For America and the world, the first decade of the 21st century America are interesting times. The decade started with a painful burst of dot com bubble and it would be ending with an even more painful depression caused by the melt-down of the global financial system. It is also a decade of the failure of super-capitalism (laissez-faire) which is being rescued by socialism. If we look back , the history would tell us that most destructions were made and driven by excess greed and excess stupidity of humans. In California, when electricity market was deregulated in 1996, people expected they would enjoy free market prices for electricity. Instead, companies like ENRON took advantage of the free market, manipulated and gouged Californians for two years in 2000-01. California was on the brink of bankruptcy. Finally the scam unraveled and the executives were put in jail. In November, 1999, it was another Republicans initiative - Gram-Leach- Bliley Act was enacted which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Gram-Leach-Bliley deregulated the financial institutions and allowed them to run rampage –casinos- design fancy leveraged products, derivatives, “sub-prime” mortgages etc, speculating and manipulating various commodity markets- oil, wheat, corn -basic necessities. It was an open license to screw the free market. Which they did for 9 years using cheap money provided by the Federal Reserve and they lost lot of money and then they began collapsing by September 2008 like dominoes. All the while the Federal Reserve was put in charge of a timid mediocre-Ben Bernake-The Ben Naked- Dr. Gloom who sat watching and fiddling for 3 years while Wall Street banks were engaged in an orgy of casino activities for a quick profit using Bernake’s cheap money, hand-outs in billions of dollars and monies of ordinary people. Eventually the banks became “sub-prime” cases.

On the 15th of September 2008, the 158 years old Lehman Brothers, one of the largest Wall Street Investment Banks declared bankruptcy after Bernake and Paulson refused to bailout. It was a Monday. It might have cost Bernake and Paulson a $50 billion and saved the day and saved the subsequent “ melt-down” of the stock markets and financial system around the world. The meltdown went on from 15th September to 10th October 2008, washing out about $5 to $7 trillion in the US corporate capital and an equal amount in the rest of the world. Each time Bernake opened his mouth and gave a speech, (October 4, 7 and December 1, 2008) the Dow Jones lost about 500 points–about $1 trillion being wiped out. America itself has become a “sub-prime” case in the end.

America is a human social laboratory which evolves continuously from the time it was instituted in 1776, where “all things are possible”.
Although this book is in part is about the current economic depression but it is also the story of an incredible human being who was accidentally born in Hawaii which was inducted into America in 1959 only a few days before a Kenyan student arrived at the University of Hawaii to do a degree in economics. Again it was not his choice. The Kenyan married a white student at the campus and had a child. The father left the child and mother behind and returned to Kenya.
The child grew up poor, fatherless, lonely and in denial. For the child, Barck Obama, the life was full of trials and tribulations. All along the journey, he was tenacious and he had the “audacity of hope” and the unfailing belief that in America that all things are possible for any human who could dare and act.

It was this aura of optimism that kept driving him to the mountain top. His trajectory of life is from zero to infinity to become the first African American to be elected as the supreme leader of the world, an emperor without a crown. Is it the Messiah has arrived to save America from bankruptcy? This is a story of an incredible human being who walked the planet when the planet is in peril, an empire is in decline and the world is in crisis. It is a fascinating story in an interesting time. The book is an excellent read and the Author views many things from a distance including– the architects of the current economic depression and “what oil crisis– enough oil until the next ice-age?”.