It's hard to prevent future taxpayer bailouts if one doesn't truly understand how the bubbles are built. Read my book, Fairy Tale Capitalism: Fact and Fiction Behind Too Big To Fail. It is the history of the building of the financial bubble. It covers the basics of how the biggest banks used financial engineering to create a superhighway of risk. They charged the tolls and used part of the profits to gain the legislation they desired out of Congress. Congress eliminated the barriers between investment and commercial banking and removed over-the-counter derivatives from regulatory oversight. This book shows how investment banking's risk-seeking trading orientation overtook the credit culture of commercial banking, which is backed by the federal deposit guarantee. This is the rare perspective of a credit expert, and it reveals some little-known details behind systemic risk. Find out why the Fed supported the biggest banks' senior credit ratings despite their weaker financial profiles and what that means for the risk profiles of their major derivatives counterparties.
The book is available from all the major book outlets, including in electronic form, and also from the publisher, AuthorHouse.