13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the next Financial Meltdown

Even after the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, America is still beset by the depredations of an oligarchy that is now bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by sixmegabanks--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 thecountry's gross domestic product, these financial institutions (now more emphatically too big to fail) continue to hold the global economy hostage, threatening yet another financial meltdownwith 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, abrilliant, historically informed account of our troubled political economy.

In 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson--one of the most prominent and frequently cited economistsin America (former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT, and author of the controversial The Quiet Coup in TheAtlantic)--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 Big Finance: fromThomas 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 good, 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 good years and dumps its losses on taxpayers in lean years, or reform through stringent regulation the bankingsystem 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 focused proposal: reconfigure the megabanks to be smallenough to fail.

Lucid, authoritative, crucial for its timeliness, 13 Bankers is certain to be one of the most discussed and debated books of2010.

From the Hardcover edition.

Simon Johnson is Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is co

Provides historical context for the 2008 financial crisis and proposes a radical solution, the megabanks deemed "too big to fail" must be made smaller.

Johnson and Kwak examine not only how Wall Street's ideology, wealth, and political power among policy makers in Washington led to the financial debacle of 2008, but also what the lessons learned portend for the future.

Simon Johnson is Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is coauthor, with James Kwak, of The Baseline Scenario, a leading economic blog, described by Paul Krugman as “a must-read” and by Bill Moyers as “one of the most informative news sites in the blogosphere.”

James Kwak has had a successful business career as a consultant for McKinsey & Company and as a software entrepreneur.

Jefferson's warning — Faraway crises — The transformation of Wall Street — How Wall Street took over — What Wall Street got — Nine bankers — Six banks.