The agencies and what they do -- How to think about the agencies -- The agencies and financial innovation -- Cogs in the wheel of financial destruction -- Aftermath -- Addendum: convenient villains & all-purpose bogeymen -- I'll be gone. You'll be gone.

"This volume narrates the financial history of the United States during a period of great upheaval in the early part of the twenty-first century. It is divided into three chronological sections: the first section describes the recovery of financial markets after the Great Recession. It begins...