Daniel Gross
[The authors]…were willing to sacrifice speed and buzz for the sake of quality writing and a textured, multilayered story. Unlike many of the quickie books on the crisis, All the Devils Are Here is tightly written, methodical and unsensationalistic…it's very much worth reading for its damning conclusions and its craftsmanship. McLean and Nocera weave seemingly unrelated strands of the story into a coherent tapestry…this narrative was constructed by skilled professionals with great care and attention. It's a shame the same can't be said for our mortgage industry.
—The Washington Post
From the Publisher
For those readers who have not immersed themselves in the murky tale of the way dubious housing finance became entangled with Wall Street’s casino culture, McLean and Nocera offer as legible an overview as exists. More than offering just a backward look, it helps explain the most troubling business headlines of the moment, as well as those that are certain to come.” – New York Times
Hard-hitting reporting and fluent writing bring the utter devastation of the Great Recession to life—with John Cassidy's How Markets Fail (2009) an essential aid to understanding where all the money went, and who benefited. - Kirkus Reviews
Unlike many of the quickie books on the crisis, All the Devils Are Here is tightly written, methodical and unsensationalistic…it's very much worth reading for its damning conclusions and its craftsmanship. – Washington Post
Kirkus Reviews
A closely written account of the late financial meltdown, when, in the words of one analyst, "we went from a collective belief in soundness to a collective belief in insolvency."
That change of attitude is entirely understandable, inasmuch as the financial system was predicated on abstractions. The origins of the meltdown and the subsequent Great Recession, write former Fortune and current Vanity Fair contributor McLean (co-author: The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, 2003) andNew York Timesreporter Nocera (A Piece of the Action : How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class, 1994), largely lie in the speculator's dream called the mortgage-backed security, which "allowed Wall Street to scoop up loans made to people who were buying homes, bundle them together by the thousands, and then resell the bundle, in bits and pieces, to investors." This innovation netted fortunes for the players at the top, undoing the former bond between buyer and seller and leading directly to the rise of the subprime industry and its toxic holdings. Ironically, write the authors, the securitizing of mortgages was not an invention of Wall Street but of government, with the federal agencies Ginnie Mae and then Freddie Mac selling securities 40 years ago. Scrupulously fair, McLean and Nocera look inside the closed doors of agencies, some now extinct, such as Bear Stearns and Countrywide, which took the official rhetoric, shared by George Bush and Bill Clinton alike, that there is something near-sacred about homeownership and ran with it. Interestingly, the authors attribute the failed policing of the subprime industry, whose criminal business practices were the engine of the meltdown, to a very real fear on the part of the government that cracking down would harm the people who most needed help. Those little fish were soon swallowed up by the Wall Street sharks, who sagely played the odds to the end, when it finally became apparent that the system was being hit by a perfect storm far beyond the worst of worst-case scenarios.
Hard-hitting reporting and fluent writing bring the utter devastation of the Great Recession to life—with John Cassidy'sHow Markets Fail (2009) an essential aid to understanding where all the money went, and who benefited.
