13 Bankers
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14 January 2022 - America
Johnson and Kwak's 13 Bankers is a financial history of the ascendence of Wall Street's influence and importance to the economy in the late 20th and early 21st century. While there is a bit of US financial history from the early days of the country, most of the book focus's on the run up to and what happened during the 2008 panic. While the authors acknowledge the moral hazard created by repeated government bailouts like that of Long Term Capital Management, they spend most of their energy arguing that it was the lack of government involvement in the form of regulaation that was the true cause of the panic. The "Too Big To Fail" companies strike the authors as a creation of moral hazard, but then they advocate nationalization rather than letting the market put them out of business. An interesting read in that it takes Democrats to task for being in the back pocket of Wall Street.
