Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The desire to analyze the current economic downturn has prompted a deluge of books, most focusing on how to address present and future economic ills and some narrowly focused on individual players and institutions that played a key role in the financial collapse, while others explained the events that led us to this place. "13 Bankers" explains how we got here and more importantly comes up with ideas to prevent a recurrence in the future far more concisely than many others I've read. I could be easy 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 those regulations have often proven ineffective or are too often enacted AFTER financial catastrophes, much our current situation. The authors rather persuasively argue that the "too big 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 instead had created institutions that are now truly to big to fail. In some respects it almost sounds like a Teddy 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 subject such as The Road from Ruin: How to Revive Capitalism and Put 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 good 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 put forward here. It's a shame that it will take another financial crisis to get Congress and the Executive Branch to really act responsibly.