False Profits Recovering from the Bubble Economy

Despite reports that the recession may be over, the unemployment rate is more than ten percent and home foreclosures are at a record high. Itrs"s no secret that the U.S. economy is in shambles because of the recent housing bubble. However, according to Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the people who looked the other way as the eight trillion dollar housing bubble grew unchecked are trying to rewrite history by downplaying the impact of the bubble. In Bakerrs"s new book,False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy,he recounts the strategies used by the countryrs"s top economic policymakers to keep the American public unaware of their failure to recognize the housing bubble and to take steps to rein it in before it grew to unprecedented levels, resulting in the loss of millions of jobs, homes, and the life savings for tens of millions of people.

Dean Baker has written extensively on the bubble economy over the last decade and was one of the first economists to recognize the stock and housing bubbles and explicitly warn of the risk of their collapse. Previously a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and a consultant to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, Baker now co-directs the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. His blog at American Prospect, "Beat the Press," features commentary on economic reporting. In addition to Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy, he has written The United States Since 1980 and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.