Anat Admati, economics professor at Stanford, and Martin Hellwig, director at the Max Planck Institute, wrote an forthcoming book called The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It. The preface is available online, and we’ve added the book to our queue after reading this quote from it:
“Do not believe those who tell you that things are better now than they had been prior to the financial crisis of 2007–2009 and that we have a safer system that is getting even better as reforms are put in place. Today’s banking system, even with proposed reforms, is as dangerous and fragile as the system that brought us the recent crisis.
But this situation can change.”
It’s hard to sum up what is motivating SwitchYourBank.org more clearly than that quote does. We agree that the financial system is still full of risk, and we agree that simple solutions (not thousands of pages of detailed rules, riddled with loopholes) can help the situation.
Importantly, the preface claims that the book aims to reach a public audience, with the authors claiming that “you do not need any background in economics, finance, or quantitative fields to read and understand this book.” Our theory and hope is that if more of the public understands these issues, they’ll make better voting decisions, and better decisions about where they bank.
In sum, the book looks promising. After we read it, we’ll review it and add it to our growing reading list.
Flickr image from othermore
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