Financial Crisis, Continued

The Fort Collins Public Library has a new name, new website, a new library branch and a new logo. The new Poudre River Public Library District (www.poudrelibraries.org) is now a network of gathering places with the mission to create learners, satisfy curiosities and encourage imagination in children, teenagers, and adults in northern Larimer County, Colorado. Check it out!

We also updated the business and nonprofit webpage, adding new books, new websites, and highlighting some changes in our databases: http://library.fcgov.com/adult/business/

Under Hot Websites, please notice the Financial Resource Guide. This is an excellent guide developed by the Business and Economics Librarian at Colorado State University, and can answer almost any question you might have on the present financial crisis. Please note, too, the How Things Work—Economics weblink. If you have any questions on basic economics, check this one out.

I also added four of our new books: Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism by Kevin Philips; A Demon of Our Own Design : Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation by Richard Bookstaber; The Foreclosure of America : The Inside Story of the Rise and Fall of Countrywide Home Loans, the Mortgage Crisis, and the Default of the American Dream by Adam Michaelson; and The Partnership : the Making of Goldman Sachs by Charles D. Ellis (http://library.fcgov.com/adult/business/)

At first glance, these books may appear to be just more depressing news while we’re going through this economic crisis, but each of them provides great incite into their topics. The books reminded me of some of my favorite readings from the 1980s crisis. Remember Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart, about junk bond kings Michael Milken, Ivan Boevsky and Martin Siegel? In fact, remember Michael Milken and Ivan Boevsky? How about, Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis? Lewis, then a rising bond trader at Salomon Brothers, provided us with a funny, straightforward explanation of America’s new found obsession with leverage in the late 1980s, as well as our new-found obsession with greed and self-indulgence. Check out these and others at our (or your) library.