In June 2007, the 5th largest investment bank on Wall Street, Bear Stearns, announced that its two funds involved in the subprime loan market had suffered significant losses. On July 31st, Bear Stearns announced that the two funds were insolvent. Bank of America (BOA) also lost more than 4 billion dollars as the result of providing payment guarantees for the assets of these two funds. In August, BNP Paribas announced the freezing of three investment funds facing losses in the U.S. subprime market, signaling the subprime crisis had officially arrived like an earthquake. However, this was just the prelude to a more serious global economic crisis.

The author of this book, the then Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, struggled at the forefront of this economic crisis. Let’s first understand what the Federal Reserve is. The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States. It was established in 1913 by the former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to serve as a "lender of last resort" in case of a financial crisis, lending money to commercial banks to help them weather the crisis. Today, the Board has seven members, including a chairman, a vice-chairman, and five other executive directors. All of them are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate to serve fourteen-year terms.

This book is Ben Bernanke's memoir of the financial crisis that began in 2007. In this book, Bernanke discloses how the Fed took innovative measures to curb the spread of the financial crisis, and consequently rescued the United States economy from the crisis. The book fully discloses the details of the decision-making process and combs through Bernanke's thinking and introspection on financial policies and financial instruments, which he drew from his in-depth knowledge and wealth of experience as a macro-economist. We have also unlocked another book, Too Big to Fail, which reveals the response of the main regulatory agencies and investment banks in the United States after the financial crisis happened. If you are interested, feel free to go check out that Bookey.