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It Takes a Pillage: An Epic Tale of Power, Deceit, and Untold Trillions Paperback – February 23, 2013

by Nomi Prins (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 127 ratings
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After months of various drafts and political infighting, Congress finally passed, and President Obama signed into law, a bill that was supposedly the biggest financial reform bill in decades. The big question is, do the supporters of this bill really believe it will change Wall Street? Or do they simply hope it'll be enough to placate us so the status quo can be validated? Nomi Prins assumes the latter, because they can't be that naive. In It Takes a Pillage, former Wall Street insider turned muckraking journalist Nomi Prins explains how we are building a new bubble with more leverage, bigger bonuses, rampant speculation and fraud, amid extended unemployment and personal financial decline. The cowering of Washington bureaucrats in the face of the power and influence exerted by the Big Banks threatens the economic well-being of us all. The scariest part is that, for all the trillions that have been spent or remain committed to the bloated stalwarts of Wall Street, our economic system is still in disarray. Average Americans continue to struggle while the banks are once again rolling in outsized profits and obscene bonuses. It Takes a Pillage is packed with the information you need to understand the financial crisis and what has followed, and to gain deeper insight into how to fight for real change.
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  1. Print length
    310 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    February 23, 2013
  4. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.7 x 8.5 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0983916047
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0983916048
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"Nomi knows. Having been at Goldman Sachs, Nomi Prins knows the mind-set, knows how to read spreadsheets, knows the people, and knows Wall Street's games. Nomi knows and now Nomi tells."
--Jim Hightower, author of "Swim against the Current"

"If you want to understand why Wall Street is disgraced but still calling the shots, you can't do better than the brilliantly written and documented It Takes a Pillage."
--Robert Kuttner, author of "Obama's Challenge"

After months of various drafts and political infighting, Congress finally passed, and President Obama signed into law, a bill that was supposedly the biggest financial reform bill in decades. The big question is, do the supporters of this bill really believe it will change Wall Street? Or do they simply hope it'll be enough to placate us so the status quo can be validated? Nomi Prins assumes the latter, because they can't be that naive, but time will tell.

In "It Takes a Pillage," former Wall Street insider turned muckraking journalist Nomi Prins explains how we are building a new bubble with more leverage, bigger bonuses, rampant speculation and fraud, amid extended unemployment and personal financial decline. The cowering of Washington bureaucrats in the face of the power and influence exerted by the Big Banks threatens the immediate economic well-being of us all.

The scariest part is that, for all the trillions that have been spent or remain committed to the bloated stalwarts of Wall Street, our economic system is still in disarray. Average Americans continue to struggle while the banks are once again rolling in outsized profits and obscene bonuses. "It Takes a Pillage" is packed with the information you need to understand the financial crisis and what has followed, and to gain deeper insight into how to fight for real change.

About the Author

NOMI PRINS is a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, now a senior fellow at Demos, who writes on corruption in Washington and on Wall Street for Fortune, Mother Jones, AlterNet, the New York Times, the Daily Beast, and other publications. She is a frequent guest on national radio and television, including NPR, The NewsHour, and various CNBC, CNN, and Fox TV programs. Her previous books are Black Tuesday, Other People's Money and Jacked. Visit her Web site at www.nomiprins.com

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ SWN Books; Reprint edition (February 23, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 310 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0983916047
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0983916048
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 127 ratings

About the author

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Nomi Prins

Nomi Prins

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Nomi Prins is a renowned author, journalist and speaker. Her new book, Collusion:How Central Bankers Rigged the World. Her last book, All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power, was published on April 8, 2014. Her prior book, Black Tuesday, was a historical novel about the 1929 crash. Before that, she wrote the hard-hitting, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. She is also the author of Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America, which predicted the recent financial crisis, and was chosen as a Best Book of 2004 by The Economist, Barron's and The Library Journal, and Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking your Pocket (whether you voted for them or not.) She wrote the financial thriller, The Trail, under pseudonym, Natalia Prentice.

Before becoming an author, Nomi was a managing director at Goldman Sachs and a senior managing director at Bear Stearns. She has been a featured commentator on numerous TV programs including for: BBC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, CSPAN, Democracy Now, Fox and PBS. She has been featured on hundreds of radio shows including for CNNRadio, Marketplace, NPR, BBC, and Canadian Programming. She has been featured in international documentaries from the US, Norway, France, Germany and other places, alongside other prominent thought-leaders.

Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Fortune, Newsday, Mother Jones, The Daily Beast, Newsweek, Slate, The Guardian, The Nation, LaVanguardia, and other publications.

Her website is http://www.nomiprins.com

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
127 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book informative and interesting. They appreciate the author's witty and humorous writing style. Many readers find the financial content valuable, with details about the current financial debacle. However, some readers find the story frightening and need to read in short bursts. There are mixed opinions on the writing quality - some find it well-written and readable, while others consider it poorly written and repetitive.

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Information qualityHumorValue for moneyWriting qualityScariness level
11 customers mention "Information quality"11 positive0 negative

Customers find the book informative and well-researched. They appreciate the author's cogent observations and how she makes the subject matter interesting and exciting. Readers mention it's a must-read for learning about obscure government operations.

"...IT TAKES A PILLAGE is a must-read because it is an inside story. Its tone is urgent and sardonic...." Read more

"...Well written; not your average business/investment book. Makes the subject matter and storyline interesting and exciting even though you know the..." Read more

"...Extremely well written, it informs readers about the obscure combined operations of our government, the Federal Reserve and major US banks involved..." Read more

"...author blends exposition and critique seamlessly as she explains all the transactions, government interactions, etc...." Read more

6 customers mention "Humor"6 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's humor. They find the author's wit, satire, and sarcasm engaging. The tone is described as urgent and sardonic. Overall, readers praise the writing style and approach as excellent.

"...Its tone is urgent and sardonic...." Read more

"...She writes in a manner that is easy to follow. Her wit, satire, and sarcasm make it more fun to read even though what she is telling you makes you..." Read more

"...The writing style and approach cannot be overstated. This book is excellent on many levels...." Read more

"...Frustratingly funny in a manner of speaking, the kind where you want to strangle someone while looking them straight in the eye asking, "what were..." Read more

5 customers mention "Value for money"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book provides good value for money. They appreciate the author's financial acumen and detailed explanation of the current financial debacle. The book is well-written and not your average business or investment book.

"...She's an excellent investigator and writer with great financial acumen. I bought her other works based on this reading...." Read more

"...on NPR, but this book lays it all out in detail- the sheer amount of money is mind boggling...." Read more

"...amazing job explaining the who, what, when, where and why of are current financial debacle...." Read more

"...It was interesting to see the names and the unbound greed behind the collapse." Read more

13 customers mention "Writing quality"8 positive5 negative

Customers have different views on the writing quality. Some find it well-written and readable, with the author seamlessly blending exposition and critique as she explains all the transactions and government. Others feel the writing is repetitive, hard to follow, and difficult to read in long blocks.

"...She's an excellent investigator and writer with great financial acumen. I bought her other works based on this reading...." Read more

"...Stowe was one; she presented slavery as it really was: brutal, inexorable, shameful and turning our entire nation into what many northerners called..." Read more

"...Extremely well written, it informs readers about the obscure combined operations of our government, the Federal Reserve and major US banks involved..." Read more

"...This book is excellent on many levels. First, it is written by an insider who explains the inner workings and relationships between the pillagers..." Read more

3 customers mention "Scariness level"0 positive3 negative

Customers find the book frightening.

"...Wait, wait! Why five stars then??? Because it's a necessary horror story...." Read more

"Well written,the information is difficult to digest very very scary book. Have a few drinks before you read this book .buy Gold ." Read more

"frightening!..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Steven Wexler
    5.0 out of 5 stars Bitch-slapped Back to Reality
    Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2009
    Verified Purchase
    By Steven D. Wexler

