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The End of Wall Street
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
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Publisher's summary
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 ordinary readers and listeners, 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 rebuild.
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- Unabridged
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The Paul Volker Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington Post journalist Sebastian Mallaby has garnered New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book honors for his enthralling nonfiction. Bolstered by Mallaby’s unprecedented access to the industry, More Money Than God tells the inside story of hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s and 1970s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007–2009.
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Valiant effort but lacking analytic horsepower...
- By ND on 01-10-11
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King of Capital
- The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone
- By: John E. Morris, David Carey
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The financial establishment---banks and investment bankers, such as Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Lehman, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley---were the cowboys, recklessly assuming risks, leveraging up to astronomical levels, and driving the economy to the brink of disaster.
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Great Story Ruined by Monotone Reading
- By Marc on 04-23-13
By: John E. Morris, and others
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Why Wall Street Matters
- By: William D. Cohan
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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William D. Cohan is no knee-jerk advocate for Wall Street and the big banks. He's one of America's most respected financial journalists and the progressive best-selling author of House of Cards. He has long been critical of the bad behavior that plagued much of Wall Street in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, and because he spent 17 years as an investment banker on Wall Street, he is an expert on its inner workings as well.
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An Inch Deep and A Mile Wide
- By Doug Sheridan on 04-26-17
By: William D. Cohan
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Shaky Ground
- The Strange Saga of the US Mortgage Giants
- By: Bethany McLean
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2008 the US Treasury put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into a life-support state known as "conservatorship" to prevent their failure - and worldwide economic chaos. The two companies, which were always controversial, have become a battleground. Today, Fannie and Freddie are profitable again but still in conservatorship. Their profits are being redirected toward reducing the federal deficit, which leaves them with no buffer should they suffer losses again.
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Details on the Culture and History of the GSEs
- By Jose on 10-15-15
By: Bethany McLean
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Wall Street
- A History, Updated Edition
- By: Charles R. Geisst
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 27 hrs and 28 mins
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Wall Street is an unending source of legend - and nightmares. It is a universal symbol of both the highest aspirations of economic prosperity and the basest impulses of greed and deception. Charles R. Geisst's Wall Street is at once a chronicle of the street itself - from the days when the wall was merely a defensive barricade built by Peter Stuyvesant - and an engaging economic history of the United States, a tale of profits and losses, enterprising spirits, and key figures that transformed America into the most powerful economy in the world.
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Many books in one; best linking of stories, eras
- By Philo on 03-23-14
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13 Bankers
- The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown
- By: Simon Johnson, James Kwak
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Even after the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, America is still beset by the depredations of an oligarchy that is now bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks, which together control assets amounting to more than 60 percent of the country's gross domestic product, these financial institutions (now more emphatically "too big to fail") continue to hold the global economy hostage.
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Easy to Understand and Comprehend
- By Kyle on 04-11-10
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The Great American Stick Up
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- By: Robert Scheer
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- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
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Instead of going where other journalists have gone in search of this story - the board rooms and trading floors of the big Wall Street firms - Scheer goes back to Washington, D.C., a veritable crime scene, beginning in the 1980s, where the captains of the finance industry, their lobbyists and allies among leading politicians destroyed an American regulatory system that had been functioning effectively since the era of the New Deal.
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A great telling of an unfortunate part of history
- By Trace on 10-27-20
By: Robert Scheer
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The Alchemists
- Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire
- By: Neil Irwin
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Neil Irwin’s The Alchemists is a gripping account of the most intense exercise in economic crisis management we’ve ever seen, a poker game in which the stakes have run into the trillions of dollars. The book begins in, of all places, Stockholm, Sweden, in the 17th century, where central banking had its rocky birth, and then progresses through a brisk but dazzling tutorial on how the central banker came to exert such vast influence over our world, from its troubled beginnings to the age of Greenspan, bringing the listener into the present with a marvelous handle on how these figures and institutions became what they are.
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Couldn't Listen to this narrator
- By Donald on 07-23-13
By: Neil Irwin
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Bought and Paid For
- The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street
- By: Charles Gasparino
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
According to business reporter Charles Gasparino, President Obama is faking his outrage at Wall Street, and his calls for new policies to rein in banks that are "too big to fail" are just pabulum. In reality, Obama has climbed into bed with Wall Street CEOs, giving them what they want so they will support his liberal, big-government agenda.
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Revealing and Convincing
- By Walter on 10-24-11
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All the Presidents' Bankers
- The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power
- By: Nomi Prins
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 19 hrs and 56 mins
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Nomi Prins ushers us into the intimate world of exclusive clubs, vacation spots, and Ivy League universities that binds presidents and financiers. She unravels the multi-generational blood, intermarriage, and protégé relationships that have confined national influence to a privileged cluster of people. This unprecedented history of American power illuminates how financiers have retained their authoritative position through history, swaying presidents regardless of party affiliation.
