And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street's Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees

I Finally Understand!

Although I tried to make sense of it (read articles, watched news specials, talked to friends) many aspects of the current financial crisis remained very confusing to me. David Faber's, "And Then The Roof Caved In" finally changed that.

Faber explains the causes and the consequences of what we have been living through with amazing clarity. He sheds a bright light on our culture's greed and offers insights from some of the most prominent front line players.

If you want to understand what happened and why, this is the book for you. I could not put it down!

5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

And then the roof caved in: How Wall Street Greed and Stupidity brought Capitalizm to its Knees.

I found this book to be interesting and thought provoking. It took a rather complicated subject and explained it step by step from the standpoint of an outside observer who had no axe to grind. He mentions many of the people, the companies, and the government agencies and the actions they took that led to our current economic problems. I found it helpful and would recommend it to anyone interested in learning what led up to our problems.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

An eye opening lesson in human nature and greed

This book is written in a way that makes a complex subject easy to read and understand. The only negative is once you have read the book you will realize the greed that is engrained in human nature and how it has to potential to ruin a global society. Hopefully this is a wake up call so history never repeats itself.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Excellent, Everyone should read.

This is an easy to read, enlightening book on a contemporary subject. It is a great companion to a CNBC special that continues to be rerun on this business channel.

A review of what happened in the meltdown

Although short and somewhat lacking in details the author writes very well. He really makes clear distinctions as to the various securities that created the problem in 2007-2008. This was a sorry time in financial circles because of too much liquidity in the markets. The experts created vehicles to invest money in hot air-- and returning to them vast commissions.

Get a Tivo

This book was a regurjitation of the CNBS special hosted by the author. For those watch CNBC and/or read the Journal or Business Week regularly there was no "gotcha" or insights that make the book worth reading.

Overall very disappointing :-(

The title is great.

We were impressed with the book. We loved the book and thought it was true to the rating online. The research done by the publisher was accurate. Thank you for your online services.

Trustworthy Reporting

David Faber is one of the most trustworthy financial reporters around. It's tough enough to simply get the facts straight on a complicated subject without selecting and coloring the facts with one's own position on the spectrum between total laissez faire capitalism and absolute Marxism. So Faber doesn't try. The result is that his reporting can be depended upon without having to filter it through one's own "universal translator." That's kind of nice.

"And Then the Roof Caved In" is written in very readable language. You don't need a financial background to understand it and value it. However, if you DO have a financial background, you can understand the book on a deeper level, and it will answer many nagging questions you may still have even if you have been closely following the current real estate/credit crash. Faber consistently explains the many financial terms and acronyms that must come up when trying to explain such an esoteric subject, and at less than 200 pages of actual text, it's a quick read.

Faber's approach is from the bottom up. His interviews of the "big boys" are not as important as his interviews of ordinary people closer to the bottom of the "food chain." We may not like it, but we understand the primal greed and/or short-sightedness of some of the worst actors on the scene, so Faber's exploration as to why ordinary people, the "noble savages," would accept mortgages that they "obviously" could not afford is of greater importance sociologically.

If I have a criticism, it would be that by limiting the text to 180 pages, Faber was able to give an understandable description of the mortgage crash, but he does not go into much depth as to how firms like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, The U.S. Treasury, and the Federal Reserve Bank sent us to the "event horizon" of the worldwide credit "black hole" that followed the real estate crash.

Faber is a great REPORTER, and you may read "And Then the Roof Caved In" with your left brain for understanding, but if you want a delicious soap opera for your right brain in which the toughest and most influential "alpha males" in the financial world are literally reduced to public tears, you will have to follow your read of Faber's book with "House of Cards," by William Cohan. You will need more financial savy to "feel" the full effect of the Cohan book, so I recommend the Faber book first.

absolutly amazing

i'm trying to understand how the economy failed and this gave me a great picture.

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