It's now official: According to the Federal Reserve, the financial crisis wiped out $14 trillion in American household wealth--an amount equal to more than $120,000 per household. Yet Americans didn't lose it--it was taken.

By whom? President Obama blames "fat cat bankers"--and polls show that 80% of Americans agree with him. But in The Great American Bank Robbery, award-winning journalist Paul Sperry offers a welcome rebuttal to this false narrative, presenting fresh evidence that government social engineers masterminded a massive bank heist with help from accomplices in the "affordable housing" sector. And now they're back in Washington planning another heist with Obama.

In a detailed narrative illustrated by charts and graphs, and supported by over 50 pages of footnotes, Sperry exposes how the shakedown artists colluded at every step of the way--from Chicago to Washington--to formulate the banking regulations and housing policies that socialized mortgages, gutted traditional underwriting standards, and led to the worst financial calamity since the 1930s. Sperry also reveals how the 9/11-type commission impaneled to investigate the subprime crime set up Wall Street bankers to take the fall for Washington politicians and their cronies. This book is the report they should have produced but didn't, and the truth they don't want you to know. Highlights:

• President Obama's own fingerprints are on the subprime scandal, and you'll meet his bank-hating Chicago mentor whose radical "anti-redlining" group not only has unfettered White House access but has had a hand in shaping Obama's financial regulations.
• Several Clinton-era architects of the disastrous housing policies that caused the crisis have returned to the scene of their financial crime; they're back at HUD and other federal agencies, now making Obama housing policy and making the same reckless mistakes.
• The Obama administration is pressuring mortgage loan officers to consider as valid sources of income unemployment benefits, welfare checks or food stamps--repeating the cycle of lower underwriting standards that led to the housing crisis.

What lies on the other side of Great Recession? While the most acute part of the economic crisis is past, the downturn's most significant impact on American life remains in the future. The personal, cultural, and political changes that result from severe economic shocks build slowly. But history shows us that, ultimately, downturns like this one profoundly alter the character of society.
 
Don Peck's Pinched keenly observes how the recession has changed the places we live, the work we do, and even who we are--and details the transformations that are yet to come.  Every class and every generation will be affected: newly minted college graduates, blue-collar men, affluent professionals, exurban families, elite financiers, middle-class retirees.
 
The crash has shifted the course of the economy.  In its aftermath, the middle class is shrinking faster, wealth is becoming more concentrated, twenty-somethings are sinking, and working-class families and communities are changing in unsavory ways.
 
We sit today between two eras, buffeted, anxious, and uncertain of the future.  Through vivid reporting and lucid argument, Peck helps us make sense of how our society has changed, and why so many people are still struggling.
 
The answers to these questions reveal a new way forward for America.  The country has endured periods like this one before, and has emerged all the stronger from them; adaptation and reinvention have been perhaps the nation's best and most enduring traits.  The time is ripe for another such reinvention.  Pinched lays out the principles and public actions that can help us pull it off.

Every book about the economic crisis of the late 2000s focuses on the institutions that caused the recession and the brilliant geniuses who were at the top when it all went down. This book is about the people on the bottom who got flattened through no fault of their own. Their stories show what happens when the system doesn't work. Now our political leaders are in the middle of a big debate about how much the nation should spend on social programs that help people. This book asks the question a different way: How much indignity should regular folks have to suffer?

For the past two years, Huffington Post reporter Arthur Delaney has written about the economic crisis, interviewing and emailing with hundreds and hundreds of people who didn't understand where they went wrong. This book is about them.