13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown
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- ISBN13: 9780307379054
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Even after the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, America is still beset by the depredations of an oligarchy that is now larger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—which together control assets amounting, astonishingly, to more than 60 percent of the country’s yucky domestic product, these financial institutions (now more emphatically “too huge to fail”) continue to hold the global economy hostage, threatening yet another financial meltdown with their excessive risk-taking and toxic “business as usual” practices. How did this come to be—and what is to be done? These are the central concerns of 13 Bankers, a brilliant, historically informed account of our troubled political economy.
In 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson—one of the most prominent and frequently cited economists in America (ex- chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT, and leader of the controversial “The Silent Coup” in The Atlantic)—and James Kwak give a wide-ranging, meticulous, and bracing account of recent U.S. financial history within the context of previous showdowns between American democracy and Huge Finance: from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They convincingly show why our future is imperiled by the ideology of finance (finance is excellent, unregulated finance is better, unfettered finance run amok is best) and by Wall Street’s political control of government policy pertaining to it.
As the authors insist, the choice that America faces is stark: whether Washington will accede to the vested interests of an unbridled financial sector that runs up profits in excellent years and dumps its losses on taxpayers in lean years, or reform through stringent regulation the banking system as first and foremost an engine of economic growth. To restore health and balance to our economy, Johnson and Kwak make a radical yet feasible and all ears proposal: reconfigure the megabanks to be “tiny enough to fail.”
Lucid, authoritative, crucial for its timeliness, 13 Bankers is certain to be one of the most discussed and debated books of 2010.
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13 Bankers takes us through he painful history of the financial crisis that brought us where we are today and that now makes it so hard to go forwards. Simon and Kwak argue that absent reform, another bailout – a more costly bailout with even greater global consequences, millions of jobs lost, and a ruinous impact on our government budget – is unavoidable.
Many Americans rumor has it that do not yet know how much influence financial institutions have in Washington, DC. Banks used to answer to Washington and were once held accountable for their actions. That is no longer is the case. We have never had such a concentrated banking system in the United States and it’s treacherous that so much of our financial future is wrapped up in the huge banks.
But the book is not pessimistic. Simon and Kwak offer instances from our history when elected representatives took on concentrated financial power. Each time, most Americans initially did not grasp how the system works, and this proved a major hindrance to reform. But the political leadership was able to clarify what needed to be done, and to persuade average Americans that the scenery of power in and around the financial sector had become so fantastic and so distorted that something major had to be done.
The book is not anti-finance, but it is very much against the way our largest banks run today. The book describes exactly what needs to be done so that what happened in 2008-09 will never be allowed to take place again. Let’s hope the prescription works.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
The desire to analyze the current economic dip has prompted a deluge of books, most focusing on how to take up present and future economic ills and some narrowly all ears on individual players and institutions that played a key role in the financial collapse, while others clarified the events that led us to this place. “13 Bankers” clarifies how we got here and more importantly comes up with thoughts to prevent a reappearance in the future far more concisely than many others I’ve read. I could be simple to dismiss Johnson and Kwak’s observations as being pessimistic, as makes a very damning indictment of the banking and financial sectors in their past and present conditions and a rather trenchant argument that if these problem are not addressed we likely face another imminent meltdown. The authors give readers a quick concise history of finance and banking in the United States, something that many Americans are woefully unaware of, that points out how banks and financial institutions came to garner so much power over the economy. While efforts have been made to regulate them to varying degrees persons regulations have regularly proven ineffective or are too regularly enacted AFTER financial catastrophes, much our current situation. The authors rather persuasively argue that the “too huge to fail” model and the bailouts of 2008 and 2009 were misguided, arguing that nationalization would have been the better route to go. They continue the argument that the forced mergers, such as Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, were mistakes and as a replacement for had made institutions that are now truly to huge to fail. In some respects it nearly sounds like a teddy bear Roosevelt-era trust buster and his argument that these large institutions need to be broken up to diffuse their power certainly makes sense. They also point out the corrosive effect their political clout and donations carry with the political process, hindering further efforts at regulation.
Ultimately “13 Bankers is far more satisfying a read than some recent books on the theme such as The Road from Ruin: How to Revive Capitalism and Place America Back on Top, On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System, Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street, and America, Welcome to the Poorhouse: What You Must Do to Protect Your Financial Future and the Reform We Need. Yet the sad truth is that while the authors make a compelling argument for change the political establishment in Washington lacks the political will to break up these excessively large institutions. It wouldn’t be excellent for THEIR business, which is getting reelected. While there are efforts afoot in Washington at reform none are as radical a surgery as proposed here, but suffice to say when the next financial catastrophe comes, and the authors argue it IS coming, there is unlikely to be any taxpayer/voter support for ANY bailout in ANY form. If anything “13 Bankers” made me mad as hell and against any future bailout, let alone continuing the current ones in place. What makes me madder still is that the politicians in both parties will likely never consider the radical proposal place forwards here. It’s a bring shame on that it will take another financial crisis to get Congress and the Executive Branch to really act responsibly.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5