Readings for MacLean and Nocera, All the Devils Are Here...
For sections between Th Feb 10 @ 12:30 and Th Feb 17 @ 11:00:
- Skim chapters 1-5 on “securitization”: how it was that people thought that taking a whole bunch of mortgages, mashing them together, and selling the results as bonds made sense...
For sections between Th Feb 17 @ 12:30 and Th Feb 24 @ 11:00:
- Read chapters 6-8 on “policy”: why the American government decided at the end of the 1990s to back off of financial regulation, and let the financial sector “experiment”...
For sections between Th Feb 24 @ 12:30 and Th Mar 3 @ 11:00:
- Read chapters 9-15 on the bubble in subprime mortgages: how mortgage companies, banks, and investors concluded that diversified investments in even risky mortgages carried very little risk indeed...
For sections between Th Mar 3@ 12:30 and Th Mar 10 @ 11:00:
- Read chapters 16-19 on how the smart guys go short: how the more clever of the investment banks began to figure out ways to profit from the forthcoming housing crash, but how the bulk of investment and commercial bankers were not so clever...
For sections in the last week before spring break:
- Read chapters 20-Epilogue on the slow-motion panic that was the impulse that generated our current economic downturn...
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