Government Reports

Anatomy of a Financial Collapse

After a two-year investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, their report, Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse was released in April 2011. This is the most damning official report to date on Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis. It describes the wheeling and dealing of bankers and others who benefited from the housing bubble while impoverishing the rest of America. It also offers four very clear causes of the financial crisis, including high-risk mortgage loans by commercial banks, failures by regulators that “set the stage for mortgage loan losses that were a proximate cause of the financial crisis,” inaccurate AAA credit ratings by the two largest credit rating agencies, and investment bank abuses. This report and its detailed case studies are a must-read for policymakers, politicians, justice officials, bankers, journalists, academics and concerned citizens in order to understand what brought the U.S. economy to the brink of destruction.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report

Published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state.

Global Trends 2025

From the Muslimization of Western Europe to the impact of HIV/AIDS around the planet, from the trials of the coming post-petroleum world to the tactical implications of an ice-free Arctic, the nations of Earth are facing more radical change than ever before in the first quarter of the 21st century. This important government report-from the United States National Intelligence Council, which has been producing assessments of national security issues for senior U.S. policy makers since 1979-casts a strategic eye at the near future and examines those factors and trends that will most dramatically shape it, including: the rapidly globalizing economy • the growing global middle class • the challenges of aging populations • migration, urbanization, and ethnic shifts.