851-2001, co-authored with Davis Dyer. A graduate of Cornell University, Gross holds an A.M. in American history from Harvard University.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Free Press

Filesize

356.78 KB

Number of Pages

N/A

eBook ISBN

1439152896