Sunday, April 17, 2011  Fatal Risk – the must-read book on AIG's
failure  There are dozens of books on the financial crisis: I
have read many of them and the Kindle samples for just about all
of them. There are only two I would recommend: those are Bethany
McLean and Joe Nocera’s excellent All the Devils are Here and
the much more specifically detailed Fatal Risk from Roddy Boyd.
Roddy's book is solely concerned with the failure of AIG.  Both
books start without any strong ideological preconceptions and
let the facts woven into a good story do the talking - and both
wind up ambivalent about many of the major players - with many
players having human weaknesses (gullibility, delusion,
arrogance etc) but committing nothing that looks like a strong
case for criminal prosecution. Reading these you can see why
there are so few criminal prosecutions from the crisis. And you
will also see just how extreme the human failings that caused
the crisis are.  If you are not familiar with the saga that led
up to the mortgage