Yalman Onaran - Zombie banks: how broken banks and debtor nations are crippling the global economy

Additional Praise forZombie Banks

Yalman Onarans analysis is dead-on. So is his imagery of the dead banks walking among us, stalking and killing the wobbly post-2008 recovery. Zombie Banks clearly and scarily puts together all the pieces that explain a financial world again falling apart. Onaran calls out the culpable, from Wall Streets toady Tim Geithner to Irelands clueless bankers, and writes so lucidly as to render a complex mess understandable.

John Helyar, co-author of Barbarians at the Gate

This book does an excellent job of pointing out the administrative and political pressures that are rampant. I like the contrast used to make the point that Iceland avoided the major errors. Ive always recommended more capital for the banks as the best way out; so does Onaran. The only way is to announce that we will not bail out any firm at any time; that will change their attitude toward more capital. Higher capital requirement puts the risk decision on management and stockholders, where it belongs.

Allan Meltzer, author, A History of the Federal Reserve, and professor, Carnegie Mellon University

Zombie Banks , like the movie Zombieland , is a fun rompuntil you realize this is not fiction. Onaran effectively expands Ed Kanes thesis from the Thrift Crisis, when only a few U.S. institutions were too big to fail, and shows how the program of declaring the end of insolvency by merely refusing to recognize its existence has grown popular, worldwide. Of course, Onaran cant yet tell us the end of the story, but we can surmise that the longer the trend continues the worse the fallout will be.

Joseph Mason, professor, Louisiana State University

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Copyright 2012 by Yalman Onaran. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Onaran, Yalman, 1969

Zombie banks : how broken banks and debtor nations are crippling the global economy / Yalman Onaran.

p. cm. (Bloomberg Press)

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-118-09452-5 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-18533-9 (ebk);

ISBN 978-1-118-18532-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-18531-5 (ebk)

1. Debts, ExternalHistory21st century. 2. Banks and bankingHistory21st century. 3. Economic history21st century. I. Title.

HG3891.5.O53 2011

332.042dc23

2011032158

To Dad, who said he bargained with the Grim Reaper to delay the day until this books publication, and

To Mom, whose habit of playing the devils advocate in debates taught me to consider opposing views more easily.