House of Debt
- book reviews and media
coverage
- The Case Against the Bernanke-Obama Financial Rescue, Binyamin Appelbaum, The New York Times (print), 05/16/2014
Mian and Sufi are convinced that the Great Recession could have been just another ordinary, lowercase recession if the federal government had acted more aggressively to help homeowners by reducing mortgage debts. ... They are particularly critical of Timothy Geithner, the former Treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, for focusing on preserving the financial system without addressing ... [the] more important problem of excessive household debt. - Larry Summers on `House of Debt', Financial Times (print), 06/06/2014
“The most important economics book of 2014; it could be the most important book to come out of the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent Great Recession. Its arguments deserve careful attention, and its publication provides an opportunity to reconsider policy choices made in 2009 and 2010 regarding mortgage debt. House of Debt is important because it persuasively demonstrates that the conventional meta-narrative of the crisis and its aftermath, which emphasizes the breakdown of financial intermediation, is inadequate. . . . All future work on financial crises will have to reckon with the household balance sheet effects they stress. After their work, we can still believe in the necessity of financial rescues; however, we can no longer believe in their sufficiency. And after their work, we have an important new agenda of reforms to consider if future crises are to be prevented.” - Book Review: 'House of Debt' by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, The Wall Street Journal (print), 05/28/2014
"a concise and powerful account of how the great recession happened and what should be done to avoid another one" - Springtime for Bankers, Paul Krugman, The New York Times (print), 05/18/2014
"the leading experts on this subject are the economists Atif Mian and Amir Sufi" - No one (important) wants faster growth, The Economist, 05/13/2014
"House of Debt", distills lessons about the crisis from their recent research into one easily digestible package"
Europe faces the horrors of its own House of Debt, Wofgang Munchau, Financial Times, 06/15/2014.
"In their magnificent book House of Debt, Atif Mian and Amir Sufi find that what is outwardly disguised as a credit crunch is in reality a fall in demand for loans." - The Agenda, Reihan Salam, National Review, 04/22/2014
"In House of Debt, their brilliant new book . . . Mian and Sufi detail the ways in which the housing bust damaged the economic well-being low- and middle-income households across the country." - Politico, 09/2014
“The country needed a bailout—the government just chose the wrong one. That’s the case economists Atif Mian and Amir Sufi made this year in a book aiming to rewrite the story of the recession—and what our politicians should have done about it. If they’re right, future crises may be handled entirely differently.” - The Opposite of Insurance, The Economist (print), 05/17/2014
- The Unwinnable War, The Economist, 05/16/2014
- Book Review by Heather Boushey, The Atlantic, 05/21/2014
- Video Interview with Mian and Sufi on the "House of Debt", and a Review, Financial Times, 05/28/2014
- Debt, Recession and Words of Advice: Interview with Atif Mian, The Leonard Lopate Show (audio), 06/04/2014
- Mian and Sufi focus on household debt relief, Bloomberg Radio (audio), 05/27/2014
- The Shared-Responsibility Mortgage Could Help Bubbleproof the Housing Market, BusinessWeek, 05/22/2014
- Rethinking the Great Recession, MSNBC, 05/29/2014
- Book Review: House Of Debt By Atif Mian And Amir Sufi, Seeking Alpha, 06/02/2014
- Washington Center for Equitable Growth, Introduction to House of Debt followed by Q/A (video), 05/29/2014
- The Biggest Policy Mistake of the Great Recession, by David Dayen, The Fiscal Times, 06/06/2014
- The Great Credit Mistake, Adair Turner, Project Syndicate, 06/06/2014
- Bucherkiste (10): Weg mit den Schulden!, Frankfurter Allgemeine (German), 06/10/2014
- Kreditklemme trotz EZB-Programmen: So viel Geld - und alles fur die Katz, Wolfgang Munchau, Spiegel online (German), 06/09/2014
- בחובות שלנו יש קסם מיוחד, interview with Calcalist on House of Debt (Hebrew), 06/13/2014
- The Great Recession's "biggest policy mistake", Mark Thoma, CBS News, 05/29/2014
- How Housing Debt and Student Loan Debt Create a Double Drag on the Economy, Whet Moser, Chicago , 06/12/2014
- What really happened to the best plan to help overly-indebted homeowners?, Matthew Yglesias, Vox , 06/13/2014
- Summers: Helping Homeowners Would Have Hurt Banks, David Dayen, 06/06/2014
- Geithner, Mian and Sufi on the crisis, Robert Hockett, The Hill, 05/28/2014
- Back Cover Endorsements
- "Much has been written about the boom and subsequent bust that rocked the US
economy during 2007-2009, but insightful and informed analysis is much rarer. This book is one of those rare gems. It offers an in-depth look at the state of housing, consumer credit, household incomes, and debt around the crisis and presents an informed discussion about its causes and consequences. The analysis of crisis resolution has resonance, not only for the United States, but for the many countries that are still entangled in severe financial difficulties."
(Carmen Reinhart, Harvard University) - "House of Debt is a very important book, reaching beyond surface explanations of the Great Recession to identify the fundamental cause–excessive
private debt built up in the pre-crisis boom years. It combines meticulous empirical research with an ability to see the big picture. Its message needs to be heeded and its proposals for reform seriously considered if we are to avoid repeating in future the mistakes of the past."
(Lord Adair Turner, former chair, Financial Services Authority) - "Mian and Sufi have produced some of the most important and compelling research on the impact of debt on consumer behavior during the recent housing bubble and bust. This excellent new book presents and expands this research in a rigorous, yet engaging and accessible way."
(Christina D. Romer, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and UC Berkeley) - "This is a profoundly important book that makes a huge range of serious
empirical evidence on the financial crisis accessible to a broad readership. A compendium of Mian and Sufi's own celebrated work would already be a spectacular contribution, but this book is so much more. Although the authors present all views in a balanced, scholarly way, their quiet insistence that we should have moved faster to write down household mortgages is well-reasoned and compelling."
(Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University) - select media coverage of research behind house of debt
- Chain of Fools, The Economist (print), 02/07/2008
- Origins of the current mortgage problems, The NBER Digest, April/May 2008
- Congressional votes tied to voter default, The Wall Street Journal, 11/07/2008
- What's in it for me?, The Slate, 11/06/2008
- Lessons From The Fall: Household Debt Got Us Into This Mess, NPR Planet Money, 09/10/2009
- Withdrawal Symptoms, The Economist (print), 09/03/2009
- House Prices, Home Equity-based borrowing, and the U.S. Household leverage crisis, The NBER Digest, November 2009
- Household Debt Can Hasten Recovery, When It Goes Unpaid, Wall Street Journal, 10/27/2009
- Vote no to the American dream, The Economist, 06/22/2010
- Study: Subprime Lending Fueled by Campaign Cash, The Wall Street Journal, 06/22/2010
- The great debt drag, The Economist (print), 09/16/2010
- Stimulus for clunkers, The Wall Street Journal, 09/21/2010
- Cash for clunkers was a wash, NPR Planet Money, 09/03/2010
Congressional support for subprime lending, The NBER Digest, November 2010 - America's broke recovery, The Economist, 01/20/2011
- Cash for clunkers had modest and short-lived effects, The NBER Digest, February 2011
- Foreclosures, hosue prices and the real economy, The NBER Digest, June 2011