success sequence, something like 70% of both democrats and republicans. so this is not a partizan thing that people, the political aisle think that it's important teach kids that there were grants, that if you do these three things, you can avoid poverty graduate high school, obtain full time job and get married before. you have kids and something like 98% of people who follow those three steps do not live in poverty. and a bipartisan there's there's bipartisan agreement this for voters i think for the elites, a mismatch. i think republican elites would support something like that in democratic elites are more skeptical of it. but for ordinary people i think like this is something that republican could actually sort of dwell on and focus on that actually agrees on this. so you can find to to promote that. well, we really encourage you all to read rob's book. it is it is great and you will definitely not want to put it

down so please thank me join me in thanking rob for coming today and book. and now i am so pleased to introduce tonight's speakers gerald epstein. ian is the professor of economics and co-director of the political economy research institute at the university of massachusetts, amherst. he has published widely on a variety of progressive economic policy issues, especially in the areas of central banking and international finance. his previous books include the political economy of central banking contested and the power of finance and what's wrong with modern money theory? a policy critique. he is also a longtime member of the center for popular economics. he'll be joining in conversation tonight by juliet schor ford, professor in economics and

associate energy at boston college. gerald epstein is presenting his new book busting the bankers club finance for the rest of us. bankers brought the global economic to its knees in 2011 and nearly did the same in 2020, both times the u.s. government bailed out the banks, left them in control. how can we end the cycle of trillion dollar bailouts and make finance work for the rest of us busting. the bankers club confronts powerful people and institutions that benefit our broken financial system and the struggle to create an alternative. eileen grable writes, quote busting the bankers club is an essential guide to all that's gone so deeply wrong in the u.s. financial sector. epstein offers a concrete map for bold, yet achievable strategies to reclaim finance for the social good. we're so pleased with this event here at harvard bookstore tonight. please join me in welcoming and juliet schor. thank you.

welcome. it's a great pleasure. be here and i just wanted to start by telling gerri what a magnificent book he has written. as some of you know, he has had a careers of research and writing on banking and finance, as well as considerable engagement with reformers in, this sector. and the book reflects that extensive research search, deep knowledge and accumulated wisdom. you did a great job. a book that works for people like myself. i have done some work these issues as well as people who know almost nothing, the financial sector or, the economic system. so congratulate and thank you for a really important contribution. it a tour de force and i recommend it to all of you. so just wanted to start by letting you have at.

what is the problem of bank and finance today. and i'm going to give you this, mike and maybe you want to start up there. okay. thanks julie and thanks to all of you coming this evening on this very cold leap night so we can all leap a little in celebration. so thank for all being for being here. and thanks also to harvard books response airing this event. my book, as people have already mentioned, is about the outsized power of finance economically and politically. i ask, how does this finance industry, especially mega banks like chase bank of america and the others, sustain their economic and political power and the huge incomes of their ceos and their investors, despite threatening major financial crises every decade or so?

while demanding government bailouts on a frequent basis now, some argue that these financial titans so big and so powerful because they provide such services to our economy. these bankers in words are essential workers. but busting the bankers shows that these megabanks, private equity firms, hedge funds, etc., actually, on balance, a drain on our economy. this is because of their misallocation of human and financial resources. the frequent financial crises they cause and the outsize profits and incomes they extract from society. by the way, this particular statement that i just made to and a lot of the background analysis in book i did with graduate students and former graduate students who have been invaluable supporters.

the work in this book. so how do these financiers sustain their power and wealth? the answer is the bankers club. the bankers club is the powerful group allies that the bankers cultivate and motivate to the interests of finance in washington and state capitals around the country. note how important this club is. the bankers survey after survey shows unpopular banks are to americans. and every year i challenge my undergraduate students to come up with a hollywood movie that portrays bankers in positive light. i challenge you to up with such a movie and closest they ever get is it's a wonderful life and that's from 1946. now the bankers club includes regular suspects. the banks and financial

institutions and the politicians. they pay off with campaign contributions, etc. but there are other members of the club that might be a bit more surprising. take for examples. for example, the federal the federal reserve, which is our central bank. i call the federal reserve the chairman of the club because well the fed sees the world through finance colored glasses with its monetary tools, its regulations, and its so-called lender last resort actions, which we bail outs. the fed often puts the interests of finance ahead, those of society at large. we saw this with the financial after after the 2007 29 financial crisis and we have seen it again more recently, the valley banks signature bank and the others. just one year ago come early. other key members of the club include many financial regulatory agencies and lawyers.

many lawyers, lawyers, lots of lawyers that work for them and for the banks. and then there's the ceos of, nonfinancial corporations who often side with the banks, which the way differs from what happened in the great depression, when many ceos, industrial corporations turned from the banks and allowed fdr to regulate and there are all too many, all too many of my own profession. our own profession, economists who theories based on flimsy assumptions that rationalize financial deregulation. what claiming that free markets are the best of all possible worlds. this club was not always so powerful when the great depression hit in the 1930s. many americans and many businesses blamed the wall street banks for the calamity. as one historian put it, for the first time in decades when the

bankers spoke, no listened. fdr, the new dealers, were able to push through a spate of financial reforms, including the famous glass-steagall act that separated deposit, taking banking from more investment banking. these regulations in a 40 year period of stable banking that tended to promote a stable and growing economy. now, most of the bankers didn't like highly regulated system. partly because it ended up limiting the amount of money they could make goes to figure. so rather than just rattling their cages, the banks spent millions of dollars on organizing the bankers. and during bill clinton's presidency, they finally in dismantling the new deal financial regulations that been placed put in place in the 1930s. these new deal financial regulations were the foundation

of a stable and relatively efficient, highly discriminatory postwar door to financial system and. some called this system boring banking. my wife, who sitting over there says says boring sounds bad, but in fact, boring was is good when it comes to banking. no drama, no bailouts, no crises. boring is good. believe me. now, this deregulation ushered our current system of what call roaring banking. now, what holds the bankers club together? it's a nexus of payoffs financial institutions give campaign campaign contributions to politicians, offers them their staffs, lucrative jobs. when leave office. financial hire. economic consultants and sometimes give gives money to economics programs and departments. the banks create a revolving door of well-paying jobs for

federal reserve and regulatory and their staffs who shuttle between private and public employment. now importantly, book is not just about the bankers and the problems it creates. my book is also about the club busters. the the organizations and groups that for years have been fighting a better financial system. they include key politicians like, for example, elizabeth warren, senator here in massachusetts. think tanks and policy groups as americans for financial reform and better markets in washington dc and grassroots organizers trying create public banks or municipal public banks or national banking legislation that supports small banks and public banks. for the rest of us. in fact. right here in boston, there's an excellent public banking organization called public banking that has very

legislation. now, before the house and senate, the massachusetts house and senate. now, clearly, as you might guess, the club busters are not fighting on a level playing field with the bankers club, but they have one victories and remain much in the game. a major goal i had in writing this book was to convey in language how our financial system works where. the skeletons are buried so that more people feel empowered to join the club. busters and create a financial system that works better for the rest of us. so that's my intro. so that was that was great. thank you. it really excellent overview. and one of the things i think you begin to see here is how original this argument is.

while there are certainly people who have written against the financial sector, the books a ability to put together, you know, in a way the socio ology or the political economy of the of bankers and the financial system, the group of people who belong to the club reproduce its power, the conflict with the folks who are trying to to to bring it down. so i wanted to start with a question that didn't come up as much in intro because you were giving the big historical sweep. but that's a really important part of the and that is the relation between the power of the bankers club and inequality. and that's one of the big arguments of the book. and it's really key, i think, for us to understand inequality, which is of course one of the

key problems in in global capitalism but american capitalism particularly what what's the role of the banks here. so i say in my book that the finance industry and the banks are engine of inequality in our. they're not the only source inequality we have numerous sources. for example the, reduction in the power of labor unions and labor. the the computer of low wage goods from china another countries that made it very difficult to organize and sustain unions for for quite a while changes in labor laws that have made it difficult to organize unions or sustain unions. so all of these things have been very important. but finance has played a major role. and among the ways that it does

that is by, first of all, generating these massive salaries and incomes at the top echelons of the major financial institutions. so that increases you that creates whole class of elites, make enormous incomes. but the way that these incomes are are determined by companies is as a benchmark. they look at the person over here in this industry, this amount, and they say, well, we need to make that amount. so their boards of directors will ratchet up incomes in in non-financial industries as well. now, so that's one way or the another way is the the way in which finance overcharges for many of its services for people like us, the banking fees, the overdraft fees, the high fees of of mortgages. these are all the high insurance costs.

