For the second time this decade, the U.S. economy is sinking into a recession due to the collapse of a financial bubble. The most recent calamity will lead to a downturn deeper and longer than the stock market crash of 2001.
Dean Baker’s Plunder and Blunder chronicles the growth and collapse of the stock and housing bubbles and explains how policy blunders and greed led to the catastrophic—but completely predictable—market meltdowns. An expert guide to recent economic history, Baker offers policy prescriptions to help prevent similar financial disasters.
“Dean Baker warned us what was coming. Alas, the government and most economists ignored him. They denied that a housing bubble existed and would soon collapse with devastating consequences. Now we can read why Dean got it right when so many experts were blind. The story is intriguing—and deeply disturbing.”
—William Greider, national affairs correspondent, The Nation, and author of Come Home, America
“Dean Baker foresaw the housing crisis, first, persistently, and almost alone, while Bush fiddled, Congress snoozed, and the media looked resolutely the other way. In Plunder and Blunder, he delivers his trademark one-two punch: clarity and honesty, in the face of vast malfeasance.”
—James K. Galbraith, author of The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC. A frequent guest on National Public Radio, CNN, and CNBC news programs, Baker has written for the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Financial Times. He writes a column for the Guardian, the American Prospect, and Truthout.org. He is the author of several books, including The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer and The United States since 1980. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.
[...] Dean Baker is the author of the new book, “Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.” [...]
The following review appeared in the June 2009 issue of CHOICE:
SOCIAL & BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Economics
Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy
This short volume is a succinct, scathing indictment of the complicity of executives of financial institutions, the regulators of these institutions, and professional economists in creating the current financial crisis. Baker (co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research) convincingly argues that the financial chaos wrought by the housing bubble could have been predicted and easily prevented. The inability, or unwillingness, of leading economists and industry regulators to recognize the extent of the bubble and their refusal to act to prevent its subsequent bursting is nothing short of criminal, in his view. Deregulation of the financial industry starting in the early 1980s led to the excesses that ultimately resulted in the tech stock and housing bubbles and busts. Baker’s suggestions to prevent future crises include Fed officials laying out evidence in public testimony on potential financial bubbles; greater restrictions on bank lending for risky mortgage loans; requiring that independent auditors, appraisers, and credit-rating agencies be chosen by independent bodies and not be beholden to those who pay them; and maintaining a lower dollar value. See related, Robert Shiller’s The Subprime Solution (CH, Dec ’08, 46-2206), Mark Zandi’s Financial Shock (CH, Dec ’08, 46-2210), and Paul Muolo’s Chain of Blame (CH, Jan ’09, 46-2794). Summing Up: Recommended. All levels of undergraduate students; general readers. D. C., Lynchburg College
[...] Dean Baker is the author of the new book, “Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.” [...]
[...] Dean Baker is the author of the new book, “Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.” [...]