Unravelling The Credit Crunch

Fascinating Insight into How the Financial System Works and How the Credit Crisis AroseClearly supplies details vital to understanding the crisis Unravelling the Credit Crunch provides a clearly written, comprehensive account of the current credit crisis that is easily understandable to non-specialists. It explains how the financial system was draw

Previously published as The Trillion Dollar Meltdown Now fully updated with the latest financial developments, this is the bestselling book that briefly and brilliantly explains how we got into the economic mess that is the Credit Crunch. With the housing markets unravelling daily and distress signals flying throughout the rest of the economy, there is little doubt that we are facing a fierce recession. In crisp, gripping prose, Charles R. Morris shows how got into this mess. He explains the arcane financial instruments, the chicanery, the policy misjudgments, the dogmas, and the delusions that created the greatest credit bubble in world history. Paul Volcker slew the inflation dragon in the early 1980s, and set the stage for the high performance economy of the 1980s and 1990s. But Wall Street's prosperity soon tilted into gross excess. The astronomical leverage at major banks and their hedge fund and private equity clients led to massive disruption in global markets. A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy will go down in flames with it. Continued denial and concealment could cause the crisis to stretch out for years, but financial and government leaders are still downplaying the problem. The required restructuring will be at least as painful as the very difficult period of 1979-1983. The Two Trillion-Dollar Meltdown, updated to include the latest financial developments, is indispensable to understanding how the world economy has been put on the brink.

Alex Brummer traces the course of the credit crisis from its origins in the US 'subprime' market to its explosion on to the international scene. He tells a story of greed, mismanagement and dithering in which bankers seeking to make a quick buck conspired to bring the banking system almost to its knees.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

We are living in the most uncertain financial environment in recent history. A quarter - century of reckless lending, asset stripping, free - market zealotry and hedge - fund secrecy has ended with a dramatic collapse. And, according to Charles R. Morris, an even more profound economic and political restructuring is on its way. In The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown, Morris explains how we got here and what we can expect next. With insight and clarity, he cuts through the guff to provide an indispensable guide to confusing times. ''''''''How we got into the mess we're in, explained briefly and brilliantly.'''''''' - New York Times Book Review Charles R. Morris is a lawyer and former banker. He is the author of ten books, including The Cost of Good Intentions, Money, Greed and Risk and The Tycoons. He has written for the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

There is no precedent to the current economic crisis which looks set to redefine social policy debate throughout the globe. But its effects are not uniform across nations. Bringing together a range of expert contributions, the key lesson to emerge from this book is that 'the crisis' is better understood as a variety of crises, each mediated by national context. Consequently, there is an array of potential trajectories for welfare systems, from those where social policy is regarded as incompatible with the post-crisis economy to those where it is considered essential to future economic growth and security.

Quantitative Finance: An Object-Oriented Approach in C++ provides readers with a foundation in the key methods and models of quantitative finance. Keeping the material as self-contained as possible, the author introduces computational finance with a focus on practical implementation in C++. Through an approach based on C++ classes and templates, the text highlights the basic principles common to various methods and models while the algorithmic implementation guides readers to a more thorough, hands-on understanding. By moving beyond a purely theoretical treatment to the actual implementation of the models using C++, readers greatly enhance their career opportunities in the field. The book also helps readers implement models in a trading or research environment. It presents recipes and extensible code building blocks for some of the most widespread methods in risk management and option pricing. Web Resource The author’s website provides fully functional C++ code, including additional C++ source files and examples. Although the code is used to illustrate concepts (not as a finished software product), it nevertheless compiles, runs, and deals with full, rather than toy, problems. The website also includes a suite of practical exercises for each chapter covering a range of difficulty levels and problem complexity.

Financial engineering has been proven to be a useful tool for risk management, but using the theory in practice requires a thorough understanding of the risks and ethical standards involved. Stochastic Processes with Applications to Finance, Second Edition presents the mathematical theory of financial engineering using only basic mathematical tools

Financial engineering has been proven to be a useful tool for risk management, but using the theory in practice requires a thorough understanding of the risks and ethical standards involved. Stochastic Processes with Applications to Finance, Second Edition presents the mathematical theory of financial engineering using only basic mathematical tools that are easy to understand even for those with little mathematical expertise. This second edition covers several important developments in the financial industry. New to the Second Edition A chapter on the change of measures and pricing of insurance products Many examples of the change of measure technique, including its use in asset pricing theory A section on the use of copulas, especially in the pricing of CDOs Two chapters that offer more coverage of interest rate derivatives and credit derivatives Exploring the merge of actuarial science and financial engineering, this edition examines how the pricing of insurance products, such as equity-linked annuities, requires knowledge of asset pricing theory since the equity index can be traded in the market. The book looks at the development of many probability transforms for pricing insurance risks, including the Esscher transform. It also describes how the copula model is used to model the joint distribution of underlying assets. By presenting significant results in discrete processes and showing how to transfer the results to their continuous counterparts, this text imparts an accessible, practical understanding of the subject. It helps readers not only grasp the theory of financial engineering, but also implement the theory in business.