BUSTING THE BANKERS' CLUB

An economics professor catalogs the countless ways in which the financial system fails ordinary consumers while favoring the wealthy.

“Finance,” writes Epstein, “is an essential and highly productive part of our economic system; but the financial system can also be a source of stagnation, instability, inequality, and crisis.” The essential inequities in the system have been laid bare at several points, but especially in the financial crisis of 2007-2008, when many corporations and financial institutions walked away unscathed at a cost to taxpayers of $50,000 to $120,000 per household—and not the mega-wealthy households, you can be sure. Some systemic fundamentals are simply off, Epstein shows: A speculator hedges on whether a stock’s value will rise, not whether the company behind it is successful or failing, ethical or criminal. Interestingly, he notes, the long period between 1945 and 1980, marked by stable but constant growth with almost no financial crises across the globe, ended in the turbulence of the Reagan era and beyond—when, by no coincidence, regulations on the financial industry were abolished or weakened. The bankers’ club of Epstein’s title has flourished on the backs of consumers, abetted by policy suggestions from influential economists, who “were not just innocent bystand­ers: they helped to bring on the catastrophe.” To counter these complex problems, the author proposes thorough reforms of many kinds, including the imposition of a new round of regulations. More comprehensively, Epstein encourages an expanded public banking sector—shorthanded as “banks without bankers”—that, in truth, are devoted less to private profit than to providing low-cost services and low-interest loans to encourage small-scale investments, greater availability of higher education to low-income students, construction of affordable housing, and the like.

A cleareyed view of the financial system’s woes, all addressable if only the political and economic will is there.