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The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America--and Spawned a Global Crisis Paperback – September 13, 2011
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"Magnificently and heartbreakingly told. . . . [Hudson] shows vividly that really filthy, face-to-face fraud and hard-sell bullying . . . brought the economy down around our ears."-The Boston Globe
In this page-turning, true-crime exposé, award-winning reporter Michael W. Hudson reveals the story of the rise and fall of the biggest subprime lender and Wall Street's biggest patron of subprime: Ameriquest and Lehman Brothers. They did more than any other institutions to produce the biggest financial scandal in American history.
It's a tale populated by a remarkable cast of characters: a shadowy billionaire who created the subprime industry out of the ashes of the 1980s S&L scandal; insatiable Wall Street executives; ensnared home owners; investigators who tried to expose the fraud; politicians who turned a blind eye; and, most of all, the drug-snorting, high-living salesman who tell all about the money they made, the lies they told, the deals they closed.
Provocative and gripping, The Monster is a searing look at the bottom-feeding fraud and top-down greed that fueled the financial collapse.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateSeptember 13, 2011
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.85 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-10031261053X
- ISBN-13978-0312610531
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“#1 Book of the Year” ―Baltimore City Paper
“Reads like chilling and compelling fiction. But the facts are true and the story is all too real.” ―Simon Johnson, coauthor of 13 Bankers
“Magnificently and heartbreakingly told. . . . This tremendous, well-documented book shows vividly that really filthy, face-to-face fraud and hard-sell bullying … brought the economy down.” ―The Boston Globe
“Remarkably comprehensive . . . a sweeping, detailed, and forceful account of the events, the people, and the policies that led to our current economic woes…. and the brave few who tried to stop it.” ―The New Republic
“Hudson has a talent for describing what was happening on the ground. He takes us on a tour of the financial carnival tent pitched by subprime factories like Ameriquest.” ―Time Magazine
“As engagingly written as Michael Lewis' The Big Short (which chronicles the struggles the winners endured during the last bubble), as caustic and trenchant in its analysis of the dotty economic theories that underpin our bubble economy as Yves Smith's ECONned; and at least as cogent of the big-picture power politics as Simon Johnson's 13 Bankers, The Monster also does what those books don't: It reveals the inner lives of both the victims and the perpetrators of predatory lending.” ―Baltimore City Paper
“Hudson's book is a guide to the worst excesses of the mortgage business . . . [and offers] a deeper, truer understanding of the many-headed subprime monster. . . . [The Monster] succeeds by entertaining us with behind-the-scenes moments and personal stories from people trading their ethics for all-expenses-paid trips to Hawaii.” ―The Seattle Times
“Terrifically readable. . . . Hudson gives readers piercing insight into the booze, broads and cocaine that fueled the buccaneers in the mortgage game. . . . Though I thought myself too old to be shocked, the revelations here shocked me. Read it and weep.” ―Chico News & Review
“Michael W. Hudson's book-length investigative journalism piece on the subprime meltdown, The Monster, is both a brilliant example of skeptical business journalism done right, and a brilliant example of the storyteller's art… Hudson's book is a model for excellent investigative journalism. It's a book that should be required reading for anyone who says that the economic crisis was caused by greedy mortgage-takers who spent too loosely with their credit cards.” ―BoingBoing.com
“Essential reading for anyone concerned with the mortgage crisis.” ―Library Journal
“A chilling account of the subprime-loan scandal. . . . As appalling as it is informative, Hudson's tale, which hasn't ended by a long shot, should find a large readership.” ―Booklist
“Hudson is a master of context, supplying the pre-1990s history within the mortgage-lending business, Wall Street and the government-regulation realm. A knowledgeable, clearly written exposé.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“Mike Hudson is a terrific journalist and an even more engaging writer. The Monster is as captivating as it is deep, not 5,000 feet but 10,000. The book is a down-to-the-bone account of the genesis of the financial crisis and paints a visceral picture of the structural deficiencies in our financial system. Lehman Brothers failure is 10x Enron and 100x Long Term Capital Management. We cannot afford not to learn from the valuable lessons in this book.” ―Lawrence G. McDonald, co-author of A Colossal Failure of Common Sense
