The Essayist: Reflections from a Real Estate Survivor

Book excerpt: The pathos of the 2008 Great Recession had a fairly wide sweep, from minimum-wage busboys to newspaper heiresses like Veronica Hearst to Federal Reserve chair, Ben Bernanke, whose childhood home was lost as a result of a relative not making timely mortgage paymentswherein all mentioned experienced some type of economic pain, or at least embarrassment, related to the Great Recession. These episodes are captured in this book as a way to bring a slight degree of levity to this economic catastrophe but to also underscore a serious juncture in American social and political theory as well. Author D. Sidney Potter, once a prolific real estate investor in the early to late part of the real estate boom that lead to the bust, puts a spotlight on the real estate finance mortgage industry as once a lucrative insider to now as a disenfranchised member and erstwhile benefactor. The irony of having to make his living as a mortgage operations professional, who now examines the very mortgage financings that once bore his name, does not go past him. His unabrasive and sometimes crude essays examine the usual suspectsfrom bankster CEOs, nascent political movements, and professional legislators to the analytics of mortgage products that resulted in the self-inflicted implosion. Mr. Potters collection of essays acts as a self-entombed time capsule that should be taken as a testimony of fact, not fiction.