very simple

All the Devils Are Here by Bethany McLean

A really in-depth look at all of the decisions and events that led to the 2008 financial crisis/collapse, from the internal workings at all of the major investment banks, the sub-prime lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the ratings agencies and AIG. No one (or very few people) actually committed “crimes”, but everyone kept pushing the envelope of what was appropriate within their given sphere, and each bad decision was compounded by the bad decisions of 100 other players. Each of these financial products (from the mortgages themselves to the securitization vehicles to the collateralized debt obligations to the credit-default-swaps to the synthetic CDOs), when first created, made perfect sense. But not necessarily when all thrown into the mix at the same time, each one feeding off of the other in a vicious cycle of lower and lower standards and more and more debt.

It’s hard to say who was the worst player in the bunch. Was it AIG, which essentially allowed the entire risk-management function to exist inside Hank Greenberg’s septuagenarian head? Or the ratings agencies, who kept giving all of these things triple-A ratings, which were supposed to mean that the investments were as “safe as treasury bonds”, even after they were well aware of the underlying problems? Or the investment banks who sidelined their own risk-managers because they didn’t turn a profit? Or the subprime lenders, who were handing out reams of money to people that they knew could never pay it back, even in a best-case scenario?

And of course, popular notions of “who’s to blame” are often not anywhere near the truth. Fannie and Freddie got a large share of the blame for causing the problem, but in actuality, they were very late to the party, and only ended up in the subprime market in the first place because they were required, by law, to guarantee a certain percentage of low-income housing. Because the subprime lenders were undercutting the more traditional “hard money” lenders that had previously serviced this market, Fannie and Freddie almost had no choice but to start buying up subprime loans. Of course, they didn’t take a step back and try to use their mighty lobbying power to get out of this obligation, or to highlight the problem, but it’s a very different scenario than the idea that they “caused” the entire mess.

Just amazing.

Not quite as “entertaining” as McLean’s prior book, “The Smartest Guys in the Room”, but then again, the collapse of our entire financial system was bound to be less entertaining than a bunch of guys in Houston who were just giant fraudsters, spending tens of thousands of dollars on everything from race cars to strippers.

In November, I rearranged my living room. This involved moving my giant, heavy bookshelf, which in turn required me to remove all the books for the first time in several years.

As a consequence, I ended up with a pile of (mostly) mass market paperbacks that I really never planned on reading again and had no sentimental attachment to, so I decided to pack them up for Housing Works. And here they sit, because I never seem to remember to actually take them with me when I leave my apartment. And lest you think I’m entitled to avoid a big hassle, there’s a Housing Works shop two blocks away.

It was announced months ago, but today was the day that the Lincoln Square Barnes and Noble officially went out of business. I was hoping to just get a picture of the “closed” sign in the window, but when I wandered down, they were dismantling the giant signage from the front of the store, so it seemed more fitting to get a shot of the disassembled giant letters.

I can’t even count the number of hours I’ve spent in the cafe and wandering the aisles of this store. Even after getting my nook, I still like to browse the physical bookstore to get ideas of what I’d like to read next, and I was in here at least 2-3 times a week.

Not to mention the fact that, after the closing of the Tower Records across the street a few years ago, this is the last place in the neighborhood that had a decent music department. Sad.

I finished two more books before 2010 came to a close, and they were both part of the same series, so I’ll tackle them together.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

The second and third books in the Hunger Games Trilogy, these books certainly lived up to their hype, although Catching Fire was a bit more engaging (only a bit!). Mockingjay seemed to take longer to get where it was going, and Katniss, the protagonist, spent much of that book essentially sitting on the sidelines – I understand why it was necessary for the story, and she had her own demons to wrestle with even away from the front lines, but the big, world-changing stuff essentially happened off-page until near the end.

But the end… really fantastic. I think my favorite part of all three of these books was that, despite being in the “young adult” category, Collins wasn’t afraid to show relationships as messy and complicated. It’s a nice change of pace from the “one true love that stands in the face of all challenges” that’s been presented to teenage girls in books like the twilight series and even Harry Potter.

My only regret is that there isn’t going to be a fourth novel. I suppose I’ll have to content myself with waiting for the inevitable movie (which I believe they’re already casting!).

Happy New Year everyone. My final reading tally for 2010 was 35 books. Not quite hitting the 50 book challenge target, but certainly more than I’ve ever read in a single year in my adulthood.

Since my last book review, I’ve read 4 books. But, between the holidays (and holiday-related travel) combined with my general weather-related ennui, I haven’t posted reviews of them. So, here’s a quick hit list of each of them. All of them were very good to excellent, but I’m already on to something new…

The War for Late Night by Bill Carter

I never read Carter’s first book about the Leno/Letterman brouhaha (and since it’s not available for my nook, won’t be for some time), but this makes me want to. A really engrossing look at the battle between Leno and Conan O’Brien, with some really neat history of the “other” late night hosts (Kimmel, Fallon), I couldn’t put it down. I have no love for Leno, and he comes off as a bit of a joke-spewing automaton, but the fact that the show, and performing stand-up is pretty much the ONLY thing he does should have clued network execs into the fact that he wasn’t just going to go gently into that goodnight once his contract was up. Not to mention the assumption that Conan would continue to be the perpetual whipping boy – willing to take whatever scraps the network gave him on the altar of “someday you’ll get to host the Tonight Show”. The person that comes off best is Fallon, who seems to have found the future of late night in DVRs and internet-friendly pieces. So much so that I’ve started DVRing his show since I read this book.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I’m not ashamed to say that I loved this book, in all of it’s young adult glory. There’s a reason people are obsessed with it. From it’s proto-feminist kickass heroine, Katniss, to the horror of the dystopian future in which she lives, I was engrossed from beginning to end. I would also point out that I had resisted reading this for some time, until even the non-book-reading Stephen Thompson of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, which I adore to no end, began his “Stephen reads a book” project with this. That pushed me over the edge.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

There’s not a lot I can say about this book without spoiling it too badly – there are just too many secrets wrapped up in this tale of two southern men, one black and one white, one relatively successful and one a perpetual loser, who are tied together through a variety of tragic circumstances. Except that I was completely drawn in.

The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro

And, of course, on a completely different note…I just finished this pretty gruesome vampire tale (part one of three) set in New York City, where vampirism is a viral infection, and the vampires are pretty horrific. Closer to zombies or the monsters in I Am Legend than the mysterious sexiness of our current vampire craze. I’m still not sure I get all of the conspiracy aspects – but those probably (I hope!) get fleshed out in the next two parts of the trilogy. That being said, once the action really got started, I couldn’t put it down, and read the last 100 or so pages in one sitting last night.