“Buy this book because Mike Hudson is a terrific reporter. Buy it because Hudson tells a vital and underreported story that somehow most every other journalist seemed to miss. But mainly you should buy and devour The Monster because it's a great read, a page turner in the fashion of the best true-crime non-fiction.” ―Gary Rivlin, author of The Plot to Get Bill Gates and Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc--How the Working Poor Became Big Business
“The Monster reads like chilling and compelling fiction. But the facts are true and the story is all too real. Millions of Americans were ripped off by devious people in pursuit of ever more profit, but that is not the biggest scandal. Amazingly, we have still not fixed the underlying problems of incentives, attitudes, and beliefs in our financial system. If we continue to shy away from real reform, American families are doomed to run repeatedly through some version of this awful cycle.” ―Simon Johnson, coauthor of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown
“How did we get in this mess? Michael W. Hudson's The Monster is a haunting, horrifying account of corporate skullduggery -- from the unregulated bucketshops of California to the hallowed halls of Lehman Brothers. No other book or article I have read so clearly identifies the human weaknesses and institutional frailties that created the worst financial scandal in American history. Hudson was one of the first investigative reporters on this story and he is still the best at tracking a nationwide collapse down to its first forged signature.” ―Elizabeth Mitchell, former executive editor of George Magazine and author of W: Revenge of the Bush Dynasty
About the Author
Hudson has been called the "Woodward/Bernstein of the mortgage crisis" by Daily Kos and the journalist who "beat the world on subprime abuses" by Columbia Journalism Review. CJR wrote of him: "You have to marvel at how a reporter can put this stuff together but the SEC/Department of Justice/FTC/FHA etc. can't."
His reporting and writing has won or shared more than 50 nationaljournalism honors, including the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, four George Polk Awards, four Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards, twoOverseas Press Club Awards and the Barlett & Steele Gold Medal. As an editor, he helped lead projects that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize forInternational Reporting, a Robert F. Kennedy Award, the ASNE Batten Medal, the Michael Kelly Award and Investigative Reporters and Editors' Tom Renner Awardfor crime reporting,
He has previously worked as senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, where he served as an editor, reporter and writer on the Panama Papers investigation. He has also worked as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and the Roanoke (Va.) Times and has contributed articles to Forbes, the Washington Post and the New York Times. .
Product details
- Publisher : St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (September 13, 2011)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 031261053X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0312610531
- Item Weight : 14.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.85 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,396,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #355 in Mortgages (Books)
- #1,084 in Banks & Banking (Books)
- #2,112 in Company Business Profiles (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Michael Hudson is a Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist. His two decades of work on mortgage and banking fraud has prompted media observers to call him the reporter "who beat the world on subprime abuses," the "guru of all things predatory lending" and "the Woodward/Bernstein of the mortgage crisis."
He is currently on his second stint as a senior editor with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. At ICIJ, Hudson has worked on many major projects, including the organization's Offshore Leaks, China Leaks, Luxembourg Leaks, Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and FinCEN Files investigations of offshore money laundering and tax avoidance. He was an editor, reporter and writer on the Panama Papers investigation, which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. In between his two tours at ICIJ, Hudson worked as global investigations editor at The Associated Press, where he edited the AP's investigation of war crimes and corruption in Yemen, which won a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
His reporting has also been published in Forbes, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, Le Monde, El Pais, The Sydney Morning Herald and other publications.
Along with the Pulitzer Prize, his work has won many honors -- including five Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards, four George Polk Awards, three SPJ Awards and two Overseas Press Club Awards as well as accolades from the National Press Club, the White House Correspondents' Association, the American Bar Association, New York Press Club and the New York State Society of CPAs.
