Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong

Edward Conard

May 2012 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

In the aftermath of the Financial Crisis, many com­monly held beliefs have emerged to explain its cause. Conventional wisdom blames Wall Street and the mortgage industry for using low down pay­ments, teaser rates, and other predatory tactics to seduce unsuspecting home owners into assuming mortgages they couldn't afford. It blames average Americans for borrowing recklessly and spend­ing too much. And it blames the tax policies and deregulatory environment of the Reagan and Bush administrations for encouraging reckless risk taking by wealthy individuals and financial institutions. But according to Unintended Consequences, the conventional wisdom masks the real causes of our economic disruption and puts us at risk of facing a slew of unintended-and potentially dangerous-consequences.

Ratings and reviews

I only read the free preview. I wouldn't buy this book. But I have some thoughts on what I read. Starting with the questions. Here are my answers: Q. If the United States had become a nation of reckless consumers rather than investors, why did productivity soar in the years leading up to the meltdown? A. Because companies stopped protecting workers and optimized profits instead. Q. If predatory bankers took advantage of home owners, why did down payments decline, thereby shifting risk from home owners to lenders? Q. Because banks wanted regular income and even risky loans are still loans. Q. If the risks were easy to spot, why did top politi­cal and financial advisers encourage lenders to make unsound investments? A. I don't think they did. But being ignorant of the trend (housing bubble) is no excuse Q. If new regulations encourage banks to hold enough capital to fund withdrawals and not just loan losses, how will the economy underwrite the risks necessary to reach full employment? A. We will never reach full employment, but banks must be held to safer investments with other people's money. Conard goes on to ask more inane questions that have reasonable answers if you just take off the blinders to reality. Yes the 50s and 60's were different and better, yes the 70s and 80s were hard on growth as the world economy started to rev up and threaten the old lumbering businesses used to little competition. Yes the 90s 2000s turned to service and IT innovation. But did the policies of the last 4 decades consider real plight of the working man? I think not.

About the author

Edward "Ed" Conard is the author of the New York Times top-ten bestselling book, Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong (2012). He is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Previously, he was a founding partner of Bain Capital, where he worked closely with his friend and colleague, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
 
In May of 2012, Conard published Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong. The book was featured on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine and went on to become a New York Times top ten non-fiction bestseller. Because of the publicity surrounding the publication of his book, Conard was the tenth most searched author on Google in 2012.
 
Since its publication, Mr. Conard has made over 100 television appearances in which he has debated leading economists including Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Alan Kruger, Austan Goolsbee, and Jared Bernstein; journalists including Jon Stewart, Fareed Zakaria, Chris Hayes, and Andrew Ross Sorkin; and politicians such as Barney Frank, Howard Dean, and Eliot Spitzer.
 
Prior to Bain Capital, Conard worked for Wasserstein Perella & Co., an investment bank that specialized in mergers and acquisitions, and Bain & Company, a management-consulting firm, where he led the firm's industrial practice.
 
Conard has a master of business administration degree from Harvard Business School and a bachelor of science degree in engineering from the University of Michigan.
 
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