http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/17/books/review/17LINDGRT.html
[clip] Cassidy doesn't really start operating on his own steam until he gets to Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman. This is the strongest section in the book, less for the reporting than for the insight that Cassidy brings to it. Though Greenspan's reputation has been taken down a few pegs since his late-90's heyday, he remains an almost saintly figure. Cassidy takes him in for a drubbing, arguing that he's much more of a free market ideologue than is commonly believed.
Specifically, Cassidy knocks Greenspan for failing to contain the rocketing stock market when he had the chance. That moment came in mid-1998 -- the market had been soaring, but investors had yet to go completely out of their minds. A boost of the interest rate would have been just the thing to preserve the country's financial sanity. Instead, when the Asian economies went into a tailspin, Greenspan got spooked by the idea of a global recession. So rates stayed where they were. Later in the year, Long Term Capital Management, a Connecticut hedge fund overseen by men thought to be the sharpest financial minds of their generation, imploded, putting investments worth billions in jeopardy. Greenspan dutifully calmed a jittery Wall Street by slicing the prime rate. And that's when the true madness kicked in.
Cassidy doesn't make Greenspan out to be a total villain -- he didn't even get rich, after all -- but everybody else, by comparison, gets off relatively lightly. For the most part, Cassidy refuses to have fun at the expense of the flimflam artists and rank profiteers who peopled the boom. He pays the ultimate compliment to characters like James Cramer, founder of TheStreet.com -- he takes them seriously." [end clip]