I just finished reading "Infectious Greed" by Frank Partnoy. I wanted to see what people had said about the book here on DKos, but my search revealed no discussion at all. This should not be the case.
Daily Show fans (throw your hands in the air!) saw Partnoy on recently promoting his latest book, The Match King. Infectious Greed is an earlier work. I want to just saw a few quick things and then remind you to read it. Have I recommended you read it yet? No? Read it.
Shortly before leaving office, Dick Cheney said, as quoted here, that, with respect to the economic crisis:
Bush has no need to apologize for not foreseeing the economic crisis.
"I don't think he needs to apologize. I think what he needed to do is take bold, aggressive action and he has," Cheney said. "I don't think anybody saw it coming."
Here's the problem with that quote: holy crap is it wrong. And I think the parallels between this and their handling of terrorism issues is not hard to see. They ignored Clarke, ignored PDBs about imminent strikes in the U.S., and when calamity struck, they responded with plans that made the problem worse in the short and long term. (Put aside taking credit for keeping the country safe with that mark on their record.) Similarly with the financial crisis, they ignored signs that had been building, and when economic catastrophe struck, with Enron, and WorldCom, and on and on, what did they do? Less than nothing. And the notion that nobody saw it coming? Nobody except anybody who was paying attention.
Partnoy's book is a quick read, and will enable you to feel a lot smarter about what led up to the mess. Strangely, all the copies in New York City are checked out of the library right now, but I'll be returning mine shortly. I'm not the only one who had this book recommended to me, and I'm glad I read it. You will be too. Trust me, or else you can find this diary when you're done and comment on how wrong I was. But that won't happen.