I didn't see the tv show. I liked how the book was laid out and how it explained what actually happened and why. It was very enlightening and entertaining to me.

David Faber has researched extensively the (recent) history of the excesses of otherwise reputable Banks and Securities Firm in this work. Anybody who wants to know why it all fell apart so disastrously will appreciate the facts and the unveiling of the inanities of greed of Wall Street and AIG, selling to and acting in the name of "investors." 'Wall Street' began to take on ever-increasing debt and leverage. The outcome is sadly proof enough!

K. Eric Lundquist

David Faber is a long-time CNBC correspondent who was the brain-child behind the documentary "House of Cards", an excellent look into the housing and credit crisis that hit our country. While I enjoyed the documentary, the documentary all went by in a flash, with little time to reflect on (or fully understand) what REALLY was being said. Now comes the book.

"And Then The Roof Caved In" (205 pages) brings in essenence an expanded written version of the TV documentary, and much more satisfying to me, primarily because the author has the time and space to explain in greater detail on what we saw in the TV documentary. And it all blows my mind. The stupedity, the complexity, the greed, is all is so mind-blowing and anger-inducing. Couple of quotes from the book:

"By 2003, stated income mortgates were being given to people who put up less than 5 percent of the home's purchase price. The litmus test of substantial down payment coupled with verified assets had been down away with".

"In 2003, the guidelines for lending that Fannie and Freddie had so diligently applied to the mortgage market were no longer operative, So who stepped in to fill the void and buy all those mortgates made during a period of declining lending standards? It was Wall Street."

"Fannie and Freddie plunged deep into the parts of the mortgage market they had once avoided. They were also cheered on for doing so by influential congresspersons such as Democratic Representative Barney Frank from Massachussetts".

Pardon me, but did I not see Barney Frank on TV now wailing against those very practices?

The book takes time to educate us on the many complex devices and tools Wall Street dreamed up to (re)package and sell these suspect mortgages, making loads of money for a few years, and it just make me angry.

In all, I really enjoyed this book much better than the TV documentary, as it gives you time to get educated, and reflect, as angry as it will likely make you on how this entire episode was brought upon by stupedidty and greed by many parties, common folk and Wall Street alike.

The book covered the technical terms quite well. He also approached who were involved in misconduct in creating the problem. However he was more than naive when it came to placing the problem at the feet of the initial culprits of creating this mess. It was the greedy Realtor. I know I was a Realtor from 1978 until June of this year. The industry is based on greed. The grossest problem the real estate "business" has is not being honest in who he/she is representing. No buyer should ever agree to dual agency or even use a Realtor who is not exclusively representing the buyer or the seller in any transaction. The industry has sold government that realtors are so pure they will not screw their customers. Even greedy attorneys are not allowed to represent both parties to a transaction. Realtors and the Real Estate industry is primarily to blame for "the roof caving in". This industry is supposed to protect their clients, not use them. They did not. If I lost my home because I purchased more home than I could afford, I would sue the Realtor who sold me that home pure and simple. The real estate business with their huge lobby wrecked this country and they should pay. The problem never should have gotten to the greedy bast--- on Wall Street. It should have been stopped at its beginning. You missed it Dave Faber

The early narrative as to what events led to the massive global economic crisis of 2008 is this: Real estate prices begin to ascend in the late 1990's led by favorable supply/demand conditions, tax policy that waived capital gain taxes and maintained a sizable mortgage interest deduction, and a healthy economy with low unemployment and tremendous advance in the technology space. This increase in real estate prices was accelerated in the early 2000's by low interest rates. An exploding global economy demanded a place to put cash, yet interest rates were so low that they demanded high quality alternatives to the low yields easily available. Wall Street met this demand by massively increasing their securitization of home mortgages, packaging products and selling them all over the world to a system flooding with liquidity. This abundant access to capital (high supply) was greater than the demand for mortgages (constrained by nuisances like income verification, good credit requirements, and down payments), so to push demand into equilibrium with capital supply, banks abandoned all pretense of mortgage underwriting requirements. This decision was made all the easier by the fact that the risk was immediately transferred to a third party, primarily the unknown investors around the world who were buying these mortgage securities. Politically, a massive mandate existed to increase home ownership (particularly with minorities). Low interest rates. Ascending real estate values. Deteriorating underwriting requirements. Abundant access to capital. Oblivious rating agencies. A global economy that soaked all this up. The dominoes were perfectly lined up for the greatest bubble the world has ever seen.

David Faber's new book does an admirable job at capturing this rough narrative, and sequentially breaking out what it meant to the financial crisis of 2008. Faber is a 20+ year financial journalist at CNBC, and does not write with any clear political bias. My impression of the book is that his biases are less ideological, and more personal (people who give him a scoop or an interview are given more favorable treatment; people who don't, are not). The book does not portend to be a heavyweight analysis or deep evaluation of the complex economic factors involved in this crisis. It is written for laymen, and it does a good job putting into laymen's terms the events that largely caused this mess.

