By Larry Doyle – Book Review:  All The Presidents’ Bankers by Nomi Prins

While all too much of our analysis of market developments comes to us in the form of sound bites and snippets, leave it to the great writers of our time to provide real depth and study of the business and political relationships that ultimately impact all of us.

I recently completed reading just such a study, All The Presidents’ Bankers by Nomi Prins. The author is not only a Wall Street insider but also highly regarded for her prior books and well documented written and spoken commentaries.

I very much had the sensation of sitting in on a semester long tutorial in Financial and Political History while working my way through this book. While at times the level of detail provided required me to take a break to ponder the magnitude of the message, the picture never lost focus.

Ms. Prins brings so much to bear in this work as a result of her visiting each and every Presidential Library going back to Woodrow Wilson’s presidency in the earliest years of the 1900s. She informed me in the midst of a recent interview that not all of the information was immediately provided. As need be, Prins utilized the Freedom of Information Act to gain an even greater understanding of the relationships between those occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the executive offices of our major banking institutions.

The relationships were very often as much social as they were business and political. In the earlier years of the prior century, the relationships ran throughout a handful of the most powerful and influential families in the land. A sense of elitism very much is on display in the process.

Prins looks through these power based relationships running between Wall Street and Washington to bring a depth of understanding of almost every major national event and goes far beyond most history books in doing so.

The founding of the Federal Reserve, our engagement in the great wars of the 20th century, the market crash of 1929 and subsequent regulations, international relations, the financialization of our economy, bailouts, and so much more, Prins covers it all. In the process, she also outlines when and how the balance of power within these relationships shifted so that the banking executives on Wall Street now very much hold the upper hand.

She concludes, “Our choice is simple: either we break the alliances, or they will break us.” Read more HERE.

Below DemocracyNow interviews Nomi Prins about All the President’s Bankers.

See also: It Takes A Pillage by Nomi Prins (Great book!)