Description
Book SynopsisThe
New York Times bestseller: "A lucid account" (
New York Times) of the recent financial crisis and the way forward by the Nobel Prize-winning economist, with a new afterword.
Trade Review"Mr. Stiglitz uses his experience teaching to give the lay reader a lucid account of how overleveraged banks, a shoddy mortgage industry, predatory lending and unregulated trading contributed to the meltdown, and how, in his opinion, ill-conceived rescue efforts may have halted the freefall but have failed to grapple with more fundamental problems…. His prescience lends credibility to his trenchant analysis of the causes of the fiscal meltdown." -- Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times
"Asks some basic and provocative questions…
Freefall is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the roots of the financial crisis. Stiglitz brilliantly analyzes the economic reasons behind the banking collapse, but he goes much further, digging down to the wrongheaded national faith in the power of free markets to regulate themselves and provide wealth for all." -- Chuck Leddy - Boston Globe
"As a Nobel Prize winner, member of the cabinet under former President Bill Clinton and chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, Joseph E. Stiglitz has some practical ideas on how to ease the pain of the Great Recession and maybe help prevent the next one." -- Carl Hartman - Associated Press
"
Freefall is a spirited attack on Wall Street, the free market and the Washington consensus." -- David Smith - The Times [London]
"Stiglitz offers a powerful account of the financial meltdown and criticizes the Obama Administration for 'muddling through' rather than pushing aggressively for change…. An excellent overview from a Nobel prize-winning economist of what caused the crisis and what reforms should be enacted…. I can only hope Obama makes room for it on his nightstand." -- James Pressley - BusinessWeek
"Stiglitz is the world's leading scholarly expert on market failure, and this crisis vindicates his life's work. There have been other broad-spectrum books on the genesis and dynamics of the collapse, but
Freefall is the most comprehensive to date, grounded in both theory and factual detail…. the definitive critique to date of how the Summers-Geithner strategy fails, both as economics and as politics…. The tone of this book is good-humored and public-minded." -- Robert Kuttner - The American Prospect
"This is the best book so far on the financial crisis. Joseph Stiglitz . . . is knowledgeable about the historical background, immersed in the policy debate and a pioneer of the economic theories needed to understand the origins of the problems." -- Financial Times
