Written for the motivated non-specialist, this fully revised and updated edition of The Financial Crisis and Federal Reserve Policy provides the most accurate and thorough coverage available of the causes and consequences of the 2008 Financial Crisis, examining the role the Federal Reserve played in preventing a major economic meltdown on par with the Great Depression. This bestselling work has been retooled from the ground up to include three new chapters on post-Crisis recovery efforts, European sovereign debt, and recently-enacted financial regulations, in addition to updated tables and figures containing the most recent data emerging out of the crisis. After the burst of the credit and housing bubbles in 2008, the Great Recession that followed deprived more than 8 million Americans of their jobs and triggered a per capita loss of income of more than $6,000. Thomas provides readers with a clear and comprehensive explanation of the myriad forces that combined to create the bubbles that were the source of the economic contraction. He retraces the chain reaction that took place as these bubbles deflated, and opens a window into the channels through which the crisis spilled over to produce a recession.