Book excerpt: The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened. -Norman Thomas With the GDP growing to its peak in June 2008, why did the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy of September 15, 2008, help spark a recession that grew to be the Great Recession? How is it possible that American financial leadership was so negligent and uninformed as to not foresee an economic situation that would be described as being so severe that it would require trillions of dollars to avoid a Great Depression? Are we so incapable from a financial management perspective, or are we so paralyzed by political forces that necessary corrections were either not foreseen or not allowed? Through meticulous research, Masters of Audacity and Deceit answers these questions and connects the dots that link the myriad factors that have led this country to its current state.