Undue Influence: How the Wall Street Elite Puts the Financial System at Risk

by Charles R. Geisst

Book Overview

A critical look at over 80 years of conflict, collusion, and corruption between financiers and politicians
Undue Influence paints a vivid portrait of the dealings between "the few", in this case members of Congress, the banking community, and the Fed, and sheds light on how radical new deregulatory measures could be introduced by unelected officials and then foisted upon Congress in the name of progress. In the process, the background of the new...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471656631
• ISBN13: 9780471656630
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great background for regulation/deregulation

Professor Geisst has done a great job of making all of the confusion about the regulation and deregulation of Wall Street and the banks clearer. His account of the trend toward freeing the banks from the 1930's laws is very valuable because it shows the behind the secenes working of the different interested parties. The whole debate is part of the larger movement toward reinterpreting the past in a more conservative fashion and I found the book interesting for that reason alone. Reading this, I get the impression that conservatives reacted toward deregulation in the 1980s as strongly as the radicals did for regulation in the 1930s but the major difference was that the old regulations at least responded to a crisis, trying to fix it. The same cannot be said of the free market movement of the recent period. I found this book very vaulable.