Eduardo Porter. The Price of Everything: Finding Method in The Madness of What Things Cost (paperback). Penguin Books, 2011, pp. 296, $16.00 Why do generic drugs cost less than name-brand drugs even though the chemical makeup is, for all intensive purposes, identical? Are wealthy people happier than poor people? Moral objections aside, can one put [...]
Borrowing Our Way into Debt
Lost Decades: The Making of America’s Debt Crisis and the Long Recovery. Menzie D. Chinn and Jeffry A. Frieden. W.W. Norton & Company 2011, pp.284, $26.95 The United States is facing a debt crisis that will shape not only American politics, but also American culture for decades to come. Those policymakers tasked with solving this [...]
Millennials, the Housing Crisis, and the Future
Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures & What We Can Do About It. Don Peck. Crown Publishers 2011, pp. 223, $22.00 While many books have been written on derivatives, the housing bubble, and regulatory policy in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, few authors have yet sought to interpret how [...]
Housing and the American Dream
Regaining the Dream: How To Renew the Promise of Homeownership for America’s Working Families. Roberto G. Quercia, Allison Freeman, and Janneke Ratcliff. Brookings Institution Press, pp. 160, $19.95 Since the Great Depression, and especially since the end of the Second World War, purchasing and owning one’s home has been perceived to be part and parcel [...]
The American Mortgage System: Crisis and Reform. Edited by Susan M. Wachter and Marvin M. Smith. University of Pennsylvania Press 2011, pp.392, $49.95 There is a direct correlation between the housing bubble and the freezing up of the credit markets in 2008. Indeed, many commentators have held the largely unregulated derivatives market – much of [...]