Look, I suck. I get that.

[octoberlib]

197. I highly recommend this book. The problem is systemic and has existed for a long time

It no longer matters who sits in the White House,” former Goldman Sachs managing director Nomi Prins writes in her new book “All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power.” “Presidents no longer even try to garner banker support for population-friendly policies, and bankers operate oblivious to the needs of national economies. There is no counterbalance to their power.”

Prins, who also worked for Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Chase Manhattan Bank, is now a fellow at the think tank Demos and a member of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Federal Reserve Advisory Council. Salon spoke with Prins about a century of presidential coziness with bankers; Barney Frank’s defense of big banks’ power; and how to “break the alliances” before they “break us.” A condensed version of our conversation follows.


It’s no secret that big banks play a big role in shaping U.S. banking policy. Your book argues they play a big role in all kinds of areas, like foreign policy. How broad, deep and consistent is the role of big banks in U.S. policymaking?

Throughout the century that I examined, which began with the Panic of 1907 … what I found by accessing the archives of each president is that through many events and periods, particular bankers were in constant communication [with the White House] — not just about financial and economic policy, and by extension trade policy, but also about aspects of World War I, or World War II, or the Cold War, in terms of the expansion that America was undergoing as a superpower in the world, politically, buoyed by the financial expansion of the banking community.



http://www.salon.com/2014/04/15/we_are_in_great_danger_ex_banker_details_how_mega_banks_destroyed_america/