● Crash of the Titans: Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch, and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America
By Greg Farrell
Review via My Bank Tracker
Money, power and corruption — a killer combination. The new book CRASH OF THE TITANS: Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America, by Greg Farrell, includes all three…Farrell disproves the popular theory that the industry giant fell due to the unexpected downturn of the mortgage market. He reveals insider information on the names at the top of the headlines, including Stanley O’Neal, Osman Semerci, John Thain and Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis. Crash of the Titans gives a minute-by-minute recap of one of the most intense 48 hours in Wall Street history.

● A Call for Judgment: Sensible Finance for a Dynamic Economy
By Amar Bhide
Podcast interview with author via The Harvard Business Review
● Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
By Matt Taibbi
Interview with author via Wall Street Cheat Sheet
I caught up with Matt to hear what he’s learned while following Wall Street and Washington during these most extraordinary times …
Damien Hoffman: In your new book Griftopia, you talk about how Wall Street and Washington have ironically got middle class America to support their agenda. How is this happening? Will it last?
Matt Taibbi: The Grifters have been getting people to support Wall Street’s political agenda by seducing them with a [Ann] Randian and pseudo-libertarian ideology. It’s always been around, but it’s just reaching a fever pitch now. And it’s the only way ordinary people can be convinced to endorse a deregulatory agenda. I think it’s going to last.
● The Future of Finance: A New Model for Banking and Investment
By Moorad Choudhry, Gino Landuyt, and Frank J. Fabozzi
Excerpt via John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Often in the search for the causes of the financial crash of 2007–2009, globalization and the role of the Asian and oil-exporting countries are underestimated. In many analyses of the crisis, the successive emerging-market crises over the past decade and the undervalued currency of emerging-market economies gets credited with, at best, only a secondary role in the crisis.
This is to miss a fundamental aspect and causal factor of the crash, and one that had been building up for over a decade. We want to phrase it even more strongly. One of the biggest challenges that world political leaders will be facing in the next decade is to address the global imbalances that have been created over the previous decade. If they do not succeed in this, then even the most robust banking regulation will not be suffi cient to protect the financial industry from another financial crisis, the effects of which could be even worse than the one just experienced. In saying this, we recognize the role emerging markets played and are still playing as pivotal to the crash.
● The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era
By Michael Mandelbaum
Review via Foreign Affairs
This book is not a work of declinism but an unsparing assessment of the constraints on American power in the years to come. No single power, or concert of powers, Mandelbaum warns, shall step forth to assume the American burden. Humanitarian interventions and military campaigns such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq are not likely to be repeated. Such endeavors, Mandelbaum writes, will be resisted by an “American public worried about increases in the costs and reductions in the benefits of entitlement programs.”