My three minor criticisms of the book are:

(1) It is far, far too easy on Alan Greenspan

(2) It fails to connect the dots between the financial instruments causing the problem and the specific freeze-up of credit that took place last fall, AND

(3) It is far, far, far, far too easy on an American public that lost its freaking mind

To be fair to Faber, he does not give Greenspan a pass, and does specifically lay some degree of responsibility with the former Fed chief. However, any book that does not say this exact sentence is coming up short: "The lowering of the Federal Funds rate to 1% in early 2002 and subsequent maintaining of that rate at 1% for well over a year was the most irresponsible act by any central banker in history". Greenspan is in bounds to defend his not knowing how severe the subprime crisis had gotten. What he can not defend is a monetary policy that screamed for - begged for - bubble-like behavior. He poured gasoline all over the fire that was the 2000-2002 real estate bubble, causing the 2003-2005 bubble to blow up perversely. Faber is far kinder to Greenspan than history will be, but he is at least not as kind to Greenspan as Greenspan is to Greenspan, who still to this day denies that the monetary policy of the Fed in 2002 and 2003 had anything to do with the crisis.

I do not envy Faber in trying to explain how CDO instruments work, let alone how Wall Street's packaging of them and collateralizing of them led to the credit crisis we suffered last year. It is not an easy task. Still, I feel that he failed to help laymen understand just exactly what the connection was between the housing blow-up and the Wall Street/credit market blow-up. More attention could have been focused here.

Finally, and this is my biggest criticism, Faber felt no need in describing the affairs of his various "regular people examples" to ascribe any moral or financial culpability to them. He described for us the cases of people who bought above their means, did not understand their mortgages, and subsequently defaulted. He mentions the fact that some people walked away from their houses, not afraid of foreclosure, once they realized that they were upside down in value. But he exerts virtually no energy in ostracizing these people as major accomplices in the crime of 2008. Washington D.C. has fingerprints all over the scene of the crime. Fannie and Freddie are blamed as they should be. Banks and mortgage brokers are villainized where appropriate. Wall Street is crucified for its complicity. But the one participant in the events that led to this disaster, speculative people who blatantly lied on their mortgage applications, committed fraud, and defaulted on obligations (often when they had the absolute ability to continue meeting them), are never discussed as anything other than "victims". It is disingenuous, and dishonest.

History will record that the "roof caved in" in 2008, and my ongoing series of book reviews at this topic will explore much of this further. Faber has done a good job here. But let's hope that the comprehensive analysis of this book does not fear populist rage as much as it fears condoning irresponsible behavior. Excessive leverage and foolish impulsiveness caused this mess - in Washington D.C., on Wall Street, and especially, on Main Street.

I was expecting a much richer book in the vein of "Barbarians at the Gate" and I got a Dummies version. Not that it wasn't clearly written, but the book, as another said, was a print version of a tv show. The writer repeatedly breaks the 4th wall, as it were, and introduces himself into the story including an pointless couple of pages about an partially eaten Alan Greenspan muffin.

Foolish me, I bought the whole book on my kindle without downloading a chapter first. Could have saved a few bucks.

.........then again, what would you expect from a know-nothing monkey who works for a know-nothing network??

David Faber's new book, "And The The Roof Caved In," hit The New York Times best seller list for the first time this week. It debuted at an impressive #10.

I enjoyed the book. It's an easy read which, given the subject -- the credit and financial crises -- is not an easy thing to do. Given that his day job is a reporter for CNBC, Faber gets credit for not pulling too many punches when it comes to Wall Street. My guess is that the book's subtitle, How Wall Street's Greed And Stupidity Brought Capitalism To Its Knees, gave some of Faber's CNBC colleagues and the people he reports on a serious case of heartburn.

But saying I enjoyed Faber's book and recommending it to others are two different things. The book is based on a 90 minute program -- "House of Cards" -- CNBC first aired in February. The book reads like a TV script (try to imagine Faber doing the voice over with the text of his book) with short chapters that appear to mimic the segments in the show. The still pictures in the book are from the program. And while the book does goes into more detail on some subjects than the program (after all, it doesn't have moving pictures to tell stories), it's still largely at TV-audience depth, that is to say at or just slightly below the surface.

I watched "House of Cards" again after reading the book and reconfirmed my initial thought that, instead of buying the book, you'd learn just about as much by watching it for free on Hulu or paying $4.99 to download it on iTunes. It's good TV and well worth the 90 minutes it will take to watch in it's entirety.

If you prefer reading to watching, try William Cohan's "House of Cards" --same title as the CNBC program but much richer content.

As someone who experienced the mortgage securitization mania, and the rise of credit default swaps while at Lehman Brothers during the first half of the decade, I found this book to be an excellent post mortem on the "what and why" of the housing debacle and recession. It is not intended to be a scholarly tome, but instead a straightforward explanation of the easy money and loose lending times, including what broke down, how all of the parties (including home buyers, mortgage brokers, Wall St, the rating agencies, and the Government) acted in their own self interest to create the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand exactly how we got into the mess we're currently in, and how disingenuous our lawmakers are when they point fingers at everyone involved except themselves.

