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The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
June 2011
On Sale: May 31, 2011
480 pages
ISBN: 1400041716
EAN: 9781400041718
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A vividly told history of how greed bred America’s economic
ills over the last forty years, and of the men most
responsible for them. As Jeff Madrick makes clear in a narrative at once sweeping,
fast-paced, and incisive, the single-minded pursuit of huge
personal wealth has been on the rise in the United States
since the 1970s, led by a few individuals who have argued
that self-interest guides society more effectively than
community concerns. These stewards of American capitalism
have insisted on the central and essential place of
accumulated wealth through the booms, busts, and recessions
of the last half century, giving rise to our current woes. In telling the stories of these politicians, economists, and
financiers who declared a moral battle for freedom but
instead gave rise to an age of greed, Madrick traces the
lineage of some of our nation’s most pressing economic
problems. He begins with Walter Wriston, head of what would
become Citicorp, who led the battle against government
regulation. He examines the ideas of economist Milton
Friedman, who created the plan for an anti-Rooseveltian
America; the politically expedient decisions of Richard
Nixon that fueled inflation; the philosophy of Alan
Greenspan, on whose libertarian ideology a house of cards
was built on Wall Street; and the actions of Sandy Weill,
who constructed the largest financial institution in the
world, which would have gone bankrupt in 2008 without a
federal bailout of $45 billion. Significant figures
including Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Jack Welch, and
Ronald Reagan play key roles as well. Intense economic inequity and instability is the story of
our age, and Jeff Madrick tells it with style, clarity, and
an unerring command of his subject.
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