Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It (English Edition) [Kindle-editie] beoordelingen het boek quotes

Other People's Money And How the Bankers Use It is a collection of essays written by Louis Brandeis and includes the following information:-- Our Financial Oligarchy-- How the Combiners Combine-- Interlocking Directorates-- Serve One Master Only!-- What Publicity Can Do-- Where the Banker is Superfluous-- Big Men and Little Business-- A Curse of Bigness-- The Failure of Banker-Management-- The Inefficiency of the OligarchsThe book attacks the use of investment funds to promote the consolidation of various industries under the control of a small number of corporations, which Brandeis alleges are working in concert to prevent competition. Brandeis harshly criticizes investment bankers who controlled large amounts of money deposited in their banks by middle-class people. The heads of these banks, Brandeis points out, routinely sit on the boards of large companies and routinely direct the resources of their banks to promote the interests of their own interests. These companies, in turn, seek to maintain control of their industries by crushing small businesses and stamping out innovators who develop better products to compete against them.Brandeis supports his contentions with a discussion of the actual dollar amounts—in millions of dollars—controlled by specific banks, industries, and industrialists such as J. P. Morgan, noting that these interests acquire a far larger proportion of American wealth than corporate entities had ever had before. He extensively cites testimony from a Congressional investigation performed by the Pujo Committee, named after Louisiana Representative Arsène Pujo, into self-serving and monopolistic business dealings.Louis Dembitz Brandeis was an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents who raised him in a secular home. He enrolled at Harvard Law School, graduating at the age of twenty with the highest grade average in the college’s history.Brandeis settled in Boston where he became a recognized lawyer through his work on progressive social causes. He helped develop the "right to privacy" concept by writing a Harvard Law Review article of that title, and was thereby credited by legal scholar Roscoe Pound as having accomplished "nothing less than adding a chapter to our law". He later published a book titled Other People's Money And How the Bankers Use It, suggesting ways of curbing the power of large banks and money trusts, which partly explains why he later fought against powerful corporations, monopolies, public corruption, and mass consumerism, all of which he felt were detrimental to American values and culture. He also became active in the Zionist movement, seeing it as a solution to antisemitism in Europe and Russia, while at the same time being a way to "revive the Jewish spirit."When his family’s finances became secure, he began devoting most of his time to public causes and was later dubbed the “People’s Lawyer.” He insisted on serving on cases without pay so that he would be free to address the wider issues involved. The Economist magazine calls him "A Robin Hood of the law." Among his notable early cases were actions fighting railroad monopolies; defending workplace and labor laws; helping create the Federal Reserve System; and presenting ideas for the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He achieved recognition by submitting a case brief, later called the "Brandeis Brief," which relied on expert testimony from people in other professions to support his case, thereby setting a new precedent in evidence presentation. President Woodrow Wilson nominated Brandeis to become a member of the Supreme Court. However, his nomination was bitterly contested, partly because, as Justice William O. Douglas wrote, "Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be."