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Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation
 
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Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation (Paperback)

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3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
Price: $9.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The financial crisis that has gripped this country since last September has had so many twists and turns, it would make for a great drama -- if it all were not so real and damaging. Companies are shutting down and laying off workers, 401ks are melting away, and the government is spending $700 billion dollars to bail out banks and financial institutions -- and that's only the beginning. The financial services industry, and the many industries that depend on it -- from housing to cars -- is in intensive care.

So what happened? How did we get to this point of financial disaster? Is the economy just a huge, Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme? It is a complicated and confusing story -- but Daniel Gross of Newsweek has a special gift for making complicated matters easy to understand and even entertaining. In Dumb Money, he offers a guide to the debacle and to what the future may hold. This is not so much a book about who did what, though that's part of the story. Rather, it pieces together the building blocks of the debt-fueled economy, and distills the theory and personalities behind our late, lamented easy money culture. Dumb Money is a book that finally lays it all out in an engaging way, and might just help people invest their money smartly until the gloom passes.



About the Author

Daniel Gross is a journalist, author, and editor who specializes in business history, political economy, and the money culture. He writes the ?Moneybox? column for Slate.com and contributes to the ?Economic View? column of the New York Times. He has worked as a reporter at The New Republic and has contributed to more than 60 publications. Since 1999, he has edited STERNbusiness, the semi-annual management journal published by New York University's Stern School of Business. Gross has appeared on CNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, C-SPAN, and on more than 35 radio programs, including NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross (no relation). In 2001, he was a fellow at the New America Foundation.

He is the author of three books: Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Times; Bull Run: Wall Street, the Democrats, and the New Politics of Personal Finance; and Generations of Corning: 150 Years in the Life of a Global Corporation, 1851-2001, co-authored with Davis Dyer.

A graduate of Cornell University, Gross holds an A.M. in American history from Harvard University.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 112 pages
  • Publisher: Free Press (April 14, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1439159874
  • ISBN-13: 978-1439159873
  • Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #397,326 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews
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 (2)
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Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Current Events, March 6, 2009
By Raederwulf (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews
Mr. Gross has given us a clear, non-technical account of our current financial crisis, credit lockdown and recession. It makes for lively reading as well, since many of the key players of this account are allowed to characterize themselves in their own words (quoted mostly in context). Mr. Gross falls just short of self-righteous indignation by reminding himself and us of the parts we played in enabling the players. There are enough facts and figures to refute the idea that somehow the people who did not make money were to blame for the excesses into which the money-makers were enticed. I do have two complaints about the story. First, there is a lack of discussion of the involvement of international credit markets connected with international trade - what I believe were the "canary in the mineshaft" - that dragged down central banks once counterparty trust was lost. Secondly, I accuse Mr. Gross of copping out in his concluding chapter. Following such a story of legal, ethical, and moral drama, I would expect the author to give us an account of the lessons he learned, and lessons we might carry away. However, he was gun-shy, and said as much, about making "predictions" about future events. The reader will have to write his or her own conclusions. For me, it was the old virtues of honesty, thriftiness and hard work. You cannot write a credit default swap on those. Other people will have other lessons.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Reads like an amateur blog, June 2, 2009
By M. whitton (leesburg, va) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This book, which promises much, delivers little. It is written in a general easy to read tone like a long blog by a skilled amateur blogger. It has little insight, few facts, and much personal opinion. You probably already know more about the financial crisis than you will learn from this book.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars To the Point, May 25, 2009
By D. Rising (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Gross has managed to write one of the most clearly stated, precise and condensed versions of the origins and nature of the current economic crisis currently on the market.

Gross is not interested in finding a ideologically motivated one-stop-shopping-style guilty party ("It's Clinton's fault!"). Instead, he concentrates on the mechanics of how things got to the point they are at now - and in a way easily accessible to the layperson, without sacrificing accuracy.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and Entertaining -
Recently I read a Newsweek column by Daniel Gross documenting that U.S. private employment today is less than in 2000, despite population having grown 9%. Read more
Published 4 days ago by Loyd E. Eskildson

3.0 out of 5 stars Breezy but superficial look at the ongoing financial crisis
"Dumb Money" is an easy-to-read account of how greed, ignorance, and wishful thinking combined to produce the great economic bubble of 2004-2007 and how it all fell apart in 2008... Read more
Published 2 months ago by David F. Nolan

3.0 out of 5 stars A short description and the main Lesson Learned: It will happen again
No table of contents. No index. A rush job to the printer. But it could be just right for you if you are looking for a condensed version of this historic financial disaster. Read more
Published 5 months ago by andris virsnieks

4.0 out of 5 stars Should be required reading for MBA students
After seeing the author speak a few weeks ago, I am enjoying this deeper dive into his topic of passion. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Steven Gardberg

1.0 out of 5 stars Baloney slicing on a grand scale
This is one of the worst nonfiction books I have ever read. No index, no bibliography, no footnotes, no substantiation whatsoever. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Count Kelvin

5.0 out of 5 stars Dumb Money
Very well organized, very clear explanation, very easy read. This book confirms everyone's suspicions that from the President's cabinet, through corportate execs and down to... Read more
Published 6 months ago by T. Ellison

3.0 out of 5 stars Dumb Mopney
I thought it was just one way to look at the economy. Felt that it was a bit amateurish. Everyone has an opinion and this is his opinion of what is going on. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Elaine R. Coyne

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
Daniel Gross does a masterful description of the current economic climate and how we got to this point. None of that Right wing or Left wing crap. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Daniel Wofford

5.0 out of 5 stars Where's the hard copy and the audio?
Daniel Gross was just on Keith Olbermann's Countdown promoting his book. When I looked on Amazon, there was only the Kindle version ready to go. Read more
Published 8 months ago by M. Shaffer

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