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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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JFD 17-6307 | Schwarzman 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
- Commercial crimes
- Embezzlement
- Savings and loan associations > Corrupt practices
- United States
- Davis, Walter Clyde
- HISTORY / United States / 20th Century
- Case studies
- Commercial crimes > Colorado > Case studies
- Embezzlement > Colorado > Case studies
- Savings and loan associations > Corrupt practices > Colorado > Case studies
- United States > History > 1919-1933
- BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Banks & Banking
- History
- 1919-1933
- Colorado
- HISTORY / United States / State & Local / West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY)
- 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