Kathleen C. Engel

The driest and most wonkish account of the current economic crisis I’ve read, with substantial attention given to possible fixes for the broken system—if we have any political appetite for them, which is unclear—instead of much in the way of personality/human interest. This is not a criticism, but it does make for tougher reading. It’s also nicely comprehensive, except that there’s very little on the emerging aspect of the disaster that involved poor recordkeeping and failure to transfer the mortgages, leading to broken gears in the securitizations; I expect that most of the revelations on that came after the book went to press.… (more)