He edited the award-winning book Merchants of Misery and appeared in the documentary film Maxed Out. His latest book, THE MONSTER: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America--and Spawned a Global Crisis, was named 2010 Book of the Year by Baltimore City Paper and called "essential reading for anyone concerned with the mortgage crisis" by Library Journal.
His 2011 series of stories for the Center for Public Integrity, "The Great Mortgage Cover-Up," was selected to appear in Columbia University Press's Best Business Writing 2012 and won two awards from the Society of American Business Writers and Editors.
https://www.icij.org/journalists/michael-hudson/
Twitter: @michaelwhudson
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"The Monster..." is the page-turning expose of the subprime mortgage business. Award-winning reporter Michael W. Hudson narrates a fascinating web of deception that was infuriatingly targeted against the most vulnerable of our society. It describes the scoundrels and their methods. This 384-page book is composed of the following fifteen chapters: 1. Godfather, 2. Golden State, 3. Purge, 4. Kill the Enemy, 5. The Big Spin, 6. The Track, 7. Buried, 8. Boil, 9. The Battle for Georgia, 10. The Trail, 11. Feeding the Monster, 12. Chimera, 13. The Investigators, 14. The Big Game, and 15.Collapse.
Positives:
1. A top-notch book that is well-researched and well-written.
2. An accessible book for the masses. It's not a technical book, the stories, narrations drives this book.
3. Reads like a very good novel in which the criminals and victims lives are intertwined by events. The characters and their roles comes to light.
4. This book totally changed my perception of how predatory lending went down. Fascinating and upsetting at the same time.
5. Predatory business model illustrated.
6. Wall Street's main villain, Lehman. Their role and impact.
7. The subprime abuses of Roland Arnall of Ameriquest.
8. The impact of politics in the deregulatory business.
9. The essence of the subprime business explained. Educational indeed.
10. Mr. Hudson makes it fairly clear, first of all, predatory lending was a crime that was perpetuated against the most vulnerable of our society. Secondly, it was mainly refinancing loans. In other words, they targeted the elderly and minorities who already owned homes and had enough equity to make the crime work. Sickening!
11. The book contains so many interesting and sad stories of victims of predatory loans.
12. Predatory lending was not just limited to loans with bad terms but outright fraud to get the approval of said loans in the first place. The book relays how one manager figured that $75 million out of the $90 million in mortgages he sold contained some sort of "material fraud".
13. Prudential's role in the subprime business.
14. The role of "securitization" in the subprime business.
15. Thought-provoking quotes, "If you don't believe in the product you're selling, he thought, you're just a con artist".
16. The stories of the rise and fall of many subprime institutions: FAMCO, Keystone to name a few.
17. The Federal Trade Commission was the only federal agency that showed concern about mortgage lending abuses.
18. The fascinating inside look at the investigations of predatory lenders and the outcomes.
19. The realization that in the banking industry, crime may in fact pay...
20. Fascinating facts throughout book. The dollar amounts are mind-blowing.
21. The fact that the lenders portrayed in the book seldom lowered people's rates and almost always put them in worse positions.
22. The rise and fall of Alan Greenspan.
23. Mr. Hudson makes the compelling argument backed by strong examples that the main blame of the subprime crisis falls on Wall Street and the institutions that designed the evil schemes that defrauded millions of borrowers.
24. How the subprime predatory practices impacted us all.
25. The main culprits of the subprime mortgage catastrophe.
26. How Richard Fuld and other top executives of Lehman represented the predatory lending fraud and paid themselves handsomely while their companies deteriorated.
27. A where are they now closing chapter that neatly ties everything up at the end.
28. An interesting read throughout.
Negatives:
1. Notes are not linked!
2. With so many players involved, it's easy to get lost at times.
3. Charts or illustrations would have added value.
4. I would have liked a little more on CRA and the political blame game.
In summary, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It provided much needed education on this important topic of subprime mortgages and in doing so changed my perception on who was mainly to blame. A very accessible and enlightening book, I highly recommend it!
