Ron Chernow Quotes
If you go back to the time of J.P. Morgan, the world of high finance was completely wholesale. The prestigious investment banks on Wall Street appealed exclusively to large corporations, governments, and to extremely wealthy individuals.
Chernow, Ron. "Interview: Ron Chernow." Frontline: Betting on the Market, PBS, 1997.
Threadneedle and Lombard streets was the center of the London Financial District.
The result was regulation of the banks and the creation of the SEC to regulate the stock market, However, over the years, the regulations were not able to keep up with the sophisticated development of new forms of investments and financial instruments and the financial industry were able to speculate with other people’s money in ways that FDR and his reformers never imagined. Finally, even the regulation that did exist was weakened by the policies of the George W. Bush administration and the combination brought about the Great Recession of 2008 where the profits from excess speculation were privatized and the losses, socialized with the taxpayer and the American worker bearing the brunt while most of the speculators were bailed out and made more money than ever. The Obama administration tried to reform the situation, but was unable to put an end to the legal speculation with other people’s money or of having institutions that were “too big to fail.”
During this crises, the taxpayers of America had to bail out most of the largest banks in the country whose profligate investment strategy had squandered their depositors and other customers money as a result of the spiral to reap higher and higher profits until they collapsed with the executives making millions in bonuses when their banks were losing money. They put millions of people out of work, and their greedy policies crashed the housing market and then the same banks evicted millions of families when the banks foreclosed on their mortgages with thousands of bank officers committing felonies in the foreclosure processes. This was to Blankfiein and many of the other leading bankers, “God’s Work”.
Ronald Chernow is an American writer, journalist, historian, and biographer. He has written bestselling and award-winning biographies of historical figures from the world of business, finance, and American politics.