David Faber has written an excellent history of the financial collapse of 2007-2008 and beyond. He does a yeoman's job of wrangling difficult facts and virtually impossible-to-understand financial instruments into a comprehensible story, explaining the economic insanity through individuals who occupy the various roles. He answers the main question most people have about this mess ("Why would banks lend money to people they KNEW could not pay it back?") and along the way debunks the most popular but incorrect answer ("The government forced them to with the Community Reinvestment Act and subsequent regulation.") Faber specifically explains why that explanation is not accurate, and then explains the even more unbelievable truth of why this occurred.

This book should be a great starting point for anyone who is caught in the aftermath wondering what happened. By the time you finish it, you will be conversant in the entire topic, and ready to tackle more arcane explanations with the vocabulary and big-picture items firmly understood.

One editorial note: Either Mr. Faber or his editors (or both) consistently misuse the word "comprise" and its various forms, and the book consistently uses "insure" when it should use "ensure" (which is particularly confusing in the context of a discussion of insurance products). But these small nits aside, the book is a terrific one-day read, well worth the price of admission.

I've watched Faber on TV since his early days as "the brain" on CNBC and my early days as pre-teen interested in financial news. He's always been an intellectual, who takes his craft seriously. The book is one of the most complete and readable surveys of the causes leading up to the financial crisis. Faber uses detailed anecdotes, backed up by macro data, to make an otherwise dry topic read like a summer beach novel.

He discusses the evolution of a world from one in which everybody bought a 30-year fixed mortgage written by Fannie and Freddie to one in which buyers were put, without credit checks, into adjustable rate and negative amortization mortgages. The books delves into the rise and fall of Fannie and Freddie, which in many ways opened the playing field to lenders of dubious origin.

Further, the book details the insatiable demand by Wall Street for packaged mortage products that led to a game of pass the hot potato that eventually landed in all of our laps.

If you want to understand how the financial crisis occurred and at the same time be engaged in a very readable summer book, I can urge you with a straight face to take this book to the beach.

One more detail. Read the book and THEN watch Faber's CNBC special "House of Cards." The reverse order is akin to watching the movie before reading the book.

This is America's eleventh hour. Our democracy is in shambles economically, morally and politically.

I suggest we take a break from "best selling" trashy books and pore over David Faber's "And Then the Roof Caved In." If for no other reason, at least to grasp a sense of ominous reality and sobering history.

As a former Cuban expatriate (1961) I see so many similarities between my former country before Castro's revolution and the US today, that sometimes I think I'm re-living a nightmare!

Andrew J. Rodriguez
Author: "Adios, Havana," a Memoir

This is exactly the same thing as the Documentary that he did "House of Cards". Watching was good. Reading same exact thing is Boring. The additional chapter on Merrill Lynch said nothing. Here is the summary : Oneal grew up poor, became CEO, leveraged up the company without anyone knowing, bought the bad stuff, he got paid alot, then he left, then the company blew up. I thought that the documentary was well done. I think the book is a waste of time and money. Take the exact words that you did for the script....publish them....and hope that people buy it.

Read Peter Schiff's "Crashproof" instead. Peter had it right well before Faber came along with this.

Want to really understand the economy? Peter Schiff, Jim Rogers, Jim Willie, Darryl Robert Schoon, Lew Rockwell, Sam Mathid, Axel Merk, Bob Moriarity, Kark Denninger, and Steve Saville.

Don't waste your money on this.

I follow D. Faber on television and I am a fan but I can not see this book for sale at this price. Just read it at the coffee shop- it is mostly fluff. It has faulty premises and blames the emotion of greed instead of the incompetence of the Bush administration, Greenspan and the SEC. Faber researched the book for 2 years that means well back into 2007 he should have been on a rooftop screaming to protect his viewers. Instead he sits back like a Vietnam Era journalist and watches a little girl burning and reports it but does not do a thing to help. If you want a proper analysis wait for Niall Ferguson to explain how things happened.
It also stikes me odd that there were so many June 17 revviews with 4 stars. Talk about priming the pump!

David Faber has compilled a very good analysis on what caused the current global economic crisis, and like several other recently published books on the subject, greed & hubris take the prize for being the biggest culprit. Yes; what else is new?

Capitalism was indeed brought to its knees by greed & stupidity.

However, captialism is alive & well; after all, this book is selling like hotcakes. Granted, it's a very good book and if it were the only one you'd read on the much discussed subject of the closest thing to a depression we've seen since The Great Depression; you will have read just about all there is to read.

This is a crisis that had its seed planted during a June 1994, Boca Raton meeting the "JP Morgan Mafia" engaged in (re: "derivatives"), & was fueled by Wall Street's greed as well as post 9/11 efforts by Greenspan to stimulate the economy. The end result was an ill-advised loosening of credit and a subprime crisis that became a primetime financial nightmare.

Now, several books later, everybody's a genius with the best hindsight imaginable. But there's hope. Capitalism is recovering, and this book will make Faber a lot of money. We're back, and Capitalism is back on its feet; battered a bit, but certainly not beaten.

Awesome read. Mr. Faber does a great job detailing the seeds of the mortgage crisis and the events leading to the collapse of the mortgage market.

You don't have to be a financial wizard to understand this book. You just have to have the desire to understand what went wrong.