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Jimmy Stewart is Dead
Book

Jimmy Stewart is Dead

Ending the World's Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking

Wiley, 2010 plus...


Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Eye Opening
  • Engaging

Recommendation

There’s no use pining for the good old days – It’s a Wonderful Life was just a Hollywood movie, the town of Bedford Falls doesn’t really exist and Jimmy Stewart is long gone. But earth-shattering economic tumult has a way of evoking nostalgia for the return of (what you think were) simpler, more honest fiscal times. Economist Laurence J. Kotlikoff delivers a salty, sometimes irreverent, but ultimately convincing remedy to cure you of the erroneous belief that banking should return to the past to make up for the sins of the present. He competently lays out his concept of how “limited purpose banking” would work while hoisting on their own petard the crafty bankers, sinister lenders and obfuscating bureaucrats who nearly crashed the economy. getAbstract recommends Kotlikoff’s original interpretation of events resulting from the 2008 crisis and his exposition of the far-reaching solution he offers, but quibbles over just one point: George Bailey ran the Bailey Building and Loan, not the Bailey Savings and Loan.

Take-Aways

  • Your friendly banker, like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, no longer exists.
  • A computer decides your creditworthiness, and you don’t know what the bank does with your money.
  • The US government effectively became the lender of last resort for the American financial system during the 2008 panic.

About the Author

Laurence J. Kotlikoff is an economics professor at Boston University and has worked with the World Bank and the IMF.


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