A great interview this morning on Squawk Boxwith Roger Lowenstein the author of, “THE END OF WALL STREET.”
In the book, Lowenstein theorizes that the financial crisis began long before the summer of 2008 and long before the failure of Lehman Brothers.
In exposing the chain of events that led to the market’s collapse (liquidity and capital) and the government’s unprecedented bailout, Lowenstein pieces together the full story of “The End of Wall Street” as we knew it and what he calls, the fall of an entire generation.
Lowenstein has already proven himself to be one of the best chroniclers of Wall Street.
He is the author of When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management and of While America Aged: How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis.
In "The End of Wall Street,"he again uses his gift of great story telling to bring a complex story to life.
Writing, "In the late summer of 2008, as Lehman Brothers teetered at the edge, a bell tolled for Wall Street. The elite of American bankers were enlisted to try to save Lehman, but they were fighting for something larger than a venerable, 158-year-old institution. Steven Black, the veteran JPMorgan executive, had an impulse to start saving the daily newspapers, figuring that historic events were afoot." (*)
Lowenstein brings that history alive and offers up sound solutions to prevent a repeat of Wall Street, the government and our own failures.
(*) Note: reprinted from “The End of Wall Street,” The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright Roger Lowenstein, 2010
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