All the Presidents' Bankers

"All the Presidents' Bankers spins an enormous amount of research into a coherent, readable narrative. Even her frequent kvetches about the lifestyles of rich and famous bankers are entertaining...There is always room for criticism, and Ms. Prins does it rather well. Banking was her first career before taking up journalism. She can talk the talk and is knowledgeable about the many points where banking and public policy intersect...Give her credit... for seeing through the facade of Dodd-Frank into the danger of another meltdown that lurks in our day of quasi-nationalized banking."--George Melloan, Wall Street Journal "A calm, authoritative elucidation of verifiable history"--Financial Times "Even those who have read Secrets of the Temple, William Greider's massive and brilliant 1987 expose of the Federal Reserve, will find Prins's book worth their time. She presents a new narrative, one that shows how the changing cast of six has shaped America's fortunes under presidents in both parties."--American Prospect "Prins divides her justifiably long text into digestible one- to three-page segments and seamlessly incorporates dozens of prominent banker profiles. Her work is highly recommended both to general readers and to students of financial history."--Library Journal "A revealing look at the often symbiotic, sometimes-adversarial relationship between the White House and Wall Street... [A] sweeping history of bank presidents and their relationships with the nation's chief executives"--Kirkus Reviews "The relationship between Washington and Wall Street isn't really a revolving door. Its a merry-go-round. And, as Prins shows, the merriest of all are the bankers and financiers that get rich off the relationship, using their public offices and access to build private wealth and power. Disturbing and important." --Robert B. Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley "Nomi Prins follows the money. She used to work on Wall Street. And now she has written a seminal history of America's bankers and their symbiotic relationship with all the presidents from Teddy Roosevelt through Barack Obama. It is an astonishing tale. All the Presidents' Bankers relies on the presidential archives to reveal how power works in this American democracy. Prins writes in the tradition of C. Wright Mills, Richard Rovere and William Greider. Her book is a stunning contribution to the history of the American Establishment." --Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and author of The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames "Nomi Prins takes us on a brisk, panoramic, and eye-opening tour of more than a century's interplay between America's government and its major banks -- exposing the remarkable dominance of six major banks, and for most of the period, the same families, over U.S. financial policy." --Charles R. Morris, author of The Trillion Dollar Meltdown "Nomi Prins has written a big book you just wish was bigger: page after page of killer stories of bank robbers who've owned the banks--and owned the White House. Prins is a born story-teller. She turns the history of the moneyed class into a breathless, page-turning romance--the tawdry affairs of bankers and the presidents who love them. It's brilliant inside stuff on unforgettable, and unforgivable, scoundrels." --Greg Palast, Investigative reporter for BBC Television and author of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits "In this riveting, definitive history, Nomi Prins reveals how US policy has been largely dominated by a circle of the same banking and political dynasties. For more than a century, Presidents often acquiesced or participated as bankers subverted democracy, neglected the public interest, and stole power from the American people." --Paul Craig Roberts, former Wall Street Journal editor and Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury "Nomi Prins has done it again -- this time with a must read, a gripping, historical story on the first corporate staters -- the handful of powerful bankers and their decisive influence over the White House and the Treasury Department from the inside and from the outside to the detriment of the people. All the Presidents' Bankers speaks to the raw truth today of what Louis D. Brandeis said a hundred years ago: 'We must break the Money Trust or the Money Trust will break us.'" --Ralph Nader "Required reading for anyone who wants a realistic explanation of how the economic system in the United States is increasingly tilted in favor of those who move in the right circles -- and why, as a nation, we are very much on the verge of going from great to good. I encourage everyone to read this book and reflect deeply on the wake-up call Prins is desperately trying to get us to hear."--Bowling Green Daily News "Money has been the common denominator in American politics for the last 115 years, as Nomi Prins admirably points out. All the Presidents' Bankers is an excellent survey of how money influences power and comes dangerously close to threatening democracy." --Charles Geisst, author of Wall Street: A History "All the Presidents' Bankers is gracefully written, carefully researched, and accessible. It is a must read for anyone concerned with politics and economics -- in other words, just about everybody." --Thomas Ferguson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute