Mind Over Market

Readers who want to understand the causal link between mortgages and the financial crisis will find it revealed in Black Box . LaMalfa on Books Black Box Casino: How Wall Street's Risky Shadow Banking Crashed Global Finance By Robert Stowe England Praeger, 2011 Mortgage Banking April 2012, page 25 There's been no shortgage of new books the past several years on the topic of financial crisis caustion. However, until now all have failed to connect the dots from the housing boom that began in the mid-1990s to the crash of 2008. Robert Stowe England, a senior writer for Mortgage Banking magazine, connects more dots than most in his new book, Black Box Casino: How Wall Street's Risky Shadow Banking Crashed Global Finance. Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner's Reckless Endangerment (2011) took readers deeper into the central role that Fannie Mae played in the financial crash than did Michael Lewis ( The Big Short ), Bethany McClean and Joe Nocera ( ...

Josh Gotbaum talked about the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, what it does, how it operates, and the importance of pensions. During his remarks he said that Americans are not saving enough and suggested that people should save 10 percent of their annual salary in order to maintain their lifestyle in retirement. He stressed retirement security and the need for flexibility to design 21st-century pension options that better fit modern employers and workers. He also talked about American Airlines, which filed for for bankruptcy in late 2011 and considered termination of all employee pension plans .