“I almost look at the mortgage industry kind of like the drug trade. Wall Street and the investment banks are the Bolivian drug lords […] You look at this and you go: What were we doing? Who doesn't want the feeling of euphoria? Who doesn't like to get money? […] Wall Street, the drug lords, were creating this product. Lenders and brokers are the street dealers who were largely making it available based on a consumer desire; a want for it.” Richard Bitner, the first supergrass of the mortgage sector. From speculation on ‘toxic’ securities to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, from the raids of the finance magicians to the collapse of investment banks, from ideological certainties to the liberalist policy of a gigantic bail-out operation of the system. The United States of America has spawned the greatest economic recession of the last half century, which today the new President is trying to combat with a radically different economic policy. The NY correspondent of Corriere della Sera describes the chain of prejudice, superficiality, speculation and market manipulation that led to the current disaster, and the measures that Obama and the European governments are taking to address it. A dramatic and at times surreal account—full of unlikely characters, dramatic turns of events, and lessons for the future.