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13 Bankers describes the rise of concentrated financial power and the threat it poses to our economic well-being. Over the past three decades, a handful of banks became spectacularly large and profitable and used their power and prestige to reshape the political landscape. By the late 1990s, the conventional wisdom in Washington was that what was good for Wall Street was good for America. This ideology of finance produced the excessive risk-taking of the past decade, creating an enormous bubble and ultimately leading to a devastating financial crisis and recession.
More remarkable, the responses of both the Bush and Obama administrations to the crisis–bailing out the megabanks on generous terms, without securing any meaningful reform–demonstrate the lasting political power of Wall Street. The largest banks have become more powerful and more emphatically “too big to fail,” with no incentive to change their behavior in the future. This only sets the stage for another financial crisis, another government bailout, and another increase in our national debt.
The alternative is to confront the power of Wall Street head on, which means breaking up the big banks and imposing hard limits on bank size so they can’t reassemble themselves. The good news is that America has fought this battle before in different forms, from Thomas Jefferson’s (unsuccessful) campaign against the First Bank of the United States to the trust-busting of Teddy Roosevelt and the banking regulations of the 1930s enacted under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 13 Bankers explains why we face this latest showdown with the financial sector, and what is at stake for America.

Too many discussions of the Great Recession present it as a purely economic phenomenon–the result of excessive leverage or errors of monetary policy or algorithms run mad. Simon Johnson was the first to point out that this was and is a crisis of political economy. His and James Kwak’s analysis of the unholy inter-twining of Washington and Wall Street–a cross between the gilded age and a banana republic – is essential reading.

Niall Ferguson, Professor of History at Harvard University,
Professor at Harvard Business School, and Author of The Ascent of Money


A beautifully written and powerful story that ties the current financial crisis to a cycle of politics as old as the Republic, and to a pathology in our politics that is as profound as any that our Republic has faced. We are far away from solving that crisis, and hopelessly far from even understanding how we could cure this pathology. Required reading for the President, and anyone else who cares for this Republic.

Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law and Director of the
Edmond J. Safra Foundation for Ethics at Harvard University

Simon Johnson

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., and a research associate at NBER. He is a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Economic Advisers and co-director of the NBER Africa Project.

Simon was previously chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, president of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies, and a member of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Advisory Committee on Market Information. He is a sought-after commentator on current financial and economic issues, and has recently appeared on programs such as Bill Moyers Journal, PBS NewsHour, This American Life, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, The Diane Rehm Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, and The Colbert Report. He also writes a weekly column for the New York Times’ Economix blog.

Simon received a B.A. in Economics and Politics from the University of Oxford, an M.A. in Economics from the University of Manchester, and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.

Личен сайт: http://13bankers.com/; http://baselinescenario.com/

James Kwak

James Kwak is currently a student at the Yale Law School. Previously, he was a management consultant at McKinsey and Company and co-founder of a successful software company.

James is not, never has been, and never will be a member of the Yale Law Journal. However, on December 11, 2009, he was named Grand Heresiarch of the Ancient, Hermetic, and Occult Order of the Shrill by Brad DeLong.

James received an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard College and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley.

Личен сайт: http://13bankers.com/; http://baselinescenario.com/