The financial crisis that has gripped this country since last September has had so many twists and turns it would make for a great drama -- if it all were not so real and damaging. Companies are shutting down and laying off workers 401ks are melting away and the government is spending $700 billion dollars to bail out banks and financial institutions -- and that's only the beginning. The financial services industry and the many industries that depend on it -- from housing to cars -- is in intensive care. <br> <br> So what happened? How did we get to this point of financial disaster? Is the economy just a huge Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme? It is a complicated and confusing story -- but Daniel Gross of <i>Newsweek</i> has a special gift for making complicated matters easy to understand and even entertaining. In <i>Dumb Money</i> he offers a guide to the debacle and to what the future may hold. This is not so much a book about who did what though that's part of the story. Rather it pieces together the building blocks of the debt-fueled economy and distills the theory and personalities behind our late lamented easy money culture. <i>Dumb Money</i> is a book that finally lays it all out in an engaging way and might just help people invest their money smartly until the gloom passes.
