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Nov 16, 2018IndyPL_SteveB rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
A fascinating look at American economic history of the past 110 years, with a focus on five of the great failures of attempted financial engineering. While this could have been a dry, technical manual, Nations is a lively writer who considers the personalities and fallibilities of the humans involved. If you have little knowledge of the vocabulary of markets, you will have to work at this a little bit; but the author is actually quite good at explaining the concepts without too much jargon. The “Five Crashes” that Nations examines in his book are: *The Panic of October, 1907 *Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929 – the crash that started the Great Depression *Black Monday, October 19 and 20, 1987 *The Great Recession, the mortgage market collapse in September-November, 2008 *The Flash Crash, May 6, 2010 Nations points out the multiple causes for each crash and finds the surprising similarities between each. NOT surprisingly, greed and short-term thinking are common factors. In addition to the interesting history, this is a good look at the risks of the stock market.