Age of Greed

Zusatztext 41794785 Informationen zum Autor Jeff Madrick is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books , a former economics columnist for The New York Times , and editor of Challenge magazine. He is an adjunct professor of humanities at The Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, The New School. His previous books include The End of Affluence and Taking America , and he has written for The Washington Post , the Los Angeles Times , Institutional Investor , The Nation , and The American Prospect . Klappentext A vivid history of the economics of greed told through the stories of those major figures primarily responsible. Age of Greed shows how the single-minded and selfish pursuit of immense personal wealth has been on the rise in the United States over the last forty years. Economic journalist Jeff Madrick tells this story through incisive profiles of the individuals responsible for this dramatic shift in our country's fortunes! from the architects of the free-market economic philosophy (such as Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan) to the politicians and businessmen (including Nixon! Reagan! Boesky! and Soros) who put it into practice. Their stories detail how a movement initially conceived as a moral battle for freedom instead brought about some of our nation's most pressing economic problems! including the intense economic inequity and instability America suffers from today. This is an indispensible guide to understanding the 1 percent. Chapter 1 Walter Wriston Regulatory Revolt As Ronald Reagan led his rebellion against government, a quieter one was born in the business community. Its leader was Walter Wriston, a tall, slouched, deeply intelligent and taciturn man with unusual ambition, little regard for tradition, and a highly conservative political ideology that he had inherited from his father. Wriston wanted to transform banking into a business like any other, capable of increasing profits as rapidly as the most admired companies in the nation. The goal would require undoing the federal financial regulations established during the Great Depression. Walter Wriston was born in 1919 in Middletown, Connecticut, his father, Henry, an eminent history professor at the town's prestigious university, Wesleyan. When Walter was five, his father was named president of Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin, where Walter grew up until he entered Wesleyan in 1937. Despite the Depression, the Wriston family remained comfortable during Walter's adolescence. Henry Wriston's reputation rose in these years and he was named president of Brown University in 1936, from which perch he was able to preach against FDR and the New Deal, convinced that the programs would lead to a planned economy. His heroes included Adam Smith, who, despite the complexities in thinking of the Scottish philosopher, he saw largely as the father of the invisible hand and laissez-faire economic philosophy. He also deeply admired the British philosopher Herbert Spencer, who a century after Smith had become popular for what was later called social Darwinism. Spencer, who beginning in the 1850s was philosophically opposed to government intervention in markets, was the popular author of the notion that human poverty was natural because the "survival of the fittest" (a phrase Charles Darwin borrowed from him) was a law of nature. At Wesleyan, Walter Wriston studied history, his father's field. He entered the Fletcher School at Tufts University, one of the nation's most prestigious schools of diplomacy, just outside Boston, to pursue a graduate degree in foreign affairs. Wriston was married to a coed he had met at Connecticut College by the time he graduated in 1942. He was drafted into the Navy in 1944 and sent overseas but di...

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book

“A fascinating and deeply disturbing tale of hypocrisy, corruption, and insatiable greed. . . . A much-needed reminder of just how we got into the mess we’re in.”
—The New York Review of Books 

“Compelling . . . Important . . . Age of Greed abounds with powerful men, ugly fights, infamous scandals, twists and turns, and, true to the book’s title, lots of shameless cupidity.”
—The Washington Post

“Richly detailed and often riveting. . . Clear and compelling. . . A must-read.”
—The Huffington Post

“Bold. . . Readers will find worthwhile stories in these pages.”
—The New York Times Book Review  

“The timing could not be better for a book like Age of Greed . . . A solid review of half a century of economic history . . . A commendable compendium.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Excellent . . . Straightforward . . . We owe Madrick thanks for what he has done.”
—The American Prospect
 
“A compelling and worthy read. Madrick is an able journalist; an excellent and cogent storyteller in a field that often defies the straightforward plot or easy explanation—economics.”
—*Salon

• “Persuasive . . . Vivid . . . As a comprehensive survey of the way institutions work together to create wealth for a few individuals and destroy it for a mass of others, Age of Greed deserves attention.”
  —The Columbus Dispatch

“Madrick pulls no punches . . . Readers who want to understand where we are, how we got here, and some possible outcomes will repay their investment in reading time if they pick up this new volume.”
—Free Lance-Star
 
“Age of Greed is lucid and compelling because of its character-driven nature.”
—Dallas Morning News
 
“Meticulous . . . Madrick makes a good case—and financial news junkies will savor it.”
—Boulder Daily Camera
 
 “Jeff Madrick has written one of those rare, wonderful books that allow us to understand a huge and important historical development that we may not have realized was a coherent and coordinated series of events. Madrick’s account of Alan Greenspan’s ideologically-driven mistakes alone is worth the price of admission, but it is but one course in a feast of wonderful reporting and writing. If you want to know what has happened to your country, read this book.”
—Robert G. Kaiser, author of So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government
 
“Jeff Madrick’s devastating biography of greed is rife with carefully documented cautionary tales of the rich, greedy and unregulated, which collectively constitute the definitive answer to Milton Friedmanesque laissez faire economics.”
—Victor Navasky, author of Kennedy Justice
 
“In Jeff Madrick’s important new book, Age of Greed, we are introduced to some of the best and brightest moneychangers in the murky world of high finance.”
—Gay Talese, author of A Writer's Life
 
“Madrick tells us who did what and how they did it—the ideologues, demagogues, corporate titans, and crooks. A wonderfully insightful but deeply troubling account of the movers and shakers who toppled America.”
—Robert B. Reich, author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future
 
“This is a book that bears reading by everyone with an interest in the American economy and the American future.”
—David Nasaw, author of The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst
 
“Madrick provides a powerful story of the damage done to our nation by hubris, delusions and lust for money.”
—David Cay Johnston, author of *Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Amer…