Age of Greed

May 15, 2011
Madrick traces Americas movement of greed from the 1970s through the succeeding two decades and its contribution to the 2008 financial crisis. We learn that this wave of greed was not caused by inevitable forces of history or natural swings in politics. This is a story of people reacting to crisis and change and the resulting economic carnage. While presidents and policymakers were players, it was mostly business pioneers who fought government regulation or, through innovation, avoided government oversight and diminished its power. Financiers led the way. Woven through their stories is the biography of a conservative thinker, born in 1933, who eventually served Ronald Reagan and whose tale of family, education and cultural influences is a prototype of the development of conservative thinking as it came to dominate the country. Madrick concludes the financial community has to be re-madean enormous challenge, given the power and money at stake. An excellent, thought-provoking book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)