Abstract

Jimmy Stewart is Dead

Forward by Jeffrey Sachs

Larry Kotlikoff is a worried man on an urgent mission. He knows that the financial crisis that hit us in 2008 can come back with a vengeance, because our government so far is treating the symptoms, but not the underlying disease. By the time you finish this book you will be worried too. With brilliance, wit, clarity, and bravery, Kotlikoff explains how our financial system is “virtually designed for hucksters.” Yet even more importantly, he shows us how to fix it.

As Kotlikoff makes clear, the litany of faulty incentives and opportunities for fraud in America’s banking system is distressingly long: “limited liability, fractional reserves, off-balance-sheet bookkeeping, insider-rating, kickback accounting, sales-driven bonuses, non-disclosure, director sweetheart deals, pension benefit guarantees, and government bailouts.” It’s a system, in a word, in which bankers make promises they can’t keep in order to collect outsized earnings unrelated to real productivity.

Source: article website Laurence Kotlikoff (click link below for full article)