| Description |
xxx, 318 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [249]-300) and index. |
| Summary |
Shortfall opens with a surprise discovery in an attic—boxes filled with letters and documents hidden for more than seventy years—and launches into a fast-paced story that uncovers the dark secrets in Echols’s family—an upside-down version of the building and loan story at the center of Frank Capra’s 1946 movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. In a narrative filled with colorful characters and profound insights into the American past, Shortfall is also the essential backstory to more recent financial crises, from the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s and 1990s to the subprime collapse of 2008. Shortfall chronicles the collapse of the building and loan industry during the Great Depression—a story told in microcosm through the firestorm that erupted in one hard-hit American city during the early 1930s. Over a six-month period in 1932, all four of the building and loan associations in Colorado Springs, Colorado, crashed in an awful domino-like fashion, leaving some of the town’s citizens destitute. The largest of these associations was owned by author Alice Echols’s grandfather, Walter Davis, who absconded with millions of dollars in a case that riveted the national media. This book tells the dramatic story of his rise and shocking fall. |
| Contents |
Prologue: captain nothing -- Advertisements for himself -- The loan man -- Racketeers and suckers -- Slipping through your fingers -- Sowing grief -- The port of missing men -- Orphans in the storm -- Epilogue. |
| Subject |
Davis, Walter Clyde.
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Embezzlement -- Colorado -- Case studies.
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Commercial crimes -- Colorado -- Case studies.
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Savings and loan associations -- Corrupt practices -- Colorado -- Case studies.
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United States -- History -- 1919-1933.
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BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Banks & Banking.
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HISTORY / United States / 20th Century.
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HISTORY / United States / State & Local / West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY)
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| Added Title |
Family secrets, financial collapse, and a hidden history of American banking |
| Other Form: |
Online version: Echols, Alice, author. Shortfall New York, NY : The New Press, [2017] 9781620973042 (DLC) 2017035260 |
| ISBN |
9781620973035 (hardcover) (alkaline paper) |
|
1620973030 (hardcover) (alkaline paper) |
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