Introduction

As the nation struggles to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the people who got us here are desperately working to rewrite history. The basic story of this economic collapse is very simple. The Federal Reserve Board, guided by its revered chairman, Alan Greenspan, allowed an $8 trillion housing bubble to grow unchecked.

Arguably, the Fed even fostered the bubble's growth, seeing it as the only source of dynamism in an economy that was suffering from the aftershocks of the collapse of a $10 trillion stock bubble. Greenspan repeatedly insisted that the housing market was just fine, even as a small group of economists and analysts raised concerns about the unprecedented run-up in house prices. He also ...

Get False Profits now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.