Book Review: 'The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America - and Spawned a Global Crisis'

Read the book - what is your view?

The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America — and Spawned a Global Crisis. By Michael Hudson.


Can you believe some view the real estate bubble we have solely on the homeowner securing the mortgage stating" "Nope, ultimately, it was the dipstick holding the signing pen who couldn’t figure out that the deal on paper wasn’t right for him."

A perverse point of view that completely neglects a corporations moral and ethical responsibility to their customers, their country and the world.

There is no question a contributing cause of this world wide debacle was (and is) an individuals personal responsibility to understand the basic tenants of financial planning. Maybe a failure to have taught or have learned, but the root cause for this crisis has been assigned right where it belongs.

Sure regulators were a contributing cause by not understanding the size and breadth of the snowball careening down the hill. they failed to slow/stop or at the very least send warning signals that danger lies ahead. And the legislators hold the honor of being a contributing cause due to their removal of some of the barriers that existed to prevent the very activities which precipitated these events. And recent politicians hamstrung regulators making enforcement of existing laws impractical if not impossible.

No, it is the failure of corporate America to make sound loans, protecting their shareholders, meeting their moral and ethical obligations to their communities. This failure is followed by the investment houses who financially engineered casino games who went on to mislead investors at large while peddling these instruments; who then and now are laughing aloud at the fact that they made large sums of money on the historical ride up, ride down and on the historical bailouts.

The problem remains since the very entities responsible are still making gobs of money on the Federal Reserve Policies that remain in place providing the ability of all those unethical/immoral corporations to work their way back to solvency.

They receive virtually free money to invest in the world financial markets while having close to no positive affect in the present day American economy.