Unintended Consequences, Edward Conard
Unintended Consequences, Edward Conard
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Unintended Consequences
Why Everything Youve Been Told about the Economy Is Wrong

Author: Edward Conard

Narrator: Malcolm Hillgartner

Unabridged: 9 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/07/2012

Synopsis

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, many commonly held beliefs have emerged to explain its cause. Conventional wisdom blames Wall Street and the mortgage industry for using low down payments, teaser rates, and other predatory tactics to seduce unsuspecting home owners into assuming mortgages they couldnt afford. It blames average Americans for borrowing recklessly and spending too much. And it blames the tax policies and deregulatory environment of the Reagan and Bush administrations for encouraging reckless risk taking by wealthy individuals and financial institutions. But according toUnintended Consequences, the conventional wisdom masks the real causes of our economic disruption and puts us at risk of a slew of unintendedand potentially dangerousconsequences. Unintended Consequencesis not a book that takes a couple of insights and expands them into three hundred pages; rather, it covers the entire scope of the economy. Its a fascinating and contrarian case for how the economyreallyworks, what went wrong over the past decade, and what steps we can take to start growing again. Whether you agree with the books provocative and counterintuitive conclusions or not,Unintended Consequenceswill reward you with a sophisticated understanding of the contemporary economyone no other book has yet provided.

About Edward Conard

Edward Conard was a partner at Bain Capital from 1993 to 2007. He served as the head of Bain’s New York office and led the firm’s acquisitions of large industrial companies. He sits on several boards of directors, including the boards of Waters Corporation and Sensata Technologies. Prior to Bain, Conard worked for Wasserstein Perella, an investment bank, and Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, where he headed its industrial practice. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School and the University of Michigan.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Will on June 11, 2012

Alternates between stone-cold brilliant and totally self-serving. I think Conard is just straight-up wrong on the EMH and his contention that no one really could have seen the crisis coming, but his macro-level explanations of the macro-economy are novel, non-obvious, and compelling. If 4.5 stars wa......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on September 12, 2012

In Unintended Consequences, Edward Conrad (former Managing Director of Bain Capital), did a weird thing. He wrote a fairly interesting and engaging argument about what went wrong in the housing crisis. He makes a compelling case that the fundamental problem was basically a bank run, and that governm......more

Goodreads review by Antoine on June 24, 2012

I give it a 3 because it tries to take the defense of an under-represented side of the debate, and brings up a number of good suggestions. It may be worth buying if you are interested in back of the envelope calculations and justification that innovation of a "few" benefits the "many". But on the cor......more

Goodreads review by Eric on March 19, 2020

It shall require a second listen, and probably buying a printed copy, before I can totally grasp some of the first two chapters on the risk factor involved in the US economy. But this seems a pretty solid work on what may have gone wrong in leading up to the recent financial crisis and the after aff......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on July 17, 2012

This book has 2 basic points: one is that the financial crisis was caused not by the banks but by investors' irrational exuberance. I agree with that. The other one is that to get out of the crisis, we must cut benefits to the poor and cut the tax rate of the rich. He claims that the rich invest a l......more

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