    Abe Lincoln used to ask, "If you call the tail of a dog a leg, how many legs does that dog have?" Whenever somebody answered "Five," he would say, "No. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." He was referring to slavery, and the habit of euphemizing it as "our peculiar institution." Few bothered to challenge this. Harriet Beecher Stowe was one; she presented slavery as it really was: brutal, inexorable, shameful and turning our entire nation into what many northerners called a shamocracy, rather than a democracy.
    In Nomi Prins' recent book, IT TAKES A PILLAGE, she hoists politician after politician and banker after mega-banker upon their own petards, as they pop off their flatulent laissez-faire euphemisms. Like Ellen Brown in CounterPunch (October 2, 2009), Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone (October 15) and Morgan Ibarra in The Humanist (September/October), she fleshes out the rape and pillage of the economy by the kleptocrats of our scamocracy. Together these writers put together a complete scenario of sociopathy--our recent reaming which has been veiled by what Thomas Frank of the Wall Street Journal compared to the mumbo-jumbo of witch doctors, who "repeat their incantations and retreat deeper into dogma."
    IT TAKES A PILLAGE is a must-read because it is an inside story. Its tone is urgent and sardonic. She whips off bon mots reminiscent of Galbraith's famous phrase about the 1929 bubble: "a mass escape into make-believe." With just one word, "Really," she emphasizes how economists now know enough to use high unemployment (ten per cent or more) as a deflationary brake upon the hyperinflationary bailout of mega-banks. This high unemployment, extending far into the future, will be our cost for rescuing their banking buddies. This secret bailout, committed by the Fed (a government-chartered private bank, charging us interest), was hidden behind the TARP smokescreen. The lemon-socialist subsidy for the once very bankrupt rich so far totals around 13 trillion dollars, according to Prins.
    Divide that by our population: 300 million. You get $43,000.
    145 people found this helpful
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  • Dienne
    5.0 out of 5 stars She knows where the bodies are buried
    Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2011
    Verified Purchase
    Pssst. C'mere. I have a deal for you. You see, I have some gambling debts and the loan sharks are starting to eye my kneecaps, so I need a bailout. Here's the deal: you give me a million bucks and I'll invest it at the craps table. If I win, I'll give you your money back (well, maybe most of it). If I lose, well, sorry about that. Maybe if you loan me another million...?

    What, no takers? I can't believe it. I guess I must not be as persuasive as Henry Paulson. Because that's roughly the deal he snookered every American taxpayer into. Well, if you multiply that by orders of magnitude, that is.

    In a dizzying account, Nomi Prins, a former Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns insider turned investigative journalist, details the events that led to the financial crisis - which Prins dubs the "Second Great Bank Depression". She takes us inside the ins and outs of the Wall Street wheeling and dealing that created behemoth "supermarket" banks which were "too big to fail" (or, as Prins puts it, "too big to succeed"). She details the political power plays that dismantled many of the regulations which were put in place after the (first) Great Depression to protect American consumers and taxpayers and prevent the public from taking on huge risks associated with giant conglomerations of banks engaged in risky speculation propped up by government largesse (i.e., our money).

    I'm no financial guru, and I probably never will fully get my head around the structure of the financial world of "credit default swaps" and "asset backed securities" being "sliced up" into "tranches". Nonetheless, Prins paints enough of a picture of these bank "products" to give even a layman a sense of how risky they are.

    Call me old-fashioned, but am I the only one who gets a little queasy when words like "creative" and "innovative" are used in connection with banking and accounting? It's sort of like the English teacher who tries to be "creative" with spelling and grammar. Such things are supposed to be rather boring because they're fundamental.

    This book is rather repetitive. At one point Prins even apologizes for beating the dead horse of Glass-Steagall. However, such repetition is probably necessary because that regulation (and other similar ones which Prins covers) is probably the biggest factor leading to the Second Great Bank Depression. I couldn't begin to cover all the ins and outs, but basically Glass-Steagall was a law implemented after the Depression in the 1930s which separated commercial banks, which provide loans to consumers based on consumer deposits, from risky investment banks which exist to speculate and take risks in order to earn large rewards. The government backed consumer deposits and commercial banks to protect both consumers and the banking industry. Investment banks, on the other hand, were left free to speculate and invest, but their risks were solely on their own books, not the public dole. Other regulations prevented large banks from merging with each other and creating overly large conglomerates. That way, no one bank was "too big to fail". Bad banks could be allowed to fail without creating any overarching crises.

    But over the course of the last 30 or so years, and especially since the Clinton and Bush 43 eras, almost all of those regulations, especially including Glass Steagall, have been rolled back or repealed entirely and banks have gleefully merged and acquired each other with abandon. Investment banks were then free to merge with commercial banks and use their large pools of consumer dollars as collateral for risky investments which were backed up by the government through various name changes, such as becoming "bank holding companies" or other similar entities. Also, the barriers between banks and other financial-related companies such as insurance companies were dissolved. The result was an orgy of greed and speculation among Wall Street banks and financial firms which resulted in the largest ever transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans to already obscenely rich executives.

