Katie Benner has a review of our book in Fortune complete with a huge picture of me (the same picture everyone has). It starts not too promisingly: “Of all the books about the financial crisis, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, is the least sexy.” (Hey! I always wanted to write sexy books.) But Benner means that as a compliment: “This staid looking text holds an explosive idea: Wall Street has hijacked our government. And without a total overhaul, taxpayers will endlessly foot the bill for its sins.”
Benner focuses on one of the central ideas of the book:
“While politicians debate minutia, Johnson and Kwak say they’re not addressing the real problem. Until the banking sector is a much smaller segment of our economy, banks will always have too much power. And as long as basic economic functions like mortgages and car loans depend on subsidizing their risky activities, we’ll keep bailing them out.”
This, we think, is the central problem. Breaking up big banks is our recommended solution, but that’s open to debate. But our main goal is to get people to agree on what the problem is.
Filed under: book reviews |
13 Bankers 