13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown »

Simon Johnson is Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is coauthor, with James Kwak, of The Baseline Scenario, a leading economic blog, described by Paul Krugman as “a must-read” and by Bill Moyers as “one of the most informative news sites in the blogosphere.”
 
James Kwak has had a successful business career as a consultant for McKinsey & Company and as a software entrepreneur. He is currently a student at the Yale Law School.
 
Visit the authors' blog at baselinescenario.com.

In spite of its key role in creating the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, the American banking industry has grown bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks whose assets amount to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, this oligarchy proved it could first hold the global economy hostage and then use its political muscle to fight off meaningful reform. 13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the financial sector and forcefully argues that we must break up the big banks if we want to avoid future financial catastrophes.
 
Updated, with new analysis of the government’s recent attempt to reform the banking industry, this is a timely and expert account of our troubled political economy.

The New York Times - Louis Uchitelle

[Johnson and Kwak] tell this story in matter-of-fact prose. Even their discussion of derivatives is accessible to ordinary readers (most of the time)…a well-documented appeal to embrace once again Thomas Jefferson's skepticism of concentrated banking power.