
After the Music Stopped
The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead
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Narrated by:
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Graham Vick
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By:
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Alan S. Blinder
About this listen
Named one of the 10 best books of 2013 by Michiko Kakutani and the New York Times Book Review
Alan S. Blinder - esteemed Princeton professor, Wall Street Journal columnist, and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board under Alan Greenspan - is one of our wisest and most clear-eyed economic thinkers. In After the Music Stopped, he delivers a masterful narrative of how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the government did to fight it, and what we must do to recover from it. With bracing clarity, Blinder chronicles the perfect storm of events beginning in 2007, from the bursting of the housing bubble to the implosion of the bond bubble, and how events in the U.S. spread throughout the interconnected global economy. Truly comprehensive and eminently listenable, After the Music Stopped is the essential book about the financial crisis.
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Critic reviews
Great summary of the financial crisis and response
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Would you listen to After the Music Stopped again? Why?
Yes I plan on listening to it again because the topic is complex and Blinder's analysis of the causes and remedies are not yet fully implemented.Who was your favorite character and why?
This isn't a story focused on characters. It is about a crisis, ideas of solutions, and decisions. The favorite idea is about the way to help people with their mortgages. That is because it was not addressed by the decision makers during the crisis.What about Graham Vick’s performance did you like?
He has a very appealing voice.If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
This is not a drama, it is an excellent analysis.Any additional comments?
This book is better than Elizabeth Warren's book or Tim Geithner's book because it is not written as a personal memoir. It is an objective analysis from one of the very few people smart enough and familiar enough to get it right.Better than the others
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The narrator was excellent. The book is written in a somewhat folksy style and Graham Vick captured the tone perfectly.
One of the best books on the Financial Crisis
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No Love for Those Who Successfully Avert Disaster
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Best book on the crisis
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Excellent summary of the Great Recession
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Brilliant research.. tip o' the hat!
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I learnt much and was pleased to discover that there was no cover up that I could detect.
My only reservation is that he gives the impression that the GFC if over or a least under control. With this I disagree. The USD$19Trillion federal debt is a time bomb created in the GFC - the fuse is lit and it is yet to explode
EXCELLENT IN MANY RESPECTS
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Instead of adding clarity, however, Blinder's presentation is highly disorganized, jumping from one topic to another and failing to define terms before using them. He even inserts his recommendations for the future in the middle of describing what happened, rather than waiting for the end. After two hours, I'm so irritated with the mess that he's made of the narrative that I just can't listen anymore.
Incoherent
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Any additional comments?
From the beginning, Professor Blinder makes false assertions and follows them with confusing, complicated statistics which fail to prove his assertions. For example, he states that no one in the world predicted the housing bubble. Then he describes the real price changes on houses, which he says went up far too fast. Lot's of people knew that the savings and loan associations had fallen from a burst bubble, and then the internet companies. Anyone who went shopping for a house could tell you that houses were overpriced, decrepit, and poorly maintained and not worth the price. The investment company wheelers and dealers were making a fortune in fees selling the houses, but lots of people realized they were being deceived and had no choice but to buy at high prices. Houses never go up in value. Houses depreciate from the time they are built, just as cars do. People were buying houses without realizing that businessmen were in a frenzy of automating jobs and laying off workers, who then couldn't pay their mortgage payments. Professor Blinder is blind to all of this, and asserts that government was unable to properly regulate the housing market, and that was the cause of the crash. Wrong on so many counts. I worked for Citi's subsidiary Primeamerica briefly, refinancing housing loans with a claim that the owner of the house would pay less if he bought with fees a loan from Primeamerica. We were trained to lie to the owner, and not give them the statistics on the price of the loan until the minute they signed for the loan. Citi was slipping millions in campaign donations to our representatives to pass bills that ignored the whole problem. That is just one example of Professor Blinder's false assertions, saying that government regulators caused the bursting of the bubble. Don't buy this book. Don't give it the time of day.Irresponsible, corrupt, and confused book
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