Based on the timing of its publication alone, economist Mark Zandi's new book, “Financial Shock,” has the potential to reach a wide audience.

As Americans debate the wisdom of funding the biggest financial bailout in U.S. history, Zandi's book offers an explanation of how the current credit crunch evolved. The chief economist and co-founder of Moody's Economy.com also offers tips on how to avoid future fiscal meltdowns.

Zandi says there's no single culprit responsible for the crisis. His book describes how lenders, investment bankers, real estate agents, builders and regulators at the Federal Reserve all played a part in driving home prices to unsustainable levels.

“As the process went badly awry, everybody assumed someone else was in control,” Zandi writes. “No one was.”

The author explains how loose underwriting standards set the stage for a spike in foreclosures. When highly leveraged subprime mortgages were bundled into securities and sold on Wall Street, complex financial engineering enabled lenders to hide the growing risk. In Zandi's view, regulators and policy makers did little to keep the industry in check. As a result, prices fell when the market corrected itself.

It's no coincidence that financial crises occur about once each decade, Zandi holds. That's how long it takes for consumers to forget the last one and drop their guard.

In the mid-1990s, lenders were mailing out credit cards with abandon, allowing cardholders to create huge debts, he writes. A decade later, lenders embraced risky subprime mortgages, which had been designed for people with less-than-perfect credit histories. Home buyers were encouraged to borrow more than they could repay.

Ending the credit crisis will require government intervention, Zandi said.

“When policymakers can't act, for whatever reason, the crisis will continue on,” he said. “We are now at a point when the financial system is at such stress that it will threaten the economy, jobs. A key lesson here is that in times of crisis, the government needs to respond decisively and aggressively.”

– EMMET PIERCE

CHECK ONLINE FOR COUNTY PERMITS

If you're in need of a building permit from the county and hate waiting in long lines, you can now check the Web to find out when's the best time to go.

The county's building division recently posted online wait-time charts that document when waits are the longest and shortest on any given day of the week.

Those estimates are based on averages calculated from wait times during the previous month for each day of the week.

Eventually, the building department hopes to post hourly wait times online as they're happening, said Building Division Chief Darren Gretler.

Typically, average waits are under 20 minutes, he said, although they can fluctuate anywhere from as short as five minutes to as long as 45 minutes.

The shortest lines are first thing in the morning, while the longest waits are generally midday and midweek.

“People don't like mornings,” said Gretler.

To research wait times, go to sdcounty.ca.gov/dplu/bldg/ and click on “average wait times for the building division.” The building division's counters, which are open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, are located at 5201 Ruffin Road.

Yet another Web-based tool offered by the county is a permit fee “estimator calculator” that lets people calculate the cost of building permits and plan checks. That can be accessed at the building division Web link. Also available is a link where customers can research permit and property histories and also apply for a building permit.

– LORI WEISBERG

SALK INSTITUTE'S ARCHITECT ONE YOU SHOULD KNOW

Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974) earned San Diego world-class status when he designed the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in the 1960s. Architects troop to the Torrey Pines campus, west of UCSD, to soak up the concrete monument that is both a scientific powerhouse of exploration and triumph in design that links place with space.

The building enjoys a two-page spread in “50 Architects You Should Know,” a 176-page all-color introduction to the work of designers dating to the Renaissance (Prestel, $19.95). They range from Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), responsible for the iconic Cathedral of Florence, to the Swiss team of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (both born in 1950), who fashioned Beijing's Olympic Stadium, otherwise known as the Bird's Nest.

The text by art historians Isabel Kuhl of Barcelona, Kristina Lowis of Berlin and Sabine Thiel-Siling of Brisbane, Australia, is rather disappointing, reciting dates and commissions but offering no interpretation or judgment. Sorely missed is an introduction describing how the 50 architects were selected and what they all say as a group. Still, the photos provide enough eye candy to capture a reader's imagination.

Perhaps more useful is “Architecture: A World History” by Daniel Borden and five other co-authors published in May (512 pages, Abrams, $19.95). It starts with a Sumerian roundhouse, circa 2900 B.C., and ends with a wormlike bus station in the Netherlands by NIO Architecture in 2003.

On Kahn, the authors also include the Salk Institute and offer this observation: “Kahn conceived of the building as a kind of Modern monastery and sought to infuse it with a sense of calm and serenity through its structural order, while at the same time maintaining its Modernist feel.”

– ROGER SHOWLEY