All the Presidents' Bankers
The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A groundbreaking narrative of how an elite group of men transformed the American economy and government, dictated foreign and domestic policy, and shaped world history.
Culled from original presidential archival documents, All the Presidents' Bankers delivers an explosive account of the hundred-year interdependence between the White House and Wall Street that transcends a simple analysis of money driving politics-or greed driving bankers.
Nomi Prins ushers us into the intimate world of exclusive clubs, vacation spots, and Ivy League universities that binds presidents and financiers. She unravels the multi-generational blood, intermarriage, and proté relationships that have confined national influence to a privileged cluster of people. These families and individuals recycle their power through elected office and private channels in Washington, DC.
From the Panic of 1907 to the financial crisis of 2008, this unprecedented history of American power illuminates how the same financiers retained their authoritative position through history, swaying presidents regardless of party affiliation. All the Presidents' Bankers explores the alarming global repercussions of a system lacking barriers between public office and private power. Prins leaves us with an ominous choice: either we break the alliances of the power elite, or they will break us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The intricate connections between finance and politics add up to less than their parts in this unfocused history of Oval Office interactions with the banking industry. Drawing on exhaustive archival research, journalist and former Wall Street executive Prins (Other People's Money) presents a sprawling, haphazard, eye-glazing account of interactions between presidents and leading bankers from the Panic of 1907 to the Crash of 2008. Bankers pop up everywhere in her narrative, lobbying presidents, holding cabinet positions, leading foreign-affairs missions and staking out policy positions. Prins styles all this as a sinister "hidden alliance" underpinning a nebulously undefined global "power," "control," and "hegemony," but her revelations are neither original nor surprising: she mainly demonstrates that bankers are part of the Establishment, with special interests less regulation, more bailouts and foreign business that they hope to see advanced through government action or inaction. Unfortunately, her (often well-merited) populist ire never builds its critique of bankers' opportunism into a coherent account of policy-making, wallowing instead in cynical conspiracy-speak "there are no accidents in global influence" and contentless Theories of Everything. ("Bankers had a propensity to capitalize on wars, but they were equally adept at profiting from peace.") The nexus of money and government deserves a more systematic and thoughtful treatment than Prins's.