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You better like history about the elite and rich
- By Victor on 01-12-15
By: Nomi Prins
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The Bank That Lived a Little
- Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market
- By: Philip Augar
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
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Based on unparalleled access to those involved, and told with compelling pace and drama, The Bank That Lived a Little is the story of one of the most familiar names on the British high street since Big Bang in 1986. Philip Augar describes in detail three decades of boardroom intrigue driven by ruthless ambition, grandiose dreams and a desire for wealth. It is a tale of a struggle for long-term supremacy between rival strategies and their adherents.
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Global superstar bankers under light-touch gov
- By Philo on 12-21-18
By: Philip Augar
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What listeners say about The End of Wall Street
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Erwin C. Pantel
- 06-10-15
Outstanding study of the 2008-2009 economic collapse
Very informative examination of the events leading up to, the collapse and the aftermath of the 2008-2009 economic meltdown.
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Overall
- Jonathan
- 04-12-10
Great investigative work, terrible narration
As a fan of Lowenstein's earlier book about LTCM implosion, I snatched this up the minute it was available. Unlike the LTCM story, however, most of us have lived through the recent crisis in real-time and have probably read quite a bit of what was happening ad nauseum. Although Lowenstien has done in homework, as usual, and supplies us with "fly-on-the-wall" tidbits, such as conversations that took palce inside boardroom meetings.
What the book does mainly is to paint a more nuanced and complete picture of the crisis, tracing it back to its early origin. The media has tried to pin the blame on specific persons (such as Greenspan or the greedy bank CEOs) or institutions (such as Goldman), but the truth is much more murky. We get a better glimpse on the CEOs, who acted on both peer pressure and their own ignorance about the actual complexity of the products. The political landscape is also an important factor, which has to do with Democrats that pushed homeownership and its unintended consequences.
For me, the book answers (though not definitely), some lingering questions, such as why the Fed decided not to bail out Lehman, and whether Henry Paulson was only the banks' interest.
Compared to Michael Lewis's "The Big Short," which cuts a narrow swath by focusing on several fringe players who profited from their prescience, "The End of Wall Street" is more like the definitive recounting that covers all the bases. I would strongly recommend reading both books to get the full picture.
As for the narration, I personally find it amateurish and annoying. He sounds like a college kid doing a bad impression of an old-time PSA (he hits the last word of each sentence hard and quick). I find the voice not only lacks gravitas but worse yet, sounds as if he's just "reading" without real comprehension. Check out the sample before making your decision.
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- Noah Smith
- 03-03-14
A whirlwind blow-by-blow of the financial crisis
Would you try another book from Roger Lowenstein and/or Erik Synnestvedt?
Yes. "When Genius Failed" is an incredible book, actually.
Would you recommend The End of Wall Street to your friends? Why or why not?
I would not, because most of my friends already know most of these events. But if you weren't glued to the news during the 2008 crisis, this book will give you a good overview of what happened.
Which scene was your favorite?
There were no really stand-out memorable scenes.
Did The End of Wall Street inspire you to do anything?
No.
Any additional comments?
If you're looking for a deep explanation of why the crisis happened, don't look here; it's a narrative overview, like reading through news clippings from the time period.
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Overall
- Oldtimer
- 11-15-10
The End of Wall Street (not really)
The book is a chronicle of events before and around the financial crisis of 2008. It is attempting to tell the story of the financial crisis in a similar fashion to the author’s best book, "When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management ". Unfortunately, this book does not come close. If you’re looking for a book similar to the story of LTCM, you’ll be sorely disappointed. The span of the coverage is so vast that inevitably leads to a shallow coverage of the events. Unlike the LTCM book, this book lacks characters and the real people. The reader never gets to know anybody beyond the media headlines.
Throughout the book, the author, perhaps intentionally, avoids passing a definitive judgment on any government official or most of Wall Street Execs. It appears, however, that he is more willing to blame free markets for the crisis. He does point out that government was partly responsible for the meltdown by forcing Fannie and Freddie to lend freely in pursuit of universal home ownership (as if credit worthiness can somehow be legislated). In many ways the book is balanced, perhaps too balanced, to the point that it feels like the author did not want to make enemies.
At the end, like many other books written about the financial crisis of 2008, it declares the end of capitalism as we know it. I’ll just remind the readers that this claim has been made many times in the past. To blame free markers for crises is to blame free will for human crimes. It’s only an excuse to avoid accepting responsibility for risky/culpable behavior.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Mongezi
- 09-05-22
An axcellent & concise summary of the 2007-08 GFC
It's possibly the best book that comprehensively captures the GFC for practitioners and serious scholars. It's well researched, robust, academically inclined and concise. I've read more than 10 books on the topic, this one is head-&-shoulders above the rest.
Novices seeking to be entertained or looking for an easy read may not enjoy.
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- Joseph
- 12-26-10
surprisingly good
Having known little about the world of macro economics, I got done with this book much smarter about it. Lowenstein does a fantastic job of explaining what happened and giving you some clue about the players involved too. I loved it!
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- Michael
- 07-18-23
Great Book
Good unbiased narrative of the financial crisis. Lowenstein has a great talent in explaining economic complexities in an understandable even entertaining way. Deserves a second read. Excellent performance but a very disturbing book.
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