num_pages: 440
description: A history of major financial crisesand how taxpayers have been left with the billIn the 1930s battered and humbled by the Great Depression the U.S. financial sector struck a grand bargain with the federal government. Bankers gained a safety net in exchange for certain curbs on their transparency rules record-keeping and antifraud measures and fiduciary responsibilities. Despite subsequent periodic changes in these regulations the underlying bargain played a major role in preserving the stability of the financial markets as well as the larger economy. By the free-market era of the 1980s and 90s however Wall Street argued that rules embodied in New Dealera regulations to protect consumers and ultimately taxpayers were no longer neededand government agreed. This engaging history documents the countrys financial crises focusing on those of the 1920s the 1980s and the 2000s and reveals how the two more recent crises arose from the neglect of this fundamental bargain and how taxpayers have been left with the bill.
language: English
title: Broken Bargain: Bankers, Bailouts, and the Struggle to Tame Wall Street
publisher: Yale University Press