Customer Reviews

Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I highly recommend this to those of us who were not adults at the time: in the 80's, I was still a kid - I couldn't be bothered to know what was happening in the world of S&Ls. Little did I know, but those high-flyers would affect my taxes for years (and years and years).

The book is easy to read - not too technical. It was a bit repetitive at times, but I think that's because many of the S&L crooks used the same types of illegal ponzi schemes to move money from one pocket to the other.

If you're like me, and knew very little about the S&L debacle, then let this book educate you. It's a telling tale of the problems brought-about by rampant de-regulation. I never knew that the S&L scandal(s) involved the wholesale looting of these banks (and American taxpayers - since they were federally protected deposits).

If you're already well-versed in the subject, you can read this to get some of the more personal stories of theft and graft.

There were also stories of corrupt politicians. I know it's a shock, but to me there's nothing more disgusting than a public trustee bending the rules to their advantage: they work for us.

I give this 4.5 stars out of 5 - very well done. The most accessible, well-documented history of the S&L crisis caused by Reagan in the 80's. Even though the topic is dated, the book provides a good subject for students of history, and also an eye-opener for people interested in the irresponsible (and costly) fiscal policies of the neo-con right wing.

In the first few pages, this book summarizes a problem (a scam, actually) perpetuated on the American taxpayers by a small handful of ultra-wealthy elitists. In just a few minutes, you will have a firm grasp on how the scam works, and the long term effects on the US economy - something even the press never really understood and failed to adequately convey to the public. The author uses metaphors and plain language, and even though it is dense, the book is easy to read.

Besides being a good overview, what I found most interesting was the secion on Neil Bush and his insurance fraud scams (over 100 of them), and how George H Bush was able to pardon him before the public or press got full wind of his embezzlement. Subsequently, I read the book "Silverado: Neil Bush and the Savings & Loan Scandal" - which was also very good, but franky, I thought that the short section on Bush in the Inside Job did more than an adequate job of covering all the facts.

Except for the historian, economist, or political scientist, this book is probably too much detail for the average reader. For those of you who want the quick & dirty fact, I suggest reading about it online (Wikipedia), or getting the the abridged version of this book, or listening to the abridged audio book. But the length of the book does not detract from my positive rating - very well done.

Overall this is one of the best books I have read. The level of reporting, the details, the work involved in tracking down sources and detailed information (during an era without high speed internet and without significant computing power) is mind boggling. I won't elaborate further since other reviewers have covered that ground.

Let me now turn my attention to the Kindle version (I read the paperback version and later bought the Kindle version to have as a handy reference). The Kindle version is woefully deficient. It is one of the the worst examples of Amazon's lack of enforcement of a standard for converting text (especially older books) to their electronic Kindle format!!

> There is NO table of content in the Kindle version, not even an unlinked one.

> The very useful Dramatis Personae is omitted from the Kindle version!

> The Glossary is omitted from the Kindle Version!

> A section on "Source Notes" which includes sections: "Suggested Readings" and "Media Overviews" is omitted from the Kindle Version.

> There is NO Index...at all. This not entirely trivial since it would at least provide an organized overview of important data. However, even if the Kindle version did have a table of contents, it, as in all Kindle books, would presumably be non-functional. Since the Kindle does not use page numbers, an index is usually presented as a poor quality, non-linked image, not as searchable text document. And, of course, there is no way in the Kindle (that I am aware of) to perform Boolean searches to compensate for this missing feature(a linked index).

> Inside Job is one of the best examples of investigative reporting I have ever read. The author's of this book have numerous and elaborate footnotes in the paperback version but the footnote references are not "linked" in the Kindle version. The lack of linking the footnotes from their reference in the body of the text makes it EXTREMELY difficult to read the footnotes(and this work has numerous footnotes). In fact it is so cumbersome to find and read the footnotes it renders them effectively useless.

In short, the publisher took shortcuts in creating the Kindle e-book version that detract substantially from an otherwise excellent book. (As a note: I also fault Amazon for not imposing a rigorous standard for books that are converted to the Kindle e-book format. If nothing else Amazon should at least provide a table on every Kindle book's Amazon purchase page plainly displaying which Kindle features are enabled (eg, TOC linked?, Index present?, Footnotes Linked? Definitions working?, Search function fully enabled? etc.) That's the least they could do.

The book itself is a fantastic example of very thorough investigative journalism. The writers obviously spent years doing massive amounts of research and interviews. It reads very well and presents a cast of characters as they truly are. It is written for the layman and casual reader. Once you put it down you will be extraordinarily disheartened at how the S&L crisis came about. The book sheds light on the roots and origins - the push for industry deregulation in the '80s and its massive, and quite apparently not well thought through, embrace by legislators. But it does a fair and balanced portrayal of the actors - highlighting that the worst people were already professional con artists and had links to organized crime. What is truly disheartening is the massive participation by and interference by top level career politicians (a handful of whom are still around)- many of whom were found by their peers to have severely violated ethics standards. It does a good job of portraying why regulation and oversight of certain industries - particularly the financial services industry, is so difficult. The rulemakers (legislators) are often severely conflicted because they are so heavily funded by the industry - most people don't like taking shots at their meal ticket. Some legislators, as detailed here, won't even hesitate to attack regulators when they threaten their lobbyist/campaign lifeline - rather than protect their citizens overall.

This is a very good read in light of current events with the mortgage lending crisis. One will find creepy, even shocking similarities. The bottom line is the same - poorly written loans (given to an elite group in the S&L case) with no real, credible basis for believing they would be repaid - shoddy underwriting, shoddy controls, shoddy monitoring, weak regulation/deregulation/regulation with no teeth [which is always exploited by those opportunistic few who quite literally make a living as con artists (criminals)], massive interference by the rich and connected.

The best, and saddest part, is this book is real - the events really happened, the facts are portrayed very objectively (the writers did an extraordinary job with research and documenting sources of information), the people involved were people well known and are still around in some circles, the costs and consequences are real and still being paid for to this day. Reading this book in light of current events will make one pause...pause and worry.

This is a tragic story of the looting of hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers money, money that could've gone for needed social services or other things. The government let it happen and this book tells you how.

"Inside Job" is a nice piece of work but it gives a complete and wholly undeserved "pass" to the US Congress for its failure to act to prevent the financial crisis we are still living today. Congress is supposed to regulate the regulators, but was snoozing at the switch ... if you give it the benefit of the doubt.

Writing this book with my two fabulous reporter/co-authors, took 4 years. Over those four years we met a cast of characters that fiction writers would have rejected as too unbelievable. But they were all too real. And they cost American taxpayers a bundle. When regulators leave bankers loosely regulated they do what bears do in the woods. We never seem to learn. Anyway, I know you'll enjoy reading Inside Job. If you like bigger than life characters this book is chuck full of them.

Steve

Everything I didn't want to know about the banking/gov't destruction of our country (and everywhere else). Pulls together all the headlines we've seen in the news over the years, and what's really behind those headlines. Exposes the ugly truth. The people who wrecked us are still at the helm.

Here is my difficulty. Bought the book, read it, found it really interesting.

If only it was well converted as well. Being a bit of a perfectionist myself I really like an ebook to be well generated. Spotting a few spelling errors or other small flaws in a book does not bother me. The quality of this book conversion is really poor.

Issues include:
- bad paragraph breaks
- OCR failures
- missing paragraphs
- chapters not configured as bookmarks (personal peeve)

You might get the impression that the publisher did not take the time to read through the converted document.

On the whole I found that the frequency of the errors was so high that it really did impact on the enjoyability of what was an otherwise very interesting and informative read.

A must read - will leave you speechless and much wiser.