Resources
This unit plan required several resources, and they are listed below by category: for teachers, students, and classroom use.
Annotated Bibliography for Teachers
Ahamed, Liaquat. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. New York: Penguin Books, 2009. Ahamed’s account of the United States’ financial system during the early 1900s provides a useful perspective on the origins of modern banking.
Blinder, Alan S. After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead. New York: Penguin Books, 2014. Blinder, a former member of the Fed, recounts the development of the Financial Crisis of 2008 and the federal government’s reaction to it.
Coffee Jr., John C. “The Political Economy of Dodd-Frank: Why Financial Reform Tends to Be Frustrated and Systemic Risk Perpetuated.” Cornell Law Review, 2012. Coffee discusses how regulatory practices reflect the shape of a sine curve.
Dasgupta, Partha. Economics: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. In this short book, Dasgupta introduces the fundamental components of the study of economics.
Ellis, Charles D. Winning the Loser’s Game: Timeless Strategies for Successful Investing. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. Charles Ellis explains the advantages of investing in index funds while providing the reader with other simple investment strategies.
Goddard, John, and John O.S. Wilson. Banking: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Goddard and Wilson summarize the inner workings of today’s financial system.
Graetz, Michael J., and Ian Shapiro. The Wolf at the Door: The Menace of Economic Insecurity and How to Fight It. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2020. In this book, the authors describe how wealth inequality, economic policy, and American politics converge.
Kent, Ana, Lowell Ricketts, and Roy Boshara. “What Wealth Inequality in America Looks Like: Key Facts & Figures.” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2019. The Fed’s report examines the crash’s effects on income inequality and the racial wealth gap.
Mallaby, Sebastian. More Money than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite. New York: Penguin Books, 2010. Mallaby recounts the emergence of hedge funds and the extreme amounts of wealth they create for their investors.
Mian, Atif, and Amir Sufi. House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. Together, Mian and Suf present the causes of the Great Recession and strategies on how to prevent a future economic collapse.
Morgenson, Gretchen, and Joshua Rosner. Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Created the Worst Financial Crisis of Our Time. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011. The authors of this book discuss the role politics and moral hazard played in the development of America’s housing bubble.
Olsen, Skylar. “A House Divided - How Race Colors the Path to Homeownership.” Zillow, Inc., 2014. https://www.zillow.com/research/minority-mortgage-access-6127/. Olsen details the effects of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis across racial demographic data.
Shapiro, Ian. “Three Views of Regulation,” n.d. Shapiro describes how retail clientelism relates to the United States’ two political parties.
Sorkin, Andrew Ross. Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story to How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves. New York: Penguin Books, 2018. In exceptional detail, Sorkin depicts the conversations on Wall Street and Washington, DC, during events such as the Lehman Brothers collapse and the passage of TARP.
Suskind, Ron. Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President. New York: Harper Perennial, 2011. Suskind analyzes the key politicians and figures of the federal government’s response to the crash.
Swagel, Phillip. “The Cost of the Financial Crisis: The Impact of the September 2008 Economic Collapse.” Washington, DC,: PEW Economic Policy Group, 2009. In this detailed report, Swagel details the consequences of the crash.
Tooze, Adam. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. New York: Penguin Books, 2019. As an economic historian, Tooze contextualizes the Financial Crisis of 2008 by describing the political and economic events that led to and followed the economic crash.
Student Reading List
Clifford, Jacob, and Adriene Hill. “The 2008 Financial Crisis: Crash Course Economics #12.” Crash Course, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPOv72Awo68. Crash Course’s economic contributors distill the development of the Financial Crisis of 2008 for students.
Hayes, Adam. “Target Rate Definition.” Investopedia, 2019. Investopedia provides an excellent, web-based source for students to research terms related to economics and finance.
Johnston, Matthew. “A Brief History of U.S. Banking Regulation.” Investopedia, 2020. This webpage outlines a basic history of the American banking system at a student reading level.
Lewis, Michael. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. Lewis, a former bonds salesman, explains the development of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis in vivid detail.
“The Financial Crisis in Response Charts.” Washington, DC,: US Department of the Treasury, 2012. The US Treasury’s report illustrates the federal government’s response to the Great Recession in a series of charts.
The United States Department of Justice. “Justice Department Reaches Settlement with Wells Fargo Resulting in More Than $175 Million in Relief for Homeowners to Resolve Fair Lending Claims,” 2012. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-reaches-settlement-wells-fargo-resulting-more-175-million-relief. This report summarizes Wells Fargo’s settlement over racial discriminatory lending practices.
Tobocman, Seth, and Eric Laursen. Understanding the Crash. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2010. Tobocman and Laursen’s graphic novel illustrates the development of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis and its effects on individual homeowners.
Whiteside, Eric. “What Is the 50/30/20 Budget Rule?” Investopedia, 2020. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/022916/what-502030-budget-rule.asp#:~:text=Senator Elizabeth Warren popularized the,socking away 20%25 to savings. Whiteside summarizes Elizabeth Warren’s advice for creating a budget.
List of Materials for Classroom Use
The Editorial Board. “Virus Lays Bare the Frailty of the Social Contract.” The Financial Times, 2020. The newspaper’s editorial board reframes the perspective of the social contract.
Google. “Monthly Budget.” Accessed July 13, 2020. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17F8Wl9TfsvsQTFlZva5jstPlcs3srYZWUvJ0EnMSSwI/edit#gid=0. Students can use this template to create their budgets.
McKay, Adam. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. Paramount Pictures, 2015. McKay recreates Lewis’ book in the form of a movie. This film pairs well with Lewis’ book and Tobocman’s graphic novel.
Metrick, Andrew, and Timothy Geithner. “The Global Financial Crisis.” Yale University, 2020. Metrick and Geithner partner together to provide an online course on the Financial Crisis of 2008.
Shapiro, Ian. “Lecture 19: Crisis, Crash, and Response.” YaleCourses, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYJLyGoWbzY&list=PLh9mgdi4rNeyViG2ar68jkgEi4y6doNZy&index=19. In this lecture, Shapiro describes the development of the economic crisis as a culmination of events that create the perfect storm.
Shapiro, Ian. “Lecture 20: Fallout: The Housing Crisis and Its Aftermath.” YaleCourses, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1EtiEuSEY&t=7s. Here, Shapiro explains how the Financial Crisis of 2008 relates to job security, housing, and the American Dream.
Shapiro, Ian. “Lecture 21: Backlash - 2016 and Beyond.” YaleCourses, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5QM1DBSRLw&list=PLh9mgdi4rNeyViG2ar68jkgEi4y6doNZy&index=22&t=3s Shapiro reports how the global financial crisis led to the consequences and reactions of today’s politics.
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