these are all ways in which finance overcharges us for many middle class and working class important activities. and they're able to do that because. much of the financial industry is is very consolidated. there's monopoly power in the industry. we used to have about 14,000 banks in the 1980s, and now we're to about 4000 banks. so there's been an enormous consolidation in the in the banking industry, which gives market power to to number of our biggest banks. finally, banks not provide services to whole groups of people. there's deserts here in boston, elsewhere where people have no access to normal banking services. so they have to turn to payday lenders and enormous fees and interest to basic banking services. banks are reluctant to invest in

communities of color. maybe later, we'll talk about community act, which is a a law that tries to push banks to do so. so in terms of the way the banks allocate credit, there's many people who are just left entirely and have to turn to high alternatives. so these are all the ways in which banks contribute to the inequality in our country. and there's no it's very difficult to put number on it. i a study a while ago that did claim that about 25% of the high income relative to average incomes in the economy is connected to finance. but i think this must simply be a rough estimate. but i think it's significant. great. thanks there's a word that you hear a lot in the sort of discourse and also in the scholarly literature today, when people talk finance and that's

financial ization. i think probably everyone in the room has heard that term term. and of course, you written in this literature a lot. in my experience this word has become a little bit like neoliberalism, a word that everybody's using and they all mean different things by it. and so comes to be a little bit meaning less. but you have a chapter in the book doesn't use that too much for you can tell us why i think we can imagine maybe because it has lost so much meaning. you have a chapter where is really important you have a very clear definition of what it is and something really important that happened in the in the us economy. tell us about that. what is and what do you think its impact has been. so i didn't use the word. partly because of what you said

that it's become overused doesn't necessarily have a clear meaning. i wrote one of the first definitions of financialization in this quarter like almost by accident. i had organized a conference with my colleague bob poland on financialization because we'd gotten a grant to do this you know academics works and i, i, i said to bob, i said, what financialization? what does it mean? he i don't know, but we're going to have a conference on it. and so when i was writing the introduction to the book with the papers in it, i realized that we didn't have a definition of financialization. so i said something very general like financialization is increased role of finance in institutions among actors in society, etc. generally very broad. and it turns out it became kind of the dominant definition of while simply because it was so broad that anybody could use it to put in their own theory. right. right. and so i realized from the

beginning that it's not a great a great term to use that, which is why i didn't use it much maybe once or twice, but to get to your question, i've always had a puzzle being a historian of of of the politics of economics. and the puzzle is this, as mentioned during the great depression, fdr was able to and his administration were able to pass all these reforms legislations, partly because the bankers hadn't been bailed out. most of the banks had gone bankrupt. so it's hard to fight, you know, the policy if you if you're not operating anymore. but there were enough left left around to fight. but the industrial corporations at the time abandoned them. they said, well, we're not going to support you. you, our economy. and number of them went with with the roosevelt administration. but this time around, what i noticed we had the financial crisis.

and then obama and his. passed the dodd-frank financial reform. legislation in 2010. and in that battle, i was slightly involved in working with americans for financial reform in that it was clear that the non-financial corporations were totally with the banks, the big nonfinancial, the small ones, the medium sized. and it made a big difference because if it's not just the lobbying congress, it's also, you know, general motors and us steel and all these other companies doing it makes makes a big difference. and i've been puzzling about why that was the case. now there's this whole literature on financialization that says, well, one reason is because there's not such clear distinction between financial institutions and non-financial institution loans anymore that many non-financial institutions like general electric and many

they get a lot of income from investing in the stock market or lending these kinds of activities, not just by selling cars or by selling computers. and that's true. but still, it's not the majority of most of these companies profits. the majority still from selling cars or steel or or computers or, brands. so i looked into it further. and what occurred? what i came up with was that what's really going on is the finance civilization of the ceos the owners of these corporations and the top management of these corporations are for reasons that we just talked about fabulously wealthy and they need somebody invest their money to manage their money to take send their money abroad to tax havens and so forth. they want the financial their financial advisers and bankers

