Books by American Financial Journalist Roger Lowenstein

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The roots of the mortgage bubble and the story of the Wall Street collapse-and the government's unprecedented response-from our most trusted business journalist.

The End of Wall Street is a blow-by-blow account of America's biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. Drawing on 180 interviews, including sit-downs with top government officials and Wall Street CEOs, Lowenstein tells, with grace, wit, and razor-sharp understanding, the full story of the end of Wall Street as we knew it. Displaying the qualities that made When Genius Failed a timeless classic of Wall Street-his sixth sense for narrative drama and his unmatched ability to tell complicated financial stories in ways that resonate with the ordinary reader- Roger Lowenstein weaves a financial, economic, and sociological thriller that indicts America for succumbing to the siren song of easy debt and speculative mortgages.

The End of Wall Street is rife with historical lessons and bursting with fast-paced action. Lowenstein introduces his story with precisely etched, laserlike profiles of Angelo Mozilo, the Johnny Appleseed of subprime mortgages who spreads toxic loans across the landscape like wild crabapples, and moves to a damning explication of how rating agencies helped gift wrap faulty loans in the guise of triple-A paper and a takedown of the academic formulas that-once again- proved the ruin of investors and banks. Lowenstein excels with a series of searing profiles of banking CEOs, such as the ferretlike Dick Fuld of Lehman and the bloodless Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, and of government officials from the restless, deal-obsessed Hank Paulson and the overmatched Tim Geithner to the cerebral academic Ben Bernanke, who sought to avoid a repeat of the one crisis he spent a lifetime trying to understand-the Great Depression.

Finally, we come to understand the majesty of Lowenstein's theme of liquidity and capital, which explains the origins of the crisis and that positions the collapse of 2008 as the greatest ever of Wall Street's unlearned lessons. The End of Wall Street will be essential reading as we work to identify the lessons of the market failure and start to reb...

The retirement crisis facing America-and the road map for a way out-from The New York Times bestselling author of Origins of the Crash

In the last several decades, corporations and local governments made ruinous pension and healthcare promises to American workers. With these now coming due, they threaten to destroy twenty-first- century America's hopes for a comfortable retirement. With his trademark narrative panache, bestselling author Roger Lowenstein analyzes three fascinating case studies-General Motors, the New York City subway system, and the city of San Diego-each an object lesson and a compelling historical saga that illuminates how the pension crisis developed. Cumulative retirement deficits are approaching $1 trillion, and Lowenstein warns that these are only the first. Retirement pensions will continue to be a critical issue as the country ages, and While America Aged is the urgent call to action and prescription for reform.

With his singular gift for turning complex financial events into eminently readable stories, Roger Lowenstein lays bare the labyrinthine events of the manic and tumultuous 1990s. In an enthralling narrative, he ties together all of the characters of the dot-com bubble and offers a unique portrait of the culture of the era. Just as John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash was a defining text of the Great Depression, Lowenstein’s Origins of the Crash is destined to be the book that will frame our understanding of the 1990s.