Light Reading at Jenny Lake Lodge

Age of Greed

Jeff Madrick

There are two types of people in the world and two types only: Those who, after seeing Wall Street, think Gordon Gecko is the hero, and the rest of us. That is a conclusion I have been harboring for some time now, but it has been made manifest by Age of Greed by Jeff Madrick.

That was my light reading at Jenny Lake Lodge the last two weeks. Every morning I would get up at 6:15, take a shower, get dressed, and walk over to the lodge to fill Katherine's Disney World All-Purpose Mug with coffee. By the time I got back with the coffee Katherine would be in pre-shower mode and I would walk back to the lodge to sit by the fire, coffee cup (Jenny Lake issue) nearby, with Madrick's collection of outrageous behavior in hand.

Madrick traces the rise of finance and the corresponding decline of government from post-Kennedy to Obama in a series of chapters, each highlighting the "accomplishments" of key individuals as they wheeled and dealed away pesky regulations in an unrelenting quest to amass fortunes.

None of this wheeling and dealing was personal, mind you. If people got hurt in the process, if loyal employees got fired en masse, if life savings were lost, if states and countries came to the brink of collapse, well it was just business and, as we all know, what's good for business is good for America.

The book is divided into two sections. The first, "Revolution," ranges from Citicorp's Walter Wriston down the line of deregulators to Ronald Reagan to Paul Volcker in eleven detailed chapters, each more maddening than the last. The second section keeps this up as it leads up to the Great Recession of 2008.

Maddening because these characters keep getting away with the same stuff and even though Madrick suggests they were responsible for one financial crisis after another, they kept getting richer, all the while complaining that they should be afforded the liberty to get richer still.

But we know all that. I want to get back to my first paragraph.

I had a surprisingly unpleasant discussion/argument with a friend at the Y and during the course of our give and take he said, "Well, you just don't know anything about business, do you?"

"No I don't," I answered proudly with what I am sure was a smart ass smile on my face.

The encounter, you'll be glad to know, ended pleasantly enough. But I have been thinking a lot about the business comment, which is, I suppose, one of the reasons I picked up this book in the first place--to understand business.

I don't understand Business in the same sense that I don't understand Pharmacy, having never taken a course. I can say things like Business Cycle and Research and Development, Profit Margins, Debit. Stuff like that, but some investor would be making a serious mistake allowing me to run a business.

After Madrick's book I really don't UNDERSTAND Business. Feel free to roll your eyes, but I never fully grasped the enormity of an individual whose only goal was the acquisition of money. Hey, I like money as much as the next guy, but I always accepted as a given that money is something that comes from something else, like a crop, or a teaching job, or a best-selling novel.

When I had all those kids back in the Wall Street days who believed that "Greed is good," I didn't realize that they really meant it. This book chronicles the successes (mostly) and failures of those kids. It showcases what can happen when Gordon Gecko is taken his logical conclusion.

So, I have been immersed in a world where Enron traders cheered when their energy market manipulations resulted in fortunes for them and near ruin for California. Where short sellers unapologetically made fortunes as Great Britain's currency came within a hair of collapse. Where lending institutions discourage you from paying off mortgages early. It is Yossarian's world in the streets of Rome. "Everywhere I look I see people cashing in."

Sounds cheery huh?

Jeff Madrick's book is compelling, infuriating, and absolutely wonderful.