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What better way to understand how to do business in Orange County than to take a look at some first-hand accounts of one of the area’s major failures. If you haven’t already included the following titles on your reading list, and yet consider yourself an Orange County business aficionado, then you better hop to it and get them read because you know this topic is going to pop up during cocktail conversation!Big Bets Gone Bad: Derivatives and Bankruptcy in Orange County: The Largest Muicipal Failure in U.S. History (Phillipe Jorian) is the first account of the largest municipal failure in U.S. history and answers questions like: How can a municipal investment pool, which is supposed to be safe, lose billions of dollars? What are derivatives and how did they contribute to this tragedy? In December 1994, Orange County became the largest municipality in U.S. history to become bankrupt. By borrowing heavily and placing the wrong bets, Orange County Treasurer Robert Citron lost 1.7 billion of Orange County’s 7.4 billion investment portfolio. Author Philippe Jorion, the only professor in Orange County who teaches and researches derivatives, is uniquely placed to understand the technical details of the portfolio and climate in the Orange County municipal government that encouraged the decisions that led to the bankruptcy. The book provides an introduction to the U.S. bond market and details Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan’s efforts to tighten credit. Its description of the 35 trillion derivatives market makes the losses of Barings Bank, Kashima Oil, West Virginia, and Metallgesellschaft more understandable, and it explains what everyone should know about tax monies and public investments since nobody likes to lose 1.7 billion.When Government Fails: The Orange County Bankruptcy (Mark Baldassare) is a comprehensive analysis of the fiscal crisis of Orange County, California, filing for Chapter 9 protection on December 6, 1994 thereby becoming the largest municipality in U.S. history to do so. The author uncovers the many twists and turns that led eventually to financial recovery in 1996 –and how to prevent similar future situations. The author is a Senior Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) and Professor and Chair of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of California, Irvine. He is also founder and Director of the Orange County Annual Survey, and the author of numerous books in urban politics.