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MAKERS AND TAKERS

Rana Foroohar

Sub-title: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business, Crown Business, NY., 388 pgs., index, bibliography, notes

 
 

Reviewer comment -
I am somewhat disappointed after reading this important book. I was hoping for a solid, academic analysis. Instead we have a journalistic rant. In other words it is the vocabulary and rhetoric that I believe detracts from the valuable content. I imagine I should expect this from a professional journalist at Time and CNN. The idea is to stir up necessary emotional responses and outrage that the author hopes will result in political action. But one is at least encouraged by the ample citations to sources in the end notes and bibliography.
In the content itself, the author continually uses the unfortunately common term, 'debt', as one of the major problems. But 'debt' is the by-product of 'credit'. If everyone would use 'credit' it would be more apparent to the public that a major problem is that the world is floating on a cloud of 'credit' which by now, for instance, already is over 95% of the U.S. money supply itself. And it is the continual expansion of 'credit' in a self-defeating effort to expand economic activity which underlies the financial gamesmanship that she so rightly wants stopped.
The chapter headings provide an outline of the content. I hope to fill in with more comments on each soon.

 
 

Introduction

 
 

Chapter 1 - The Rise of Finance

 
 

Chapter 2 - The Fall of Business

 
 

Chapter 3 - What an MBA Won't Teach You

 
 

Chapter 4 - Barbarians at the Gate

 
 

Chapter 5 - We're All Bankers Now

 
 

Chapter 6 - Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction

 
 

Chapter 7 - When Wall Street Owns Main Street

 
 

Chapter 8 - The End of Retirement

 
 

Chapter 9 - The Artful Dodgers

 
 

Chapter 10 - The Revolving Door

 
 

Chapter 11 - How to Put Finance Back in Service to Business and Society

 
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Barry Ritholtz - Bailout Nation

 
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Peter Conti-Brown - The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve

 
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Danielle DiMartino Booth - FED UP: An insider's Take on Why the Federal Reserve is Bad for America

 
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Charles Gasparino - Bought and Paid For

 

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