Subprime Factor
Jeffrey D Schlaman
Synergy Books

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Opening with an August 3, 2007 blog outlining the writers concerns regarding the role of the Federal Reserve Bank in the so called Great Depression of 1929 Martin Cheyne is blogging from a parking spot just across the bridge from a famous place. Suprime Factor is a fiction spanning nearly a year and growing out of recent economic crisis.

Cheyne, thirty two years old is cagey. He is careful not to post his GPS location on his blog entry. His blog Economic Calamity ranked on Google top 10,000, his PhD dissertation and his mission to discredit the Federal Reserve has exposed him to a lot of repercussions. His failed attempt to defend that dissertation would be the least of them. After a narrow escape with friends Paul, Phil and Doug in the Sierra Nevadas Martin know he is being followed. Soon after checking into a Jekyll Island, Georgia hotel he knows he is in real trouble.

In Auburn, California, Doug Boyd hung up the phone. He was a tad perplexed. PPT? Martin was going to get dirt on Pearson, so what acronym was he fiddling with now? He called Phil, got a number and called Webb Sutton. PPT- Plunge Protection Team, the Present’s Working Group on Financial Markets, led by the secretary of the Treasury. These are the guys, according to Sutton, who are responsible for putting the country into the mess our children’s children will inherit.

Doug began to wish he hadn’t asked.

From that beginning the reader continues checking Cheyne’s blog, travels to California where FBI special agent Philip Shultz rapped on the door of a house where a suspected child pornographer was housed. Shultz owes $200,000 more on the house he has seen go into foreclosure than the latest $400,000 appraisal. Recently his wife packed his kids, her bags and bought a one way ticket to Virginia.

Phil and Paul LeBrach were frat brothers. Paul’s real estate investment company was grown aggressively until today he owned sixteen homes and was in the process of funding a downtown Sacto condominium project. He opened the trunk of his car, removed a for sale sign and pounded it into the turf of Phil’s front yard. Not that the house was going to bring anything like the $550,000 asking price.

CPA Doug Boyd, Martin, Phil and Paul were friends from Cal State. They became good friends through their fraternity. The four all realized that the game of life is rigged, that an edge is needed to climb to the top of the corporate ladder where the good old boy network held sway.

Cheyne’s last blog listed is July 3, 2008 in which he mentions his plans to begin a new series of columns on a new threat. Near Blacksburg, Virginia Phil and his family are settling into life filled with fields of strawberries when Phil was not presenting seminars at Quantico. Paul LeBrach looked better than Doug might have expected. Too bad they didn’t have a lot to say to one another. Doug himself and his wife live in Auburn and are expecting their first child.

Reading Author Schlaman’s captivating fast paced novel moves the reader from one coast of the United States and back in a wild rush filled with danger, chicanery, fraud and treachery. A DC Starbucks, Bull Spears Investment Bank, San Francisco, Martin’s blog, The Economics Tutorial lab at the University of Nevada-Reno, and a weekend mountain camping trip all advance the tale as does the finding of suspicious numbers on a high profile audit. And, Doug’s refusal to bend rules regarding the finding.

It is during the camping trip that Doug, and his friends find themselves targets of a hit man, leading to their becoming entangled in a dangerous conspiracy generated from situations at the Federal Reserve Bank. Doug and his friends are unwitting pawns caught up in the scheme to cover up a huge economic mistake that has caused the credit crunch and collapse of the housing bubble.

Their attempts to gather evidence of governmental or other wrong doing may well end with the loss of their careers if not their lives. From members of the cabinet to elected officials to a hired hit man or two the narrative is a compelling, page turner of a read.

Writer Schlaman put in plain words, in narrative format, many of the underhanded characteristics surrounding the foundation and expansion of the housing bubble here in the US. The chronicle is easy to understand as well as being an engaging read. Characters are well fleshed, villains are suitably villainous, good guys are filled with faults and quirks and human feelings. Settings are clearly delineated. Because I am a Californian who has done some traveling; I recognized many of the locales listed.

Included in the narrative is a wealth of fiscal information presented from the standpoint of a CPA and integrated into the storyline. The sequence of events are not difficult to follow as the tale recounts a saga woven around much of our present economic situation.

Knowing that the writer is a former auditor and California CPA who earned an advanced degree from the University of Florida adds credence to his credentials for writing a book with economics at the core.

Convincing read, happy to recommend.