The Monster
by Michael W. Hudson
Times Books

Here's your Halloween horror story. The apparent conventional wisdom about the sub-prime mortgage crisis that plunged the U.S. into a near Depression is that it was banks giving in to the bad choices made by people who really had no business wanting those loans. The reality Michael Hudson exposes is very different: a morally corrupt and systematic campaign of predation, with no conscience and an excess of greed, by a sociopathic financial system--not at the fringes but in its vital centers. The victims are most often lied to and subjected to relentless psychological warfare, the records falsified and legal obligations of the lenders are circumvented. That the book begins with a primitive act of forgery is the signature of what goes on for the rest of its pages.

There are people who will enjoy reading this thoroughly reported expose as essentially a (multiple, serial, organized) crime story. I find it all too disgusting to enjoy as a reading experience, but I do want the truth even if it's hard to take. This is an important book.