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After The Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, The Response, And The Work Ahead (2013)

by Alan S. Blinder(Favorite Author)

4.07 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1594205302 (ISBN13: 9781594205309)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Penguin Press HC, The

review 1: AFTER THE MUSIC STOPPED,, Alan S. Blinder's history and deconstruction of the housing and financial crisis that marked the final days of the Bush nightmare and the beginning of the Obama presidency is, in fact, informative and worth reading. However, Blinder is guilty of authorial cowardice in that he seems to have bought the Scalia deception that corporations are people. Throughout the book, Blinder tiptoes around naming all but a few of the psychopaths and other conservatives who played fast and loose with the U. S. economy George W. Bush's sellout to the oligarchs. Read Matt Taibibi instead. He names names and takes no prisoners. Blinder does for nonfiction what Kathryn Stockett and the Mary Ann Shaffer/Annie Barrows duo did for fiction in shying away from the villains... more in their stories. Remember the guy from college who returned on Friday night from his sorority date to host a late-night bull session. It was 1971 and he wore a crew-neck sweater that he tucked into his pressed jeans. Mantovani's Greatest Hits played on the record player he bought from Woolworth's. He could talk for hours about the glories of free-market capitalism. He shed tears as he uttered the words "deregulation," "rugged individualism," "entrepreneurs" and "invisible hand." Later, you might have sat in a teacher's lounge while a substitute teacher carrying a dogeared copy of ATLAS SHRUGGED browbeat anyone who would listen about the values of social Darwinism and the importance of returning to orphanages and poor houses. People think these thoughts; not institutions like Bear Stearns and AIG. Americans don't want to think and believe in the history they have hardwired in their brains. Many Americans listen to FOX News where they "misinform the uninformed." The economic crisis could have been predicted if anyone paid attention to the events leading to the Great Depression. The income inequality that was the hallmark of the Gilded Age is reproducing itself today. The blackguards have names. They are people, Mr. Blinder. As George Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." And as Blinder says, quoting Mark Twain, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Read the book to see that what President Obama did wrong was that he did not repeatedly tell the public what was being done, why it was done and how effectively it worked. As a result, conservative talking heads fed gullible America oral farts and random acts of bloviation. This is a time for those of us who believe in building a future for our country to write with rage.
review 2: Alan Binder's book has something to make everyone angry, from the far left to the far right. The bottom line is, despite it's unfairness, the government's reaction to the financial meltdown saved many of us from the breadline. After the Music Stopped makes sense of what I experienced through soundbites and daily news stories. Sometimes I got a little lost in the intricacies of Wall Street, but overall it gave me a clear picture of what went wrong, and what we can do to keep it from happening again. (And surprise, surprise, it doesn't involve less regulation.) less

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