Not a Wall Street insider?

A guide to the economic crisis for the rest of us.

How could the best and brightest in finance crash the global economy and then get us to bail them out? What caused this mess? And what can Main Street do about it?

In The Looting of America, Les Leopold debunks the prevailing myths that blame low-income homebuyers, credit-card debtors, and government interference. Instead, readers will discover how Wall Street undermined itself and the rest of the economy by playing and losing a highly lucrative and dangerous game of fantasy finance.

He also asks some tough questions:

• Why did Americans let the gap between workers’ and executives’ pay grow so large?

• Why did we fail to realize that the excess money in those executives’ pockets was fueling casino-style investment schemes?

• Why did we buy the notion that financial products that no one could even understand would somehow form the backbone of America’s new economy?

• And how can we get our money back and never give it away to gamblers again?

In this page-turning, plain-speaking narrative, Leopold tells us how everyone from individual investors to school districts to institutions around the world fell victim to Wall Street’s “innovative” financial products–like collateralized debt obligations, better known as CDOs, which sucked trillions of dollars from the global economy when they failed.

As the country teeters on the brink of a depression, he warns we should be especially wary of advice from the so-called financial experts who got us here and then conveniently got themselves out. So far, it appears they’ve won the battle, but The Looting of America refuses to let them write the history-or plan its aftermath.

Les Leopold cofounded and currently directs two nonprofit organizations, the Labor Institute and the Public Health Institute, and is the author of the award-winning The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi. Leopold designs research and educational programs on occupational safety and health, the environment, and economics and helped form an alliance between the United Steel Workers Union and the Sierra Club. He attended Oberlin College and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He lives in Montclair, NJ.

“Les Leopold’s account of the economic crisis is the clearest and most accessible that I have seen. It gives a reader with little economics or financial background a riveting description of how Wall Street tore down our economy and what we can do about it. It’s a page turner we all should read.” -Leo Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers