In FED We Trust, David Wessel
In FED We Trust, David Wessel
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In FED We Trust
Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic

Author: David Wessel

Narrator: Dan Woren

Unabridged: 10 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/04/2009


Synopsis

“Whatever it takes”

That was Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s vow as the worst financial panic in more than fifty years gripped the world and he struggled to avoid the once unthinkable: a repeat of the Great Depression. Brilliant but temperamentally cautious, Bernanke researched and wrote about the causes of the Depression during his career as an academic. Then when thrust into a role as one of the most important people in the world, he was compelled to boldness by circumstances he never anticipated.

The president of the United States can respond instantly to a missile attack with America’s military might, but he cannot respond to a financial crisis with real money unless Congress acts. The Fed chairman can. Bernanke did. Under his leadership the Fed spearheaded the biggest government intervention in more than half a century and effectively became the fourth branch of government, with no direct accountability to the nation’s voters.

Believing that the economic catastrophe of the 1930s was largely the fault of a sluggish and wrongheaded Federal Reserve, Bernanke was determined not to repeat that epic mistake. In this penetrating look inside the most powerful economic institution in the world, David Wessel illuminates its opaque and undemocratic inner workings, while revealing how the Bernanke Fed led the desperate effort to prevent the world’s financial engine from grinding to a halt.

In piecing together the fullest, most authoritative, and alarming picture yet of this decisive moment in our nation’s history, In Fed We Trust answers the most critical questions. Among them:

• What did Bernanke and his team at the Fed know–and what took them by surprise? Which of their actions stretched–or even ripped through–the Fed’s legal authority? Which chilling numbers and indicators made them feel they had no choice?

• What were they thinking at pivotal moments during the race to sell Bear Stearns, the unsuccessful quest to save Lehman Brothers, and the virtual nationalization of AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac? What were they saying to one another when, as Bernanke put it to Wessel: “We came very close to Depression 2.0”?

• How well did Bernanke, former treasury secretary Hank Paulson, and then New York Fed president Tim Geithner perform under intense pressure?

• How did the crisis prompt a reappraisal of the once-impregnable reputation of Alan Greenspan?

In Fed We Trust is a breathtaking and singularly perceptive look at a historic episode in American and global economic history.

About The Author

David Wessel is the economics editor of The Wall Street Journal and writes the Capital column, a weekly look at the forces shaping living standards around the world. David has shared two Pulitzer Prizes, one for Boston Globe stories in 1983 on the persistence of racism in Boston and the other for stories in The Wall Street Journal in 2002 on corporate wrongdoing. He appears frequently on National Public Radio and is a regular on PBS’s Washington Week.


Reviews

Goodreads review by John on April 25, 2021

David Wessel is a keen and disinterested reporter of the workings of the financial markets, the same sort of objective reporting he produced as the economics editor of the Wall Street Journal. His book about the Federal Reserve Board's (the Fed)efforts to first address the failure of those financial......more

Goodreads review by Justin on April 15, 2017

This is probably the first complete look at the Fed and Treasury's handling of the financial crisis. I've enjoyed getting greater detail on those events which I followed with much interest (and my students are writing a wiki about). I enjoy Wessel's columns and tweets. Economists like Scott Sumner ha......more

Goodreads review by David on September 13, 2012

Okay, being a supporter of a central banking system, and a supporter of the Federal reserve in particular, I was upset at what seemed to be the haphazard, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants decision making the Fed engaged in, along with the Treasury, on the bailouts of all the financial institutions. Thi......more

Goodreads review by Rodney on June 12, 2018

This book describes the actions of the Federal Reserve under the direction of Ben Bernanke in coordination with Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, to combat the Great Panic of 2007-2008. In other words, it focuses on the perspective of government officials: what decisions they made to cope wit......more

Goodreads review by B on February 12, 2023

A book that explains the financial crisis of 2007-2009 in intricate detail, but in layman terms. Wessel provides an overview of the events surrounding Federal Reserve banking system’s foundation (including the conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton where the latter’s failed attempt at founding Firs......more


Quotes

“...gives a revealing blow-by-blow account of the recent financial crisis”
—David Brooks, The New York Times

“...essential, lucid—and, it turns out, riveting—reading."
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“...a tale that’s nothing short of hair-raising..reveals in scary detail how unprepared politicians and regulators truly were...”
—Paul M Barrett, The New York Times Book Review

“Wessel delivers an engrossing account of Bernanke's improvisational responses to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
Fortune Magazine

“... so far the most entertaining and most readable book on the financial crisis.”
—Tyler Cowen, marginalrevolution.com

“...persuasively told and richly reported... It will win awards and inspire copycats.”
BusinessWeek

"David Wessel brings his deep knowledge of the Federal Reserve and U.S. politics and economics to a topic that will be studied by historians for decades to come...No one can understand what happened and what did not happen without reading this book."
–Joseph E. Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics and author of Globalization and its Discontents