Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse (Hardcover) by Thomas Woods is an easily read and understood account of the factors leading up to the recent economic collapse. Woods is even handed in his assigning responsibility to those at fault, whether Democrat or Republican. This is a book that is written so those without command of economics jargon, can grasp and understand the decisions, market forces, and dangers of what happened. The blurb on the inside front cover summarizes the book well.

If Christians, and especially pastors, are going to help our folks understand what is happening and more importantly, why, we need to grasp the issues. Economics is a vital doctrine in the Scripture. From man’s creation he was given volitional responsibility. The first manifestation of this responsibility was in the area of labor and production, Adam was to guard and keep the garden. Eve was created to help him achieve that end. This is the essence of economics. So responsible labor and honest income are imbedded in God’s established order for creation. However, labor, service, and responsibility soon became burdensome and toilsome as sin infected all of creation. The creation began to fight against the man who was toiling in the fields, thorns and thistles came up, and man earned his living by the sweat of his brow.

As we discuss various issues related to understanding the biblical teaching on the divine institutions, colateral reading will be recommended. This never means we fully endorse everything an author says. But frequently the basic thrust of a book will be endorsed. When these are secular works, unrelated to the Bible, there will always be the caveat that we have found these books to be helpful and insightful, but this does not mean that we believe their thinking to necessarily be Scriptural or represent divine viewpoint.

(From inside front cover)  Is Capitalism the Culprit?

The media tells us that “deregulation” and “unfettered free markets” have wrecked our economy and will continue to make things worse without a heavy dose of federal regulation. But the real blame lies elsewhere. In Meltdown, bestselling author Thomas E. Woods Jr. unearths the real causes behind the collapse of housing values and the stock market–and it turns out the culprits reside more in Washington than on Wall Street.

And the trillions of dollars in federal bailouts? Our politicians’ ham-handed attempts to fix the problems they themselves created will only make things much worse.

Woods, a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and winner of the 2006 Templeton Enterprise Award, busts the media myths and government spin. He explains how government intervention in the economy–from the Democratic hobby horse called Fannie Mae to affirmative action programs like the Community Redevelopment Act–actually caused the housing bubble.

Most important, Woods, author of the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, traces this most recent boom-and-bust–and all such booms and busts of the past century–back to one of the most revered government institutions of all: the Federal Reserve System, which allows busy-body bureaucrats and ambitious politicians to pull the strings of our financial sector and manipulate the value of the very money we use.

Meltdown also provides a timely history lesson to counter the current clamor for a new New Deal. The Great Depression, Woods demonstrates, was only as deep and as long as it was because of the government interventions by Herbert Hoover (no free-market capitalist, despite what your high school history teacher may have taught you) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (no savior of the American economy, in spite of what the mainstream media says). If you want to understand what caused the financial meltdown–and why none of the big-government solutions being tried today will work–Meltdown explains it all.