    Furthermore, because these banking leviathans are backed by the government, we, the American taxpayers, not the Wall Street executives, shoulder the risks of this speculative greed. As mortgage-backed securities began to fail during the early days of the foreclosure crisis, the enormous house of cards built on top of bad mortgages began to teeter, which is the real reason credit became frozen. The government, originally led by Bush 43's Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, stepped in to bail out the banks while failing to help a single American homeowner.

    Prins destroys the notion that greedy homeowners were responsible for the Second Great Bank Depression, although I wish she had covered the right-wing's favorite whipping boy, the Community Reinvestment Act, in a little more depth. Even if every American homeowner defaulted on their mortgage, the government could, if it so chose, bail every one out for a small fraction of the trillions that have been poured into the bailout of the banking industry.

    Lenders deliberately pushed borrowers into risky mortgages knowing that there was a likely chance that the mortgage would fail. However, it didn't matter because the lenders assumed they'd always be able to re-sell the underlying home for more than the bad mortgage was worth, since it was assumed that housing prices would continue to rise. Furthermore, these bad loans were repackaged and sold as securities on various markets. And those securities were further structured and sliced and diced and re-sold. When housing prices slowed and eventually declined, the securities built on top of those "assets" fell apart and became "toxic".

    But you needn't fret about those poor Wall Street executives who had so much riding on those toxic assets. Using your money, the government - mainly the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department - swooped in to save Wall Street. But, unfortunately for you, you'll probably never know how most of your money was spent because, as a public-private entity, the Federal Reserve is immune from ordinary audits, as are the banks which received our largesse. Prins and her staff, using exhaustive research, followed the money as far as they could and the numbers are staggering. But Prins admits that the numbers to present a full picture simply aren't available, so we can only imagine how much more staggering the reality is.

    Prins ends with heartfelt - but probably hopeless - pleas to restore the regulations implemented after the Depression: re-implement Glass-Steagall to restore the barrier between commercial and investment banks, restore the barrier between banks and other financial companies, re-implement sensible limits on how much a bank is allowed to borrow based on ratios to their deposits and other assets, impose transparency and accountability on the Federal Reserve, end the "revolving door" between Wall Street and the agencies which are supposed to regulate Wall Street. All of those are definitely worthy and much-needed steps to restore some semblance of sanity to our financial system so as not to have- and soon - a Third Great Bank Depression. However, considering that both parties basically represent corporate interests, and with the Citizens United Supreme Court decision which basically allows corporations to spend as much as they like buying elections, I don't foresee any significant changes. Until it gets bad enough that Americans get off their collective duffs and take to the streets like the Egyptians have the past two weeks, nothing is going to change.

    I recommend this book to every American. Even if you don't understand all the details, you'll understand enough to see that you're getting screwed, and maybe enough people will start to care enough to do something about it. Or, as Dr. Seuss put it, "Until someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
    15 people found this helpful
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  • JDIRENZO
    4.0 out of 5 stars blood-boiling
    Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    This book provides a close up and extremely hard-hitting look at how reckless management, greed and out-right stupidity made it possible for the large investment banks on wall street to bring out economy to the brink of destruction. Nomi Prins does clearly has the personal history and knowledge to back up her belief that before this "economic down-turn" is over more that $13 TRILLION of wealth will be transferred from the tax-payers to the very same firms that knowingly inflated this bubble, packaged up bad loans with ridiculously high default rates into shiny new pieces of paper lovingly stamped AAA by the ratings agency, created a demand for them and then shorted them on the quick. It describes how virtually all government regulation was systematically dismantled by their puppets in DC.

    It seems like the book was written to elicit a specific response from the readers...rage. The author does not pull any punches and does a very nice job of boiling down complex information into "bottom line" type statements or take-home messages. The sum of all these messages is simultaneously revealing, dire and depressing.
    14 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • paulholdsworth
    5.0 out of 5 stars very interesting
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 19, 2022
    Verified Purchase
    opens your eyes to the truth of the USA and the west in general or humanity for that matter
    Report
  • Judith Grad
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in Canada on February 7, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    A must read
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  • Roger
    5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 7, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Essential reading for anyone who wants to know who really won or lost in the aftermath of the 2008 GFC. Nomi Prins has, through diligent research, condensed a vast amount of data into a very readable summary of the actual beneficiaries of the enormous bailout funds. It is truly a shocking tale!
    Report