Plunder and Blunder:
The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy

By Dean Baker
Polipoint Press(2009)

For the second time this decade, the U.S. economy is sinking into a recession due to the collapse of a financial bubble. The most recent calamity will lead to a downturn deeper and longer than the stock market crash of 2001.

Dean Baker’s Plunder and Blunder chronicles the growth and collapse of the stock and housing bubbles and explains how policy blunders and greed led to the catastrophic—but completely predictable—market meltdowns. An expert guide to recent economic history, Baker offers policy prescriptions to help prevent similar financial disasters.

"Dean Baker warned us what was coming. Alas, the government and most economists ignored him. They denied that a housing bubble existed and would soon collapse with devastating consequences. Now we can read why Dean got it right when so many experts were blind. The story is intriguing—and deeply disturbing."

— William Greider, National Affairs Correspondent, The Nation,
and author of Come Home, America

"Dean Baker foresaw the housing crisis, first, persistently, and almost alone, while Bush fiddled, Congress snoozed, and the media looked resolutely the other way. In Plunder and Blunder, he delivers his trademark one-two punch: clarity and honesty, in the face of vast malfeasance."

— James K. Galbraith, author of The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too