{"product_id":"9781429940047","title":"The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America--and Spawned a Global Crisis","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWho killed the economy? \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA page-turning, true-crime  exposé of the subprime salesmen and Wall Street alchemists who produced  the biggest financial scandal in American history \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"It's  hard to have a guilty conscience if you don't have a conscience.  Anything that benefited production - that benefited me and benefited my  wallet - I'd do it.\"\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe sales force at Ameriquest Mortgage  took this philosophy to heart. They watched the Hollywood  white-collar-crime flick \"Boiler Room\" as a training tape, studying how  to pitch overpriced deals to unsuspecting home owners. They learned how  to forge signatures on mortgage paperwork and create fake documents in  \"cut-and-paste\" operations they dubbed \"The Lab\" or \"The Art  Department.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this stunning narrative, award-winning reporter  Michael W. Hudson reveals the story of the rise and fall of the subprime  mortgage business by chronicling the rise and fall of two corporate  empires: Ameriquest and Lehman Brothers. As the biggest subprime lender  and Wall Street's biggest patron of subprime, Ameriquest and Lehman did  more than any other institutions to create the feeding frenzy that  emboldened mortgage pros to flood the nation with high-risk, high-profit  home loans. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt's a tale populated by a remarkable cast of the  characters: a shadowy billionaire who created the subprime industry out  of the ashes of the 1980s S\u0026amp;L scandal; Wall Street executives with  an insatiable desire for product; struggling home owners ensnared in the  most ingenious of traps; lawyers and investigators who tried to expose  the fraud; politicians and bureaucrats who turned a blind eye; and, most  of all, the drug-snorting, high-living salesmen who tell all about the  money they made, the lies they told, the deals they closed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eProvocative and gripping, \u003ci\u003eThe Monster\u003c\/i\u003e is a searing exposé of the bottom-feeding fraud and top-down greed that fueled the financial collapse.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Holt, Henry \u0026 Company, Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47153848090864,"sku":"9781429940047","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781429940047_p0.jpg?v=1769902278","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781429940047","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}