Nomi Prins
Essential reading on the deep, dark history of crony capitalism in America
By John Butler on March 29, 2014
Nomi Prins has done it again. With All the Presidents' Bankers, she shows in exhaustive detail how Wall Street has captured the US political and regulatory process: Left, Right, Up, Down, Sideways. Indeed, as she demonstrates convincingly in the book, the entire left-right paradigm of modern US politics is completely irrelevant to a proper understanding of what really goes on in the long, dark tunnels of power linking Wall Street in New York with K Street in Washington, and their deleterious impact on what some still purport to call ‘democracy'.
In this regard her book is written in the hard-hitting, anti-establishment traditions of such monumental works as ‘Wall Street and American Foreign Policy' by Murray Rothbard and the more recent ‘The Great Deformation' by David Stockman.
One particularly revealing aspect of Prins' forensic financial and political power investigation is the ‘family tree' of the alliances she uncovers and exposes, many branches of which are cemented by marriage. While similar nefarious associations are no doubt as old as organized corporations and government generally, there has been a dramatic increase in their power and scope since the early progressive era in US history, where Prins sources many of the historical threads she weaves into a vast tapestry of questionable influences on powerful politicians, compelling circumstantial evidence of corruption and, in some cases, blatantly overt attempts to extend insider influence into areas it once feared to tread.
As one proceeds through chapter after thoroughly documented chapter, there arises a sense of helplessness regarding what, if anything, is to be done. But education and the enlightenment that follows are the essential first steps to an empowerment that might, just might, make a material difference. With All the Presidents' Bankers, Nomi Prins just might have written the text that catalyzes education and enlightenment into effective action, and for this she has done not only her readers, but all concerned Americans, a great service.