Further suggestions: "Perfectly Legal..." by David Cay Johnston, "War on the Middle Class..." by Lou Dobbs, "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class" by Thom Hartmann, "The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy" by Joshua Holland, and "The Looting of America..." by Les Leopold.
While this is an excellent micro perspective, it is weak on the broader perspective. There is little explanation of how broader economic issues affected or were affected by subprime mortgages. Although Hudson explains in exquisite detail how individuals were defrauded by hard-sale techniques, he does not explain how the supbrime securitization system could have run for so long (over 10 years), if so many people were put into mortgages they could not afford to pay and thus would have quickly defaulted on. All bubbles burst, as the housing bubble did, when interest rates rise and running debts cannot be turned over. Hudson provides virtually no discussion of this aspect of the history. For that, one is better off reading "This Time Is Different."
Hudson also simplistically paints all republicans as villains and all democrats as dupes at worst. That is lazy and inaccurate. Also, in Hudson's telling, free-market advocates are nothing but shills for evil corporate interests who are just looking for another way to screw the unsuspecting poor out of their pittances. That is cartoonishly simplistic. Those weaknesses are easy to skip over, however, and they do not interfere with the heart of the book, which is a well told narrative of the characters involved.
The Kindle version works well, although the publisher decided not to use footnotes or any other indication of what material is included in the endnotes. Use hyperlinked footnotes!
Why boring? It's an endless list of people hurt by the greed of credit companies, sleazy banks lying in commissions, simplistic deals before the big crisis ... all that was about to collapse.
But that said, the author's research work was very good, and the subject needed clarification.
The summary is: robbery, heartless, greedy bankers, are the world scum. And they will continue in the same way. Nothing can stop them.
To put Hudson work into context at the macro level..What were the three things which enabled the whole ripoff to take place? (1) An easy money policy by the Federal Reserve (2)The "Big Three" rating agencies giving stellar ratings to junk derivatives (3) No Assignee Reponsibility to hold any interest reponsible for the toxic investments they peddled. The true genius of the whole ponzi scheme went something like this.. Bundeling crappy loans with few more good ones by "securitizing"..then passing it off as low risk investment grade stuff by the prestigiuos rating agencies (which earn fees from the same Wall Street clients which packaged the garbage).. ultimately offloaded onto the public..Then a political sales job by mainstream Dems & Republicans alike which attempted to convince the public that "we the people" must subsidize those poor ole Wall Street banks & well connected Hedge Funds/Private Equity firms by swapping US Treasuries for the junk derivatives they were left holding. Blowing smoke up the public's *** by saying the junk mortgages will somehow turn into investment grade stuff... What a joke.
The best part of the book was the personal accounts by employees of these subprime lenders relating to their "boiler room" training, falsified documents and how to get the homeowner to sign the contract without explaining the terms. One manager recalled how a loan submitted was secured by a duplex. However, the duplex was not even a house! It was a greenhouse. The borrowers' stories were all pretty much the same, with the same result - foreclosure.
It's pretty sad, and it's worse than very little is being done to help these people, while the entities that caused or contributed to the meltdown either got away with it or got government bailouts.
As so often happens, the gov't, in their zeal for instant solutions and bigger headlines have hurt the party least able to defend themselves, the honest borrower!
Whilst it focuses on the sub-prime mortgage crisis - who caused it, how and why - it is also a damning indictment of the direction in which capitalism has headed. It is not enough to work hard for your wealth these days - you should also lie, cheat, forge documents and carefully target your 'marks' who will be the weak in society and therefore those least likely to be abe to defend themselves. But as a precaution you will anyway try to buy off any organisations which might try to come to their aid and ensure that you have sufficient political backing that you are never brought to account for your actions.
I finished this book in as angry a mood as I have ever been - you will too, if you have any sense of justice or shame.
This is one of the top 5 books written on the financial crisis. Researched big time. Well done; loved reading it.
This is a "must read" for every person who has wondered about the cause of the recent financial catastrophe (and who hasn't?). I guarantee that you will want to loan it or recommend it to your friends.
-great american stickup
-all the devils are here
-bailout nation