Stephen's got the serious $$ stuff tonight. Economist Simon Johnson and Baseline Scenario co-blogger James Kwak have put out the book 13 bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. Here's a bit of the press release:
In 13 Bankers, Johnson, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, and co-author James Kwak cite historical precedents and offer financial analysis to conclude that a second financial shock is inevitable unless the financial and political stranglehold held on Washington by the nation’s biggest banks is broken. "The best defense against a massive financial crisis is a popular consensus that too big to fail is too big to exist," the authors write. "This is at its heart a question of politics, not of economics or of regulatory technicalities."
The book points out that the current concentration of financial and political power is not unlike other moments in American history. President Theodore Roosevelt, for example, challenged the monopoly powers of banker and industrialist J.P. Morgan. "No one thought he could win," Johnson says in an interview, "but he did succeed in the first prosecution of a corporation under the Sherman Antitrust Act." Roosevelt, he said, began a process that helped people understand the need to rein in the power of corporate giants, such as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, "which was arguably more important as a single company in 1910 than J.P. Morgan was then or J.P. Morgan Chase is now," says Johnson.
Similar leadership is needed from the Obama administration and Congress now, according to 13 Bankers, which concludes that regulatory changes and other responses to date have been vastly inadequate...
Devilstower reviewed the book on the FP this past Sunday (and they responded ). But the Publisher's Weekly review (via Amazon) is shorter:
Though this blistering book identifies many causes of the recent financial crisis, from housing policy to minimum capital requirements for banks, the authors lay ultimate blame on a dominant deregulatory ideology and Wall Street's corresponding political influence. Johnson, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Kwak, a former consultant for McKinsey, follow American finance's rocky road from the debate between Jefferson and Hamilton over the first Bank of the United States through frequent friction between Big Finance and democracy to the Obama administration's responses to the crises. The authors take a highly critical stance toward recent palliative measures, arguing that nationalization of the banks would have been preferable to the bailouts, which have allowed the banks to further consolidate power and resources. Given the swelling size of the six megabanks, the authors make a persuasive case that the financial system cannot be secure until those banks that are too big to fail are somehow broken up. This intelligent, nuanced book might be too technical for general-interest readers, but it synthesizes a significant amount of research while advancing a coherent and compelling point of view.
I found a few articles by Johnson, some other reviews, and an explanation of the title at the booksite (which has links to more reviews, excerpts, etc.):
The title of this book is taken from a meeting held at the White House on March 27, 2009. In attendance were the heads of thirteen major U.S. banks (as well as representatives of two banking industry associations)...
We chose this meeting because it aptly symbolizes the solidarity between the new Obama administration and the major banks at the depths of the financial crisis and recession. Speaking with reporters after the meeting, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, "We’re all in this together," a phrase repeated by multiple bank CEOs. This contrasted with the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration of 1933, which largely froze out the bankers, much to their chagrin...
Keep the pressure on, guys. |