to have maximum flexibility in making maximum returns on their private wealth. so even if the head of general decided that it might be better general motors to regulate the banks a little more his or her interest, i think now it's a her is to let finance run wild and so that's what i mean by the of the ceos. so it's a really argument because i was always in that first camp it's like, oh, general motors acceptance corporation, they're making all that money. they're bank and so many other at consumer goods companies are. so that's really interesting and your answer actually prompted another for me because i've been myself the same question about climate change which is why are all these companies who are not

fossil fuel entities, not screaming, bloody murder, what the fossil fuel complex is doing to the country and, the world and, you know, we've seen little bit of peeps from from silicon valley, but for the most part, they're absent in this debate are not trying to get the government to do what the industrial corporations allied with to do in the thirties is to save the system. so just, you know, i don't like to spring this on you but do you think the same kind of thing might might help address why we've got this similar kind of thing happening. yeah. so i do think that's that's happening and issue about this, the financialization of the ceos doesn't obviously just apply to

bankers, it applies to top and ceos of, many corporations and unless they're going to fill cost in their in their pocketbooks even if it might even hurt their corporations a bit they'll be biased in favor just kind of letting things alone. now it's a little more complicated than that, i think, because surely you've heard about these asset management companies, the ones who try to create portfolios that exclude fossil fuels, exclude defense companies or that esg companies equality environment social and governance issues. and i think there are a lot of people with money who would rather invest in a portfolio that they see is more moral, perhaps isn't investing in fuels or in military or something

something else. and i think this industry has grown and there are lots of problems, it and so forth, but it is there and it made some difference. you know it's making a difference because the bankers are the right wing, particularly the right wing republicans joined by some of the bankers, is fighting against this. there's a group of red states secretaries of the treasury who have said that if if you're a bank and you're refusing to lend to fossil fuel companies, we're going to take out our state funds from your bank. and if you're a management company and you're trying to create these portfolios, don't include fossil fuel companies, then our attorney generals of our states are to sue you because. you're not doing the best for your clients. so i think these kinds of activities are having an because we know that because having such a strong reaction from the other

side. yeah. and of those really big ones like blackrock and some of the others have pulled out, they've, they've gone back on their climate and so forth because of this. so you probably remember quite a few years ago, you and i wrote some papers, central banking. i remember very and we were writing about the ways in which the the independence, the political of central banks led to the private banking sector having a disproportionate influence on monetary and banking policy and that interest to promote their own agendas. so independent central banks or kind of and this is a you know it's a theme here in the book obviously the independ of the

fed allowed it to of ally with the bankers club board what you say they're the chairman of the bankers club so thinking about our earlier in the context of your book i'm wondering the current situation and whether things have changed. you in the book about the dirty little secret of monetary policy that is the fed's that the fed's for fighting inflation is causing recession and. you know if you if you paid attention the inflation debate over the last couple of years you know there's been a lot of talk about this. can we have a soft landing? can you bring inflation down without having a recession and so forth? but so i'm curious about whether you think things have changed from when we wrote those papers back in the 1980s because it to me that neither the democrat cuts nor the republicans nor the fed at moment has much stomach

for its dirty little secret and this may be a sign that the fed is sort of lesson dependent than it used to be. neither of the really were prepared for the pain of a recession. and so the fed i think the fed didn't do what it what it might have done back in the time we were writing. and certainly what it did in 1979, which is it jacked the interest rates up almost to 20%, 19 or something. maybe i'm wrong on the how high, but in the book you argue that the fed sort of brief leaned in the direction of about jobs, but that pretty quickly moved back to its sort of traditional stance. i'm not sure exactly when the went in. it's some months from now. where do you stand on this now? how are you thinking about the fed it whether or not other

let's say outside the bankers club are really important for it now. yeah great question. well, i want to remind you that our theory that we developed together about the federal reserve until i'm sure you haven't forgotten this, it's a theory of. the federal reserve is a contested terrain. the idea is that the federal reserve is a very important macroeconomic and political institution in our economy. and being such a important institution because it sets interest, it regulates the banks, etc. determines unemployment some extent. and all of this interest groups and all classes and subclasses are all fighting for influence over federal reserve as they are central banks in other countries as well. and and so the federal reserve in principle can be influenced

