Previously published as The Trillion Dollar Meltdown Now fully updated with the latest financial developments this is the bestselling book that briefly & brilliantly explains how we got into the economic mess that is the Credit Crunch With the housing markets unravelling daily & distress signals flying throughout the rest of the economy there is little doubt that we are facing a fierce recession In crisp gripping prose Charles R Morris shows how got into this mess He explains the arcane financial instruments the chicanery the policy misjudgments the dogmas & the delusions that created the greatest credit bubble in world history Paul Volcker slew the inflation dragon in the early 1980s & set the stage for the high performance economy of the 1980s & 1990s But Wall Street's prosperity soon tilted into gross excess The astronomical leverage at major banks & their hedge fund & private equity clients led to massive disruption in global markets A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping abusive lending & hedge fund secrecy will go down in flames with it Continued denial & concealment could cause the crisis to stretch out for years but financial & government leaders are still downplaying the problem The required restructuring will be at least as painful as the very difficult period of 1979-1983 The Two Trillion-Dollar Meltdown updated to include the latest financial developments is indispensable to understanding how the world economy has been put on the brink