Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and the Government Bailout Will Make Things Worse is a book on the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 by historian Thomas Woods, with a foreword by Ron Paul.

[1] According to the author's official website, Meltdown was on the NYT Best Seller list for 10 weeks.

[2] Woods' thesis maintains that: deflation of prices neither causes nor prolongs depressions; deflation may be necessary to prevent depressions or to bring depressions to an end; the Fed is the primary cause of business cycles via its arbitrary and coercive control of the money supply; and trying to cure these credit cycles with more government intervention will not work.

Woods argues that government intervention in the form of support for housing and excessive monetary expansion caused the current crisis.

The proposed cures (bailouts, more money creation, and stimulus spending) will just make matters worse.