Research Catalog

Shortfall : family secrets, financial collapse, and a hidden history of American banking

Title
Shortfall : family secrets, financial collapse, and a hidden history of American banking / Alice Echols.
Author
Echols, Alice
Publication
New York, NY : The New Press, [2017]

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library JFD 17-6307Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description
xxx, 318 pages : illustrations; 22 cm
Summary
Shortfall opens with a surprise discovery in an attic - boxes filled with letters and documents hidden for more than seventy years - and launches into a fast-paced story that uncovers the dark secrets in Echols's family; an upside-down version of the building and loan story at the center of Frank Capra's 1946 movie, It's a Wonderful Life. In a narrative filled with colorful characters and profound insights into the American past, Shortfall is also the essential backstory to more recent financial crises, from the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s and 1990s to the subprime collapse of 2008. Shortfall chronicles the collapse of the building and loan industry during the Great Depression; a story told in microcosm through the firestorm that erupted in one hard-hit American city during the early 1930s. Over a six-month period in 1932, all four of the building and loan associations in Colorado Springs, Colorado, crashed in an awful domino-like fashion, leaving some of the town's citizens destitute. The largest of these associations was owned by author Alice Echols's grandfather, Walter Davis, who absconded with millions of dollars in a case that riveted the national media. This book tells the dramatic story of his rise and shocking fall.
Alternative Title
Family secrets, financial collapse, and a hidden history of American banking
Subjects
Genre/Form
  • Case studies.
  • History.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-300) and index.
Contents
Prologue: captain nothing -- Advertisements for himself -- The loan man -- Racketeers and suckers -- Slipping through your fingers -- Sowing grief -- The port of missing men -- Orphans in the storm -- Epilogue.
Call Number
JFD 17-6307
ISBN
  • 9781620973035
  • 1620973030
LCCN
  • 2017018190
  • 99975672592
OCLC
974699746
Author
Echols, Alice, author.
Title
Shortfall : family secrets, financial collapse, and a hidden history of American banking / Alice Echols.
Publisher
New York, NY : The New Press, [2017]
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-300) and index.
Chronological Term
1919-1933
Other Form:
Online version: Echols, Alice, author. Shortfall New York, NY : The New Press, [2017] 9781620973042 (DLC) 2017035260
Other Standard Identifier
99975672592
Research Call Number
JFD 17-6307
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