The author explains how the siphoning off of public land, tax revenues, and even local transit systems for use by private capital coincided with a suddenly deregulated banking industry to create the sub-prime mortgage debacle and housing bubble that began to burst in late 2007.

The losses will not be limited only to the infamous sub-prime borrowers, Jeter cautions. “Defaults are now hitting even well-off borrowers saddled with adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), whose low introductory monthly payments are reset upward as interest rates rise. About a quarter of all home loans are ARMs, and sub-prime…”

Alas, unregulated speculation, in practice, has yielded one unsustainable bubble after another, supplanting productive innovation with a high-stakes Ponzi scheme.

“For all its bundling of complex investment vehicles, for all the Ivy League pedigrees and ampersand credentials of the blue-blooded financiers who orchestrated the housing bubble, a child could have identified its fatal flaw: if the commercial bankers have no real stake in whether borrowers can repay the loan, they are bound to make one bad mortgage loan after another.”

Compelling account.

What are the first questions that you should ask yourself when considering creating your enterprise? “What am I good at? What do I love doing?” answers the first chapter of Making It: Women Entrepreneurs Reveal their Secrets of Success by Lou Gimson and Allison Mitchell ( www.wileyeurope.com ). If you earn a living doing something you are good at and you love doing, it won’t feel like work, the authors advise.

Aim high, exhorts another chapter. But how can you hitch a ride in the rocket that will ricochet you to the mouth-watering moon of your business desires? “If you want to know the secret, stop salivating, pick up a pen and start scribbling, because those of us who write down our dreams are more likely to achieve them. Like a homing pigeon, a guided missile or the arrow from a bow, you’ve got to define your target so you can hit it smack bang in the middle.” Some entrepreneurs write letters to themselves. “Others have created extremely visual representations in the form of posters or collages.” Whatever method you choose, successful aim definition has three magic components, viz. positive, explicit, and present, or PEP, in short.

How to be ‘positive’? Always think about what you do want rather than what you don’t want to aim for, the authors elaborate. “Your brain is a magnificent but complicated organ and telling it what you don’t want to aim for can send it into a state of confusion.”

Insightful read.

Most of the time, we don’t look at events as events, but as problems and start worrying, says Rajan in I Love Living: A Practical Guide for Effective Living ( www.jaicobooks.com ). “Worry is the biggest tax collector, and if given a choice, one would prefer not to pay taxes. But in our life, we keep paying so much tax with this habit of worrying.”