Who rules America?
All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power is a groundbreaking narrative of how an elite group of men transformed the American economy and government, dictated foreign and domestic policy, and shaped world history. Culled from original presidential archival documents, All the Presidents’ Bankers delivers an explosive account of the hundred-year interdependence between the White House and Wall Street that transcends a simple analysis of money driving politics, or greed driving bankers, or bankers controlling governments. It presents the shocking genealogyof American power.
Prins ushers us into the intimate world of exclusive clubs, vacation spots, and Ivy League universities that binds presidents and financiers. She unravels the multi-generational family, blood, intermarriage, and mentor-protégé relationships that have confined national influence to a privileged cluster of the same people who recycle their power through elected office and private channels in Washington, D.C.
All the Presidents’ Bankers sheds new light on pivotal historic events—such as why, after the Panic of 1907, America’s dominant bankers convened to fashion the Federal Reserve System; how J. P. Morgan’s ambitions motivated President Wilson during World War I; how Chase and National City Bank chairmen worked secretly with President Roosevelt to rescue capitalism during the Great Depression while J.P. Morgan Jr. invited Roosevelt’s son yachting; and how American financiers collaborated with President Truman to construct the World Bank and IMF after World War II.
Prins divulges how, through the Cold War and Vietnam era, presidents and bankers pushed America’s superpower status and expansion abroad, while promoting the broadly democratic values and social welfare at home. But from the 1970s, Wall Street’s rush to secure Middle East oil profits altered the nature of political-financial alliances. Bankers’ profit motive trumped heritage and allegiance to public service, while presidents lost control over the economy, as was dramatically evident in the financial crisis of 2008.
This unprecedented history of American power illuminates how the same financiers retained their authoritative position through history, swaying presidents regardless of party affiliation. All the Presidents’ Bankers explores the alarming global repercussions of a system lacking barriers between public office and private power. Prins leaves us with an ominous choice: either we break the alliances, or they will break us.
Praise for All the Presidents' Bankers:
"Highly recommended both to general readers and to students of financial history” - STARRED Review, Library Journal
"A revealing look at the often symbiotic, sometimes-adversarial relationship between the White House and Wall Street...sweeping history of bank presidents and their relationships with the nation's chief executives...a valuable contribution..." - Kirkus Reviews
"All the Presidents' Bankers’ spins an enormous amount of research into a coherent, readable narrative. Even her frequent kvetches about the lifestyles of rich and famous bankers are entertaining.” Wall Street Journal Review, April 14, 2014
"Authoritative elucidation of verifiable history." The Financial Times, April 11, 2014
"Progressive Pick of the Week", Truthout, April 1, 2014
"A masterful compilation...deserves instant classic status" - Wall Street on Parade
“Nomi Prins ... has written a seminal history of America’s bankers and their symbiotic relationship with all the presidents from Teddy Roosevelt through Barack Obama. It is an astonishing tale. All the Presidents’ Bankers relies on the presidential archives to reveal how power works in this American democracy. Prins writes in the tradition of C. Wright Mills, Richard Rovere and William Greider. Her book is a stunning contribution to the history of the American Establishment." - Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize winning biographer and the author most recently of The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames.
"Nomi Prins takes us on a brisk, panoramic, and eye-opening tour of more than a century’s interplay between America’s government and its major banks – exposing the remarkable dominance of six major banks, and for most of the period, the same families, over U.S. financial policy." -Charles R. Morris, author of The Trillion Dollar Meltdown.
"The relationship between Washington and Wall Street isn't really a revolving door. It’s a merry-go-round. And, as Prins shows, the merriest of all are the bankers and financiers that get rich off the relationship, using their public offices and access to build private wealth and power. Disturbing and important."- Robert B. Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley, Former Labor Secretary.
"In this riveting, definitive history, Nomi Prins reveals how US policy has been largely dominated by a circle of the same banking and political dynasties. For more than a century, Presidents often acquiesced, or participated, as bankers subverted democracy, neglected the public interest, and stole power from the American people." -Paul Craig Roberts, Former Assistant Treasury Secretary and Wall Street Journal Editor.
"All the Presidents' Bankers is gracefully written, carefully researched, and accessible. It is a must read for anyone concerned with politics and economics — in other words, just about everybody." -Thomas Ferguson, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Senior Fellow, Roosevelt Institute.
"From Taft to Obama, Nomi Prins gives the low-down on the cozy ties between bankers and Presidents in America. And although the state has become more powerful and the bankers less necessary, things have gotten worse, not better, over the century she describes." -James Galbraith, Professor, the University of Texas at Austin and author of The Predator State
"Money has been the common denominator in American politics for the last 115 years, as Nomi Prins admirably points out. All the Presidents' Bankers is an excellent survey of how money influences power and comes dangerously close to threatening democracy." -Charles Geisst, author of Wall Street: A History.
"Nomi Prins has written a big book you just wish was bigger: page after page of killer stories of the bank robbers who've owned the banks—and owned the White House. Prins is a born storyteller. She turns the history of the moneyed class into a breathless, page-turning romance—the tawdry affairs of bankers and the presidents who love them. It's brilliant inside stuff on unforgettable, and unforgivable, scoundrels." -Greg Palast, Investigative reporter for the BBC and author of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.
“Nomi Prins has done it again – this time with a must read - a gripping, historical story on the first corporate-staters – the handful of powerful bankers and their decisive influence over the White House and the Treasury Department from the inside and from the outside to the detriment of the people. All the Presidents’ Bankers speaks to the raw truth today of what Louis D. Brandeis said a hundred years ago: “We must break the Money Trust or the Money Trust will break us.”” – Ralph Nader
