Capital Offense: How Washington's Wise Men Turned America's Future Over to Wall Street - Hardcover

"To understand the slow, steady shift of power from Washington to Wall Street, you have to connect the dots year by year, across decades. For that you need a seasoned veteran like Mike Hirsh, who has used deep sourcing, a long memory, and his razor-sharp critical sensibilities to show how the tide slowly turned from public good to private gain. In this amazing book, Hirsh shows definitively how Wall Street won and America lost."
—Ron Suskind, author of The Way of the World

"In this brilliantly crafted narrative, Hirsh pins the financial crisis on the hubris of key economic policymakers in Washington who, through a mix of training, background, and philosophy, allowed themselves to be persuaded that the less regulation of Wall Street, the better. Balanced? Not necessarily. Fascinating? Definitely."
—Kenneth Rogoff, coauthor of This Time Is Different

"In this riveting narrative, Michael Hirsh shows how the road to the Great Recession of 2008–2010 was paved with mistaken assumptions, sleepy regulators, hubris, misplaced faith in markets—and that we may be headed down the same road again. Hirsh is masterful at weaving economics, politics, and personalities into a great story that illuminates how we got here and how we must act to avoid the next crisis."
—Steve Weisman, author of The Great Tax Wars

"A vivid, insider account of how elite policymakers became intellectual hostages to free market fundamentalism and set about giving Wall Street the keys to the global economy. Michael Hirsh draws on firsthand knowledge of Washington's elite to describe the ideological and personality struggles that gave 'free market' fundamentalism a Stalinist stranglehold over policy. A deft account of how men who should have known better wrecked the economy."
—Yves Smith, author of ECONned

"This is a fascinating inside account of the political dynamics and personalities of the crew who wrecked the economy. Remarkably, as Capital Offense points out, the same group is still calling the shots today, which makes people very concerned."
—Dean Baker, author of False Profits