Why read Makers and Takers?

Book cover of Makers and Takers: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street

Book description

Is Wall Street bad for Main Street America?

"A well-told exploration of why our current economy is leaving too many behind." —The New York Times

In looking at the forces that shaped the 2016 presidential election, one thing is clear: much of the population believes that our economic system is…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Makers and Takers as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Marc Fasteau

Author

When I was an investment banker in the 80s and early 90s, the prevailing mantra was that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. Nevertheless, I wondered whether slicing and dicing mortgages into different classes of derivatives and selling them to other financial institutions actually added value to the real economy.

This book made it clear to me that it does not and shows how the overgrowth of the financial sector—rising from four to five percent of GDP in the 1970s to over eight percent in the 2000s—caused the Great Recession of 2008. This explosion of…

From Marc's list on The best books on how the US government’s free trade and extreme free market policies destroyed the American middle class and what to do about it.