= Short book reviews and notes

== John Kay -- Other people's money

Very complex.  Kay is an expert with long experience in the
financial world and it shows.  He fleshes out his stories and
picture of various aspects of the financial world with lots of facts
and details.

The question we might want to ask: (1) Are Kay's descriptions
accurate?  (2) Are they coherent?  Does the mass of details that he
gives us add up to a picture or story that is well organized enough
so that we can make sense of it, so that we can ask intelligent
questions about it, and so that we can make intelligent claims about
it?

Something to keep in mind and something that Kay helps us appreciate
is that there exist a number of different kinds of finance and they
each serve a variety different kinds of purposes and needs, some of
which are legitimate and some are bogus and subject to different
kinds of abuses.

This also means that these different financial areas attract
different kinds of participants with different wants.  That is
something we will especially want to keep in mind when we start
thinking our way through and proposing fixes to some of the problems
we have and will find.  We are even likely to find that some areas
of finance were invented because of and for the use of the abusers.
This is likely especially true of some of the weirder derivative
financial instruments.

So, what we are finding is that the innovations in the financial
industry (e.g. some of the new financial instruments and some of the
recent organizations and structure of investment and banking firms)
have unintended consequences, and that some of the corrective
actions had and will have unintended consequences.


== How the other half banks

Some points emphasized and reiterated by this book: (1) U.S. banks
have forsaken their obligation to the broader public.  (2) Banks
cater to and serve those with more money and ignore those with less
money while ignoring those with less, because it is less profitable
to do so.  (3) But, we all pay for the banks, in particular when
they take on bad risks and subsequently need to be bailed out.  (4)
The use of fringe and alternative banking is very costly to the
poor.

Much of the book describes in detail how this system works to the
disadvantage of the poor.  There are also chapters on the history of
banking and a chapter on banks such as credit unions that are
somewhat more helpful to a broader section of the public.




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