Unravelling the Credit Crunch

David Murphy is principal of rivast Consulting, a leading London risk management consultancy.

• Introduction. What Happened? Understanding the Slime: U.S. Residential Mortgages. Financial Assets and Their Prices. Liquidity and Central Banks. The Crash of 1929 and Its Legacy. Securitization, Tranching, and Financial Modeling. The Legacy Fails: Fannie, Freddie, and the Broker/Dealers in 2008. Structured Finance. Municipal Finance and the Monolines. The Rules of the Game: Accounting and Regulation. Changes and Consequences. Index.

"The crisis is a bafflingly complex phenomenon. This complexity is considerably amplified by the incomprehensible jargon that most experts use to discuss it. This book is the first that I have seen to explain the many different aspects of the crisis in terms that everybody can understand. The coverage is excellent starting with why the crisis started in the housing sector, the role of the Federal Reserve, and so forth. The book also explains securitization, tranching, and many other technical aspects the reader needs to understand what happened. It provides historical context by discussing what happened in the 1930s and the 1990s in Japan. While the U.S. is naturally central, the effect of the crisis on other countries is also discussed. I highly recommend this book to everybody."—Franklin Allen, Nippon Life Professor of Finance and Economics, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA