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Roger Lowenstein's take on the current financial crisis

January 21, 2010

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From the introduction of his April 06, 2010 book called The End of Wall Street, Roger Lowenstein states: "On the evidence, Lehman was more nearly the climax, or one of a series of climaxes, in a long and painful cataclysm. By the time it failed, the critical moment was long past. Banks had suffered horrendous losses that drained their capital, and as the country was to discover, capitalism without capital is like a furnace without fuel.

From the introduction of his April 06, 2010 book called The End of Wall Street, Roger Lowenstein states:
"On the evidence, Lehman was more nearly the climax, or one of a series of climaxes, in a long and painful cataclysm. By the time it failed, the critical moment was long past. Banks had suffered horrendous losses that drained their capital, and as the country was to discover, capitalism without capital is like a furnace without fuel. Promptly, the economy went cold. The recession mushroomed into the most devastating in postwar times. The modern financial system, in which markets rather than political authorities self-regulated risk-taking, for the first time truly failed. This was the result of a dark and powerful storm front that had been long gathering at Wall Street's shore. By the end of summer 2008, neither Wall Street nor the wider world could escape the imminent blow. To seek the sources of the crash, and even the causes, we must go back much further."

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