I'm jumping in here more to vote among the opinions already expressed than to say anything new. I mostly agree with Bruce Lasker. The book is a good straightforward history of how we got to this point in American banking, but is neither deep in its analysis nor strong in its recommendations. If the reviews had been split on this issue I wouldn't have bothered, but since its 9 to 1 against Mr. Lasker, I think it's worth making it 9 to 2.
The opinion in this book is all expressed through word choice. When the authors don't like an increase in lending it is "an orgy of lending." When they do, "banks responded with capital to support growth." People they disagree with "rant," while people they like "point out" or even "prove." But there's never any analysis to back up these opinions, they're painted onto what is basically a factual history. I happen to agree with more than half of their views, but if I didn't, I wouldn't have been convinced by this book. It doesn't help that everything is based on secondary sources, from which the authors take what they like and nothing else.
On the other hand, if you want a factual history, and either agree with the authors or are willing to ignore loaded words, this is an excellent choice. It's well-written, witty, up-to-the-minute and accurate. The opinions are never intrusive, and never foolish. They feel concentrations of banking power are dangerous, which is pretty reasonable, but they ignore the problems caused by the local corruption that grew up in its place. You learn about Jefferson, Madison and Jackson's principled objection to national banking, you won't learn about politicians anxious to create local bank monopolies for their friends and associates, restraining competition in order to maximize profit and control local economies.
You'll learn how deposit insurance and limits on deposit interest reduced bank failures for 50 years, but not how it destroyed middle class savings when high inflation combined with low legal ceilings on interest; you also won't see the terrible customer service that existed until a "shadow" banking system made an end run around the regulations and offered ATM's, high-interest money market accounts, 24-hour-banking, automated deposits, Internet banking and other innovations (when I started working you got a paper paycheck every two weeks that you had to take to a physical bank on your lunch hour as they were open only 9 to 3 on weekdays and the tellers took the same lunch hour as the office workers so you didn't eat lunch on payday, no food allowed in the bank). Sneaky overcharging and predatory lending loom large in this book, with no hint of the advantage to customers when fixed commissions were smashed or companies were forced to improve accounting disclosure.
Wall Street is always the villain, local banks that lend only to their boards of directors and pals and support the local political machine, are whitewashed. The entire S&L crisis is blamed on Wall Street sharpies taking advantage of sleepy local bankers, you won't hear that virtually the entire loss was from commercial lending by oil-patch banks whose strong political connections ran through Texas, not New York. You'll read how Wall Street money flooded into Washington in campaign contributions and lobbying, you won't read about extortion from politicians introducing legislation to expropriate people's financial businesses unless they paid up. You also won't read about the constant movement of financial innovators to get away from the whole messy business of power politics, organizing off-shore, using private vehicles and leaving regulated businesses to come up with better solutions. It's always politicians trying to draw these into the regulatory framework, where they are forced to render unto Caesar, it's not financial innovators lining up to buy political backing for their ideas. Even the harm done by the gigantic financial institutions built entirely by Washington is blamed on Wall Street, not Washington.
I'm not defending Wall Street here, just pointing out there are two sides to the story. Wall Street, and more generally global financial innovation fighting entrenched local traditional practices, has done both good and bad. Mostly it does things that some people will consider good and others will consider bad. The one point of strong agreement I have with the authors is that a system of crony capitalism grew up, and led to a lot of our current problems. Personally, I would attack all crony capitalism, not just financial, as killing it in one place just tends to encourage it to spring up in another. We have crony defense contractors, medical companies, agribusinesses among many others. I grant that financial cronies are more dangerous than the others (except maybe defense contractors) but they are more alike than different. And the fundamental reform has to be political. If someone is handing out government money, it's pointless to outlaw taking it, because someone will always find a way to break the law, and then repay the giver. Stopping the handout is the point.
