Events

  Leopold (founding director, Labor Inst. & Public Health Inst.; The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor) spends much of this text providing an excellent “lemonade stand” explanation of the history and mechanics of the various mortgage-related securities and their derivatives that have come under scrutiny as a result of the current financial crisis. Many readers will find the simplicity of this exercise a welcome parry to the mass media refrain that only the most highly trained Wall Street professionals can comprehend these financial instruments. The Whitefish Bay, WI, school board’s foray into these unregulated markets supplies Leopold with a suitably disastrous example of how such securities and derivatives multiplied exponentially the losses resulting from the mortgage default surge that began in 2007.