Charles Geisst – Undue Influence. How the Wall Street Elite Puts the Financial System at Risk
A important look at over 80 years of battle, collusion, and corruption between financiers and politicians
Undue Influence paints a vivid portrait of the dealings between “the few”, on this case members of Congress, the banking neighborhood, and the Fed, and sheds mild on how radical new deregulatory measures could possibly be launched by unelected officers after which foisted upon Congress in the identify of progress. In the course of, the background of the new monetary elite is examined-because they’re markedly totally different than their predecessors of the 1920s and 1930s. Undue Influence additionally brings readers up to the mark on different necessary points, together with how the monetary elite has been in a position to perpetuate itself, how the markets lend themselves to those particular curiosity teams, and the way it’s potential that after 80 years of monetary regulation and regulatory our bodies the identical issues of monetary malfeasance and fraud nonetheless plague the markets.
Charles R. Geisst (Oradell, NJ) is the creator of 15 books, together with Wheels of Fortune (0-471-47973-X), Deals of the Century (0-471-26397-4) and the bestsellers Wall Street: A History and 100 Years of Wall Street. Geisst has taught each political science and finance, labored in banking and finance on Wall Street and in London, in addition to consulted. His articles have been printed in the International Herald Tribune, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Newsday, Wall Street Journal, and Euromoney.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter One Distrust of Wall Street in the 1920s 11
Chapter Two The Assault on Wall Street 59
Chapter Three Continuing the Assault 109
Chapter Four Three Decades of Slow Change 149
Chapter Five The Reagan Years 189
Chapter Six Deregulation in the 1990s 239
Postscript Is Deregulation Working? 287
Bibliography 291
Notes 295
Index 305
Author Information
CHARLES R. GEISST is the creator of fifteen different books, together with Wheels of Fortune: The History of Speculation from Scandal to Respectability (Wiley), Deals of the Century: Wall Street, Mergers, and the Making of Modern America (Wiley), and the bestsellers Wall Street: A History and 100 Years of Wall Street. Previously, he labored as a capital markets analyst and funding banker at a number of funding banks in London, and has additionally taught each political science and finance. He has printed commerce articles in magazines and newspapers corresponding to the Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Newsday, and Euromoney.
Reviews
“…incisive explanation of various consiracy theories” (Gulf Business, May 2005)
The Glass-Steagall Act, separating industrial banks from funding banks, was handed in 1933 to forestall banks from risking depositors’ funds on the still-shaky inventory market. It was repealed in 1999, when playing different folks’s cash on the inventory market was thought of the top of monetary probity. In this partaking historical past of Glass-Steagall, Geisst (Wall Street: A History) surveys the 70 years resulting in this ideological sea change, as the widespread Depression-era populist suspicion of Wall Street subsided, to get replaced with the pro-business dogma of the Reagan period and the New Economy bubble. Formal repeal, Geisst reveals, was preceded by many years throughout which huge industrial banks, hungry for a slice of the profitable funding banking enterprise, more and more flouted Glass-Steagall restrictions with the connivance of ideologically sympathetic Federal Reserve regulators. The huge sums banks have spent on lobbying and marketing campaign contributions, and the comfortable Wall Street jobs awaiting authorities officers who change sides, make Geisst wonder if “the gamekeepers and the poachers had all joined the same club.” Geisst supplies a lucid information to the monetary points concerned and a colourful account of decades-long political debates and legislative wranglings, whereas elevating troubling questions on the course of public coverage. (Dec.) (Publishers Weekly, November 15, 2004)