13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (Vintage) [Paperback]

Simon Johnson (Author), James Kwak (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 11, 2011 | Series: Vintage

In spite of its key role in creating the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, the American banking industry has grown bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks whose assets amount to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, this oligarchy proved it could first hold the global economy hostage and then use its political muscle to fight off meaningful reform. 13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the financial sector and forcefully argues that we must break up the big banks if we want to avoid future financial catastrophes.
 
Updated, with new analysis of the government’s recent attempt to reform the banking industry, this is a timely and expert account of our troubled political economy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though this blistering book identifies many causes of the recent financial crisis, from housing policy to minimum capital requirements for banks, the authors lay ultimate blame on a dominant deregulatory ideology and Wall Street's corresponding political influence. Johnson, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Kwak, a former consultant for McKinsey, follow American finance's rocky road from the debate between Jefferson and Hamilton over the first Bank of the United States through frequent friction between Big Finance and democracy to the Obama administration's responses to the crises. The authors take a highly critical stance toward recent palliative measures, arguing that nationalization of the banks would have been preferable to the bailouts, which have allowed the banks to further consolidate power and resources. Given the swelling size of the six megabanks, the authors make a persuasive case that the financial system cannot be secure until those banks that are too big to fail are somehow broken up. This intelligent, nuanced book might be too technical for general-interest readers, but it synthesizes a significant amount of research while advancing a coherent and compelling point of view. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Johnson and Kwak are the coauthors of The Baseline Scenario, a leading economic blog that pulls no punches when criticizing current economic policy. Just when you thought we were past the worst of the financial crisis, they are here to tell us that another potentially worse meltdown looms ahead in the future, due to the fact that nothing has really changed in the way large financial institutions do business. After the failures of banks like IndyMac, WaMu, and Wachovia, there are now just a handful of banks left that control not only all the money but also the political influence to prevent the kind of reform that is needed to rein in the industry from indulging in the risk-taking practices that got us in trouble in the first place. The government has already set the precedent that these financial institutions are “too big to fail,” thus shifting all the risk onto the American taxpayer if and when the next financial crisis occurs. The authors propose enacting strong legislation that will effectively reduce the size and scope of our national banks and make them “small enough to fail.” --David Siegfried --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (January 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030747660X
• ISBN-13: 978-0307476609
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (92 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #277,996 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

250 of 263 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A radical, but necessary proposal for revamping the banking and financial systems March 30, 2010

By Todd Bartholomew TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

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. Read more ›

113 of 120 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Painful History Well Told, and a Bold Prescription for the Future March 30, 2010

By Great Faulkner's Ghost TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

13 Bankers takes us through he painful history of the financial crisis that brought us where we are today and that now makes it so hard to move forward. Simon and Kwak argue that absent reform, another bailout - a more costly bailout with even greater global consequences, millions of jobs lost, and a ruinous impact on our government budget - is unavoidable.

Many Americans apparently do not yet understand how much influence financial institutions have in Washington, DC. Banks used to answer to Washington and were once held accountable for their actions. That is no longer is the case. We have never had such a concentrated banking system in the United States and it's dangerous that so much of our financial future is wrapped up in the big banks.

But the book is not pessimistic. Simon and Kwak offer instances from our history when elected representatives took on concentrated financial power. Each time, most Americans initially did not grasp how the system works, and this proved a major obstacle to reform. But the political leadership was able to explain what needed to be done, and to persuade average Americans that the nature of power in and around the financial sector had become so great and so distorted that something major had to be done.

The book is not anti-finance, but it is very much against the way our biggest banks operate today. The book describes exactly what needs to be done so that what happened in 2008-09 will never be allowed to happen again. Let's hope the prescription works.

277 of 306 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful, but not groundbreaking or controversial April 13, 2010

By Aaron C. Brown TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

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. Read more ›