The Reckoning: How Bad Loans, Bad Debt, and Bad Judgment Drowned the Economy

The acclaimed New York Times investigation of the meltdown of the American financial system, reported by the leading names of frontline journalism

In the fall of 2008, The New York Times set out to investigate the convoluted roots of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. In this hard-hitting series of articles—cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as the leading reporting on the crisis—the Times’s top business reporters, including Pulitzer Prize winner Gretchen Morgenson and bestselling author Joe Nocera, offer revelations:

• the tiny, hugely profitable London-based unit whose risky bets nearly killed the insurance giant AIG and posed a mortal threat to Goldman Sachs
• former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s unquestioning support for the complicated contracts known as derivatives that overwhelmed the financial system
• the school districts and public agencies that, egged on by bond salespeople, gambled on these investments and lost
• startling lapses in judgment and oversight at behemoths, including Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and Washington Mutual
• legislators and government officials—Democrats and Republicans alike—who protected Wall Street from stiffer regulation

Now available for the first time in book form, The Reckoning stands as an essential, and at times enraging, historical document of the failures of the American financial system.