by banks, by outside groups, by politics, loans, etc., depending on who has levers of power to influence it. and i do think there has been a change. we did our in the 19, in the ancient, it was the eighties when we did our way. and then in the 19 6870s and eighties, i guess in that after the i think a lot of it had to do with the occupy what the financial crash occupy wall street people mobilized but even more so when when george floyd was murdered and black lives matter became very active and a lot of federal reserve reform groups really started pushing the pushing the fed on having a more diverse group. economists working their diverse board members more diverse staff

members and so forth. this became a very big around the time of this reassessment as a result of george floyd and other murders by police. and so think that's one of the reasons why the fed briefly changed its operating tools to say we need to have over full yes we have a mandate to have full employment but we need to actually have over full employment because that's the way you you create demand for jobs. people who are marginalized in the workforce, people of color, people without skills maybe people who have been in prison, people who don't have educations. so we could run the economy at a really high level. then we can bring in more people into the labor market and and reduce inequality. and that's something they wanted to do. and it was a lot because there was so much social and political

pressure. but then when inflation went up because of covid and, the russian invasion of ukraine, and the supply disruptions. they reverted to form and. they really wanted to get inflation under control and they really jacked up interest rates a fair amount. five, five or six percentage points. and they were, i think, were willing to have at least some recession, maybe not a stomach for a vocal style, you know, a 20% unemployment recession of 12% unemployment recession. but they were they were willing to do that. but it didn't happen. and i think the reason didn't happen was, partly because the federal has less control over the economy than it used to because of all the financial innovation all the changes in the global financial has made it harder for the fed, make its interest rate policy, really bite. so they're great now because it

seems we've had this so-called soft landing. you know, they they didn't have to cause a. unemployment has remained low inflation is coming down and now they seem like the you know the the greatest fed in decades. but i think it's a lot of luck and the fact that their interest rate policies didn't bite as much as they would have maybe 20, 20 years ago. it just didn't. kind of a silver lining to all of the all the innovation that, of course, plunged us into the great recession. so i know you want to talk about solutions. you devoted a third of your book to them and you have an extensive agenda on how to bust the bankers club too big. chapters one on regulation. dealing with too big to fail and jail, too complex to regulate of interest. and then a on public banking

banks without bankers so let's talk about your solutions. what's the roadmap for for getting out of this fix. right. so financial regulation is the main thing that economists and others talk about you know fixing the in the dodd-frank law that were kind of swiss cheesed by the bankers club but that's important but i my argument is that it's not sufficient. so what's important what's important is to reduce the size of the big banks, the good banks we need to reinstate kind of a modern glass-steagall act, kind of a ceiling on how big banks can can you get this has a purpose to reduce their political has an economic purpose to reduce their market power so we can have a more affordable banking services in so forth and these big banks have become too big to fail every time they get into they put the government in a corner saying, either fellas, either

bail us or we're going to wreck the economy. they become too big to jail. and the great financial crisis, nobody was jailed as a result of that with the savings and crisis in 1980s. many people bankers went to jail. but not this time around. too big to manage the people at the top of the banks really don't know what's going on they can't really can't really imagine so we need to cut them down to size. that's number one. but number two, financial regulation should do more than just. reduce the number of crises. i mean, if we had if bought a car and our our auto industry produced cars that that didn't didn't crash all the time, but couldn't then work couldn't get us from point to point b, you'd say there's something with the car industry. well, the finance system, even if it doesn't crash all the time if it's not providing services

that we really need, then not a very good financial system. we need more proactive regulations on banks that incentivize them and push them to invest in the things we need, like a green transition in green energy to redevelop our communities and forth. so we need a a negative screen. you can't do this. you can't that. you can't do the other thing in a positive screen. you should do this so that the other thing, because you are a public institution, the government gives charters to banks, it provides services to banks, it allows them to create money. so we a quid pro quo from the banks. but even that's not sufficient because they're private banks. their goal is to maximize their profits. and so we need a an active and effective financial that is publicly oriented, you know, during the great depression with the new deal when they created the new deal system, they said banks should be mission guided. they should have different kinds of missions to serve our

