Michael Hudson Authors Expose on Financial Meltdown

Center for Public Integrity financial writer Michael Hudson has authored The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America - and Spawned a Global Crisis.

The expose will be released on October 26 by Times Books. Hudson tells the story of the rise and fall of the subprime mortgage market - and of the failures of regulators and policymakers to stop the fraud and reckless behavior that overtook the nation's home-loan market and helped spark a financial meltdown that is still playing out.

Given the current uproar over the banking industry's foreclosure tactics, The Monster is a timely chronicle of how the nation's financial system spun out of control. Hudson is available for interviews, media appearances, and article submissions. He can talk about a variety of political and economic issues:

• the current foreclosure crisis
• the politics and failures of financial reform
• the causes of the mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis

"The current reports of perjured documents and other abuses in the foreclosure process are shocking, but they aren't surprising given the recent history of the mortgage industry," Hudson says. "Fraud seems to have become part of the industry's DNA. What I've tried to do withThe Monster was journey back a generation or more and explore how the mortgage industry was corrupted - and who is to blame."

A book-release reception with Michael Hudson will be held on October 25, 2010 at 6 pm at the Center's offices at 910 17th St, NW, 7th Floor, Washington, D.C. If you would like to attend, please contact Francesca Craig or call 202-481-1248.

Read an excerpt of The Monster.

About The Author

Michael Hudson is a staff writer at the Center for Public Integrity. He previously worked as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and The Roanoke Times and as an investigator for the Center for Responsible Lending. The winner of the George Polk and John Hancock awards, Hudson has also written for Forbes, the New York Times, the National Law Journal, the Los Angeles Times and the Huffington Post. He edited the award-winning book Merchants of Misery and appeared in the documentary film Maxed Out. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.