13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the financial sector and forcefully argues that we must break up the big banks if we want to avoid future financial catastrophes. Updated, with additional analysis of the governments recent attempt to reform the banking industry, this is a timely and expert account of our troubled political economy.
13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the financial sector and forcefully argues that we must break up the big banks if we want to avoid future financial catastrophes. Updated, with additional analysis of the governments recent attempt to reform the banking industry, this is a timely and expert account of our troubled political economy. Simon Johnson is Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MITs Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. James Kwak is an Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law. Visit the authors' blog at baselinescenario.com.
They were careless people, Tom and Daisythey smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby INTRODUCTION My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.
Barack Obama, March 27, 2009 Friday, March 27, 2009, was a lovely day in Washington, D.C.but not for the global economy. The U.S. stock market had fallen 40 percent in just seven months, while the U.S. economy had lost 4.1 million jobs.2 Total world output was shrinking for the first time since World War II. The Obama administrations proposals to stop the bleeding, initially panned in February, were still receiving a lukewarm response in the press and the markets. Prominent economists were calling for certain major banks to be taken over by the government and restructured. Wall Streets way of life was under threat.
That Friday in March, thirteen bankers the CEOs of thirteen of the countrys largest financial institutions gathered at the White House to meet with President Barack Obama. * Help me help you, the president urged the group. Meeting with reporters later, they toed the party line. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs summarized the presidents message: Everybody has to pitch in. Were all in this together. Im of the feeling that were all in this together, echoed Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf repeated the mantra: The basic message is, were all in this together. What did that mean, were all in this together? It was clear that the thirteen bankers needed the government. But why did the government need the bankers?
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