economy. and we need mission guided public banks as well. public banks don't have to be government owned. they can be small community banks, but they have a public say to fund affordable housing or to fund green energy or to fund public education and so forth. they can public private partnerships partly banks, partly public, but they have to have a social mission and they can't have as their only goal, maximum housing profits. they're these of public banks all over the world. in germany, they have a whole slew of public banks, they're not perfect. they get into trouble like our banks do, but they also help to develop the regions. in germany, we have some german experts here who might be able to say more about that, but they do a much better job of serving a public than our banks. so what are examples of public

banks? well, as i said, here in massachusetts, we have a public banking movement that's trying to get a public bank passed by the legislation. this is a public bank that will fund community oriented banks, that will fund small banks, that can then on lend these funds to the people that they and the businesses that they know in their community. there's banking movements in that have gotten the legislate agreement to create public banks in municipalities and, in regions in california. what will these banks, some of them will be tasked funding affordable housing and so forth. a mission now the government has to put in capital to get these banks going. they, the treasury the government needs to in working funds that the banks can on lend to the community members or to smaller banks rather the treasury putting all their excess funds in chase manhattan

bank or bank of america gets lent around the world. so i think these public banks are really important. the thing the public banks can do and my book has kind of a pun, there's kind a double entendre in the book, the bankers club. it's the of bankers and their allies, but it's also the club that the banks hold over our heads. that if we don't do what they want, if regulate them too much or we don't bail them out, they're going to get up and move to london or frankfurt or shanghai or they're going to crash our. so, you know, we're we're powerless. so i think one of the things the public banking can do if it's on a small scale and if it's on a bigger scale, is give us an alternative so that when the big banks threaten to go on capital or wreck our economy, we can say. goodbye, good river riddance. we have other sources of financial services here. the final thing i'll say about

this is that it's not going to work if. they're just very small scale, small public banks in california, massachusetts and so forth. they need to be scaled up in a larger scale for to really deal with the problems that we face, like climate. so for example, in in biden's inflationary act, they, they a green bank, a national bank with an initial investment of $20 million. that's tiny. that's nothing but that can grow there's a bill before congress to make the federal reserve give financial resources and liquidity to help the public prosper just as they help the megabank prosper so we need to have a national infrastructure from the fed. we need to have development banks at the national level to scale this up. so we really can create an alternative to roaring banking.

okay, i'm to open it up in one second, but i just do want to come back on this because, the end of your book in some ways reminded me of many other books that i talked or even written myself where, you know, the book is about like really serious deep structure role, huge problem in the economy. and then you a chapter now at the end about how it can be fixed and to your credit. you have a whole third of a book there, but i remember teaching a class once in i was i had assigned a book with a similar kind of thing structure and i was students were angry and were angry because i was it wasn't book i was putting out the the author was putting out solutions that they felt were absolute lutely impossible because the government would never do these

things. you are saying the government needs to do so i mean it's you know so much of the book is about how powerful the banks are and then we have a chapter on regulation which is pretty much about, you know, cut down to what is you know, shrink them down to the size of the bathtub or so what do you how do you come back on that one? so my last chapter is called restoring democracy. and i started off by saying this problem, this catch 22, this chicken and the egg problem, etc. it's exactly chapters in books like this go to die. i mean, yes, how can i say that? the bankers club is so powerful and then proposes menu of solutions. and the argument i try to make in the last chapters is that i kind of use the example or the metaphor of archimedes. he said, you give me a lever and a place to stand and i can move the world. and what i say is that we need

many levers we need many places to stand. we need to work on public banking or to stop banks from lending to fossil fuels or fight against discrimination in housing or or get the federal reserve, start supporting public banks and not just the megabanks. et cetera i'll pick a lane, pick pick a policy, pick a group, join with other groups who are doing kinds of things and try to push forward. if you can join the club busters. and my idea, my argument that well, some of these will be blocked, but if there are a lot of them coming from different places with different groups and interest in endeavors, there's a chance that some will get through and accumulate change. this is already worked to some extent. a lot of the regulators in the biden came out of these movements and they're now trying to regulate cryptocurrencies they're trying to regulate the

banks they passed a new community we excuse me reinvestment act is helping to channel funds into to poor communities and communities of color so this can work. but there's one final thing i'll say about it. if i can. the goal actually is not just to to reform the system, but is to to hurt the bankers club along the way. it's important to try to pass regulations and reforms that will actually reduce their profits. we economists often say, well, you we want to propose policies that makes everybody better off. we want propose policies that will make the people better off but hurt the banks so that they have less profits. to pay the bankers club, we have to do it in such a way that we're going to reduce the power of the bankers club along the way and we can do it in small ways medium sized big ways.

