Oreo Cookie Book Club – The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

The Really Serious Oreo Cookie Book Club met June 19 at the home of Chafer and Phyllis Tezer to discuss the book, After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, The Response and

The Work Ahead, by Alan Blinder. Blinder is an economist whose professorship at Princeton should not be confused with Yale or Harvard or other anonymous Eastern establishment schools. Mike Harrod did the difficult job of identifying the villains and heroes of the terrifying financial crisis as faced in Washington, DC and the rest of the country and, eventually, in the rest of the world. Most in the group decried the lack of lending controls and regulation, the failed governmental and agency oversight, the greed and fiscal irresponsibility of the real estate, banking, lending and brokerage agencies. It was deemed appalling that criminal and jail sentences were not liberally applied. Keynesian remedies were proposed by all except the laissez faire and libertarians in the group. It was agreed by all that home or apartment property owners should never rent to people with Doberman Pinchers.

At the next meeting on July 17 The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt will be discussed.

— Norton Schwartz