The 1980s opened with the prime interest rate at an astonishing 21.5 percent, leading to a severe recession with unemployment reaching nearly 11 percent. Depression-like conditions befell the country, the entire thrift industry was badly insolvent and the major money center banks were loaded with third world debt. Some 3,000 bank and thrifts failed, including nine of Texas' ten largest, and Continental Illinois, which, at the time, was the seventh largest bank in the nation. These severe conditions were not only handled without creating a panic, the economy actually embarked on the longest peacetime expansion in history.
In Senseless Panic: How Washington Failed America, William M. Isaac, Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) during the banking and S&L crises of the 1980s, details what was different about 2008's meltdown that allowed the failure of a comparative handful of institutions to nearly shut down the world's financial system. The book also tells the rousing story of Isaac's time at the FDIC.
Senseless Panic is a provocative, quick-paced, and thoughtful analysis of what went wrong with the nation's banking system, a blunt indictment of United States policy, and a road map for making sure it doesn't happen again.
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9781118431986
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 07-16-2012
Pages: 240
Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
About the Author
William M. Isaac is Senior Managing Director and Global Head of Financial Institutions for FTI Consulting and Chairman of Fifth Third Bancorp. Both are positions he assumed after this book was published in its hardcover edition. He served as Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation during the banking and S&L crises of the 1980s, when some 3,000 banks and thrifts failed, including nine of the ten largest Texas banks as well as Continental Illinois, then the nation's seventh largest bank. Isaac writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Forbes, Washington Times, Washington Post, New York Times, American Banker, and other leading publications; testifies before Congress; and makes regular appearances on leading radio and television programs.
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