that's that's my proposal and grab a lever. let's pull and i'm voting for you in november. all right. so so. we have a bit time for questions. i'm sure there are. yes. i want to thank you. i had noticed we had traveled to ireland after the 2008 collapse and they had generally the same type of collapse, a much smaller country. only about 6 million people. and yet the national list every bank except one. they had seven national banks nationalized six. they left the seventh, they restructured all of the mortgages on the houses. so nobody lost the house and the banks. they've now re privatized six banks, i believe. how did that happen. that's really a great example. and because when they when they bailed out the banks they nationalized them and they had strings attached, they said,

okay, you have to stop doing what you're doing. you have to instead use the money that we're investing in. you to help make the households whole. we did none of that when we when the the obama administration bailed out general motors, they put all kinds of strings. they said they the key executives had to leave, the unions had to give back massive givebacks and they had to change their policies. they did nothing like that with the banks. and so that's the difference. one another observation i believe they also wiped out appropriately all stock all the equity so every stockholder lost every single cent appropriately. interesting i didn't that. thank you right there. questions comments. yes yes that's lot of your i'm sure a lot of your talk is how do you bring it down to the common person for their good bye.

let's stick economists? 50 years ago there was one book paul samuelson you could ace it it was m1m to a gdp, gnp you load it, you memorize, you did it. but i've never seen economists down the street and answer a question like, why is my food more expensive? why can't i get a mortgage? so you need to imagine economics somehow it's like, i know somebody said the other day when the pharaohs built pyramids, i'm sure the gdp went up. but those poor mason the all didn't get anything. okay so how does that help the thing with cfos recently i talked to finally, they say our job is to bridge the gap between finance, marketing, etc. so it's like economists finance stick to themselves a language they know federal just those three things right open market transaction and i say reserves requirements and interest rates but all of a sudden we say you have to fight inflation. they go all we got is three

levers here. you start say we can't do anything else. so it looks like there's a big click economist, finance, etc. who have a language of their own, but nobody walking down the street trying to explain. why bread is more expensive. yeah. so thank you so. julie and i were both there on that there is a chapter on economists. we just didn't to it, but also just can say some things here too. julian, i we're both in an organization center for popular economics. in fact, julie is one of the founding members of this organization. so there are a lot of economists who try to put to talk to people and explain at a basic level. and there's a magazine here in boston published here in boston called dollars and you were probably in that involved with that, too. so i think you're right that to many economists to speak among themselves and try to jockey for favors, academia and to have some kind of influence in government. but there are a lot of

economists out there where we're at umass amherst, the umass boston where julie teaches in boston college, who really spend a lot of time on and how we can try to explain things better to students and everybody else. it's an uphill battle. you can say something about that, know there's a great chapter on it. economists and one of the to me one of the interesting and brave things that gerry did in the book was, in that chapter, he he explain sort of the group think of of economists and why they can't do the things that your talking about the ways in which the profession is is structured it's sort of hierarchy it's lack of tolerance for dissent and so forth. but he also took on another dimension of this, which very few people have been willing to talk about, and that is the vested interests that economists

have, in terms of the money that they get from being members of the bankers club. and there's there's a lot of it. and, you know, there have been there have been some film expert documents exposes of of the great crash and the money that was funneled from you talk about ireland know iceland's the famous example of giving a lot money to an economist to talk about how sound that banking system was when were you know on the verge of collapse and they're sitting on boards on financial and financial institutions and you can go look at, you know, the the department right behind us here and look at the number of people there who are not no longer just on boards, but who have joined appointments, who are actually employees or or permanent consultants. some of these firms bringing in millions, millions of dollars.

so, yeah, it's a it's a really it's one of the best chapters in the book. i didn't get to my on it just because, you know, i wrote too many questions. no definitely not. so, jerry, can you help us understand. i think how to think about you talked about there were 14,000 banks at some point in time i don't what know what year you were talking about and now they're 4000. i mean, how we think about the right number of of banks that there should be and geography brazil. he doesn't much the same role it used used to play in terms of home mortgages in that region and so forth. i mean how do we think about size and numbers of banks? is there can you help us with that? yeah, that's an excellent it's really an excellent question. and just just to to be clear, our financial is very different from financial systems in other

countries where there is a small number of big banks like in canada for example and and a number of european countries, we have a history of having many banks and small medium sized banks and so forth. and part of the idea is the banks the smaller banks can really their communities this the small businesses of the communities they know their communities and so forth and being such a large country and having such a regional diversity, having a lot of banks has helped to maintain competition and services for small rural communities. but there is no obvious number. and what you're saying now about electronic and the internet and so forth it could well be that we don't need that many banks. in fact, it could be that we just need one bank for that maybe we need a postal savings bank. many countries have postal

savings banks. we used to have a postal savings. maybe we could have free low cost accounts for. everybody in a postal savings bank or and or maybe we could have fed accounts. the federal reserve could create accounts for everybody cheaply or at no cost so that everybody has access to low cost banking. so i think the internet and electronic banking and so forth can really transform this, but it doesn't have to transform it so that we just have a small number of very powerful mega-banks. we can have really use economies of scale to have a national public bank to serve some these purposes. stephen kirkham i want to sort of piggyback on that because you mentioned it's a wonderful life which is actually about a good little banker and, a bad big banker. and so i wonder about the role of little banks.

you're actually scaring me now talking about one big bank and then trump gets elected and runs the big bank. no, i like the idea of a lot of little banks right behind julie. it says locally owned, independently run. so this is another trend or at least slogan that people on the left like to use. and my experience little banks has been that they've me everything that i've wanted i need any big banks. what there an advantage to having big banks is there a disadvantage to having small banks why are people opening accounts at wells fargo when they're criminals as i don't really understand what what the role should be little banks.

well think i agree with what you're saying about little banks that community banks little banks that members of a community can know their banker they maybe even serve on a public related to their bank, a board of state of stakeholders. and so that's why i'm a big supporter of these public banks that use the partnership banking model that i mentioned. we have a public bank, a state public bank in dakota. i don't know if everybody knows that the this the bank of north dakota in 1919, partly as a result of the populist movement that was, you know, in the prairies at that time and what they developed this partnership model where they give to community and small banks in north dakota who then on lend this cheap these cheaper funds to us to the community members to the small businesses, cooperatives and, so forth. so i'm a big fan of that of, that model and so small banks need help.

they need help from public that can give them cheap credit. they help from the federal reserve and other regulatory agencies that can provide cheap liquidity facilities for them that can give them a helping hand when they get into trouble. so it's not just helping the megabanks, but what is the role of big banks? well, know we have a global financial system, have a global trade system and i think there is a role for for fairly banks as long as the regulators that they're not designed just to engage in speculation but really to to promote our economy. all right. we'll take one more question. yeah, but 40 years ago in fort worth, texas was a group who started buying pawnshop shops. and i said, a banker, why are you investing this is that it gives us we are allowed to charge 20% a month. i said that's legal. he said absolutely legal.

and later on they i mean, they made millions public soon, but why why isn't the bank doing this they say it's not in our charter or because people don't have collateral and credit. say, hang on a second. okay so they didn't that same group started all your cargo is loaning money against cars to the who the banks would not give credit to. they went public for billions. so what is it about banks? they see this profit here. they still don't go after well. i think the first part of your story is more accurate that is, if you look at pawnshops and day lenders and so forth they charge these enormous fees and enormous interest rates. a number of them are financed in the background by some of these big banks they're not the the big banks are to get some of the profits of the share of the profit here without getting the bad publicity.

and so i think the banks if they they smell the profit and they think they can do it in a way that that doesn't give them bad publicity from the government or community activists or their shareholders they're in their and they're increasingly in their is we move to more electronic versions of. all right well let me congratulate again on this fantastic book thanks to all of you for being here and engaging these really important issues and please come up and, get your book signed and and to professor epstein, thanki'm to introduce's

brunch. the author robert kuttner. he's a award winning and bestselling author who covers