Content

Preface

Part One/A brief history of capitalism

Part Two/The timeline

1 – 1720: The South Sea Bubble
2 - 1873 The long depression
3 – 1907: The bank Panic
4 - 1930s: The great depression
5 - 1970s: The great inflation
6 - 1980s: The Regan & Thatcher era
7 – 1987: The crash
8 – 1997: Asia financial crisis
9 – 1998: The Russia default & LTCM
10- 1990s: Japan’s lost decade
11- 2001: The dot com bubble burst

Part Three/In the spot light

In the leading role

1 - Henry Paulson/US
2 - Ben Bernanke/US
3 - George Bush/US
4 - Alan Greenspan/US
5 - Timothy Geithner/US
6 – Barack Obama/US
7 - James Gordon Brown/UK
8 - Nicolas Sarkozy/FRANCE
9 - Angela Merkel/GERMAN
10 - Geir Hilmar Haarde/ICELAND
11 - Jean-Claude Trichet/EU
12 - José Manuel Barroso/EU

The government/international entities

13 - Federal Reserve
14 - Treasury Department
15 - Federal Deposit Insurance
16 - Federal Housing Administration
17 - European Central Bank
18 - IMF/World Bank/WTO
19 - US Securities & Exchange Commission

Other path finders

19 - Ringing the alarm bell: Roubini, Joseph Stiglitz, David Hirst, Cramer

Part Four/The 2007 subprime Invasion

1 - The earlier years
2 - The initial signs
3 - 13 June: The tide turned
4 - Bear Sterns two funds collapsed
5 - Moody cuts rating
6 - Chrysler funding crisis
7 - IKB Deutsche Industriebank
8 - Merrill Lynch broken down
9 - Paulson the optimist
10 - Citigroup the biggest write off so far
11- UK: North Rock Building Society
12- Others

Part Five/The chronicle of disaster 2008 – a brief recount

In the stormy seas

1 - Countrywide financials – first to fall
2 - Bear Sterns collapse
3 - Indymac Bank collapse
4 - Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae

The autumn mayhem

5 - The ground shaking 30 days/
6 - The nightmare continued

The after shocks

7 – Into the winter
8 - List of US government measurement
9 - Counting the loss
10 – VIX: the fear index

Part Six/The crying games – an in depth look

The end of an era – demise of the Wall Street Investment banks

1 - Fall of Bear Sterns
2 - Fall of Lehman Brothers
3 - The demise of Merrill Lynch
4 - Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanly conversion

More from US

5 - Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae: limping in the no mans land
6 – AIG: a bottomless pit
7 - Fall of Washington Mutual
8 - TARP
9 - Wachovia – Love triangle
10 - The trouble Citi
11 - SOS from Detroit
12 - GE - Fighting for survival
13 - Money Market trouble
14 - Berkshire Hathaway – the snow ball hits bump?
15 - The wolf in sheep skin – the Madoff scheme


The burning Europe

16 - EU
17 - UK
18 - Tale of Iceland
19 - German
20 - France
21 - Russian
22 - Other Europeans

The X factors

23 - The Libor story
24 - Changing face of gold
25 - Slippery oil
26 - Other commodities
27 - The lure of currencies

Other signs

28 - The global shipping crash: The Baltic Dry Index
29 - The danger of cooperate default: CDX Indexes

Part Seven/The trouble of the rest
The China syndrome/The China Inc.

1 - China: the awakening lion with two mindsets
2 - From Chindia to Chimerica

My Australia experience: Trouble in a land far away

1 - Lucky country in an unlucky time
2 - Private equities playground
3 - The xxx saga
4 - Demise of BNB & Co.

The rest

5 - The trouble spreads
6 - Sovereign wealth fund
7 - From G8 to G20

Part Eight/In retrospective

The perfect breeding ground
1 - Low rate: cheaper money and easy credit
2 - The regulation oversight
3 - The securitization bungle
4 - The off balance sheet/spv trap
5 - Mark to market – a reality or distortion
6 - Leveraging – the Viagra of greed and fear
7 – CDS: the major weapon of mass destruction
8 - Two big to fail: too big to be good?
9 - Rating agencies – judging the judge
10 - The globalization myth
11 - Shattering the Glass Steagall Act

The moral hazard

12 - Executives’ pay – laughing all the way
13 - The culprits

Part Nine/The pressing dangers

The ticking time bombs

1 - Pension/medicare/social securities
2 - The twin deficits
3 - Credit card
4 - Junk bond
5 - Derivatives
6 - Monoline insurers
7 - Hedge funds
8 - ARM
9 - Dubai’s property bubble
10 - US dollar/Treasury/bond
11 - Others

Part Ten/The US-b economy: a new theory

1 - The relative money theory
2 - The applications

Part Eleven/In the eyes of beholder

1 - From the rearview mirror
2 - Looking for the crystal ball
3 - A moral dilemma
4 - Fighting for deflation/stag - deflation
5 - Keynesian: a choice without a choice
6 - Dear America, yes you can!
7 - The new dawn: same tune, different beat

Postscript

Notes

Glossary