Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy |  | Author: Peter S. Goodman
Publisher: Times Books
List Price: $25.00
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 44032
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 0805089802
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.973
EAN: 9780805089806
ASIN: 0805089802
Publication Date: September 15, 2009
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Product Description
How Main Street was hit by—and might recover from—the financial crisis, by The New York Times’s national economics correspondent When the financial crisis struck in 2008, Main Street felt the blow just as hard as Wall Street. The New York Times national economics correspondent Peter S. Goodman takes us behind the headlines and exposes how the flow of capital from Asia and Silicon Valley to the suburbs of the housing bubble perverted America’s economy. He follows a real estate entrepreneur who sees endless opportunity in the underdeveloped lots of Florida—until the mortgages for them collapse. And he watches as an Oakland, California-based deliveryman, unable to land a job in the biotech industry, slides into unemployment and a homeless shelter. As Goodman shows, for two decades Americans binged on imports and easy credit, a spending spree abetted by ever-increasing home values—and then the bill came due. Yet even in a new environment of thrift and pullback, Goodman argues that economic adaptation is possible, through new industries and new safety nets. His tour of new businesses in Michigan, Iowa, South Carolina, and elsewhere and his clear-eyed analysis point the way to the economic promises and risks America now faces.
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| Customer Reviews:
Heart wrenching October 19, 2009
G. Froelich (Illinois)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Until I read this book, I did not totally understand this recession. Now I feel I do. Its not written in a style that is so boring and technical that you don't quite "get it", instead it is written about people who are living out the horrors of the recession. I found the book informative and hard to put down.
 Good Human Interest Backgrounds - October 9, 2009
Loyd E. Eskildson (Phoenix, AZ.)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Extravagance is only part of the explanation of our national crisis, says author Goodman. His "Past Due" does a good job putting a human face on our current economic plight, telling the stories of a number of individuals, high-school graduate to MBA, who fell victim to either unfortunate personal circumstances or succumbing to the temptation to pick up the 'free money' lying around from soaring stocks and/or home values. Readers cannot avoid the "There but for the grace of God, go I" feeling.
Continuing, Goodman points out that his downturn is unusual - the result of two decades of excessive debt building up, not just too much investment in houses. Thus, the recovery will not likely follow typical historical paths or timing. Meanwhile, we must get back to honest work, in jobs that can support middle-class life.
First, however, Goodman takes readers on a nostalgic tour of earlier America - Horatio Alger successes and the Protestant Ethic, then the Greenspan/Reagan dismantling of regulations based on the thinking of economist Milton Friedman and novelist Ayn Rand. First results were troubling and not long in coming - the S&L crisis ($124 billion), and the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management ($3.6 billion, via private banks). Then came the dot.com crash, 9/11, and the subprime debacle.
Goodman sees relief coming in the form of 'in-sourcing' - jobs funded by money from China, possibly building wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity. Perhaps. However, China now leads in low-cost production methods of solar panel creating, and China is close behind the U.S. in the production of wind power generating installation.
The definitive analysis of the global financial meltdown September 30, 2009
redjellydonut (USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Peter S. Goodman has done the almost impossible: He's made the origins of the global financial collapse comprehensible and he's done so without forgetting that it is individual human beings who have been most devastated by the complex tangle of motives that created the crisis. It's that blending of Goodman's incisive, expert understanding of international economics with his ability to put a human face to the disaster that makes "Past Due" such a timely and important book. I can't recommend it more highly.
Great book if you want to know "what the heck happened, and where do we go from here?" September 30, 2009
holographer (Portland, OR)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you enjoyed This American Life's "Giant Pool of Money," you'll love this book. It took this reader gently through the questions and answers of "what the heck happened!?!"
If you're anything like me, you know that the financial meltdown is one of the most important events of this generation, but you've despaired of really understanding it. Mostly because the reporting all seems so damn boring! Well, this book is good news because it's actually an interesting read. As in: I didn't have to force myself to read it because I thought I "should." Instead, I found myself actually enjoying reading about the economy.
Part of the magic is that the author uses real stories of real people. The stories are compelling, and the author is a good storyteller, so it ends up being really entertaining. And then, almost without realizing it, you find that you understand what actually happened, and maybe even some of the lessons to be learned, and how to move forward.
[...]
It will give you the flavor of the book.
You won't find a smarter writer September 22, 2009
Charles Duhigg (New York)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Peter Goodman is one of the smartest, most interesting writers I've ever encountered. There was an excerpt of this book in the New York Times that was amazing. Understanding economics can be a slog - unless the writer knows how to tell stories about real people, and explain events through peoples' lives. Peter